Chapter 14
Charlotte
T he next two days blurred together in a strange kind of limbo.
Kane and I were stuck in a holding pattern—Tate checking in periodically but with nothing substantial yet, Calloway still out there hunting for me, and nowhere safe to go except this modest house in the middle of nowhere.
So we waited. And in the waiting, the distance and tension between us quietly disappeared, replaced by a constant, simmering awareness that seemed to follow us everywhere.
It lived in the small things. How Kane’s eyes lingered on me a second too long when I walked into a room.
The way my pulse kicked every time his hand brushed mine while passing papers back and forth across the coffee table as we discussed my article.
The charged silence that settled between us whenever we ended up standing too close in the kitchen.
At night, the safehouse felt too small. Too quiet.
I became hyperaware of him existing just down the hall—the low murmur of his voice on the phone with Tate, the sound of his footsteps moving through the house, the occasional glimpse of broad shoulders when he wandered into the kitchen in a fitted T-shirt and gray sweatpants that did absolutely nothing to help my self-control.
And the worst part was how easy it all started to feel. Like we’d slipped into an easy rhythm we should have already known years ago.
I tried to work on my story whenever I could, reorganizing my notes, drafting sections I could write without new evidence, outlining the structure the piece would eventually take when Tate, hopefully, found the pieces I needed to expose Calloway for who he really was beneath the philanthropist facade.
Kane gave me space when I needed it, but in a house this small, space was a relative concept.
We watched movies—action films he picked and documentaries I insisted on.
We discovered a battered Scrabble board in the hall closet and played ruthlessly competitive games that devolved into arguments about whether “qi” was a real word (it was; I won that round).
We cooked meals together, moving around each other in the small kitchen with a surprising ease.
Kane worked out religiously—push-ups, pull-ups on the doorframe, some kind of martial arts routine that made the muscles in his back shift in ways I absolutely did not stare at.
I did yoga, then cardio, then more yoga.
Anything to burn off the restless energy coiling tighter and tighter between us with each passing day.
Because here’s the thing about clearing the air with someone: once the anger drains away, you’re left facing whatever was buried beneath it.
And what had been buried beneath my anger toward Kane was a bone-deep attraction that hadn’t faded in two years.
If anything, it had intensified and sharpened into a craving I couldn’t ignore no matter how many sun salutations I forced my body through.
We’d agreed that night at The Players Club was about getting our complicated desire for one another out of our systems. A release and closure.
What a damn joke.
Kane wasn’t out of my system. Not even close. And I didn’t think I was out of his system either.
The domesticity of our situation made everything worse.
This was what it could have been like, I kept thinking, if everything hadn’t imploded between us.
If I hadn’t written that article, we’d be two people who’d met at a club, gone on that dinner date, and discovered we actually liked each other as much as we wanted each other.
Instead we tried to behave normally, both pretending the attraction and sexual tension between us wasn’t becoming impossible to ignore.
But in those quiet hours with nothing to do but wait, we talked. Not about the case or our past or the weight of everything that had happened—just the small, mundane things that make up a life and our personalities.
I learned that Kane’s favorite color was blue and that he’d wanted to be a marine biologist as a kid before he’d ever considered law enforcement. That he was actually an amazing cook and enjoyed reading psychological thrillers.
He learned that I stress-baked when I had access to an oven, that my guilty pleasure was reality TV dating shows, and that I’d once gotten lost in Barcelona for six hours because I refused to admit I couldn’t read the map.
He discovered I was ticklish behind my knees—information he filed away with a dangerous glint in his eyes—and that I talked in my sleep, though he wouldn’t tell me what I’d said.
These were the things you learned when you dated someone. The small intimacies that created a foundation for a real relationship. And we were accumulating those moments despite ourselves, building a connection neither of us had asked for or expected.
By the third day, I was done pretending.
There were only so many hours we could work out, only so many movies we could watch, only so many games of Scrabble I could win before the distraction stopped working. The tension had become a living thing between us—heavy and electric, impossible to ignore.
I wanted Kane with a single-minded intensity that made it hard to think about anything else, and I knew the feeling was mutual.
Someone was going to have to break first.
I decided it was going to be me.
After dinner, we settled into what had become our evening routine—me on the couch, Kane in the armchair across from me, the coffee table between us serving as our gaming surface.
Tonight it was poker, a game I’d learned at my father’s knee, watching him fleece marks out of money they couldn’t afford to lose.
The irony wasn’t lost on me that those skills were now being put to more constructive use.
We’d raided the kitchen for betting stakes, piling the table with the Oreos and pretzel sticks and fun-sized candy bars I’d ordered from grocery delivery because a girl needed her snacks.
The game had been going for over an hour, the lead shifting back and forth between us in a way that was both frustrating and exhilarating.
Kane had a good poker face—years of interrogation training, probably—but I’d grown up reading people who lied for a living.
I studied him over my cards. He was down to his last few Oreos, but the slight quirk at the corner of his mouth told me he thought he had this hand locked down.
He didn’t. But winning another pile of candy wasn’t what I was after.
“Let’s raise the stakes,” I said, keeping my voice casual.
Kane’s eyes lifted from his cards, one eyebrow arching. “Getting bored with the snacks?”
“Something like that.” I set my cards face-down on the table and met his gaze directly. “Next hand. Winner gets to ask the loser for anything.”
The word hung in the air between us. Anything.
Kane went still. I watched understanding dawn in his expression, followed immediately by heat, then calculation. He knew exactly what I was doing. I was tired of dancing around this thing between us, tired of pretending we weren’t both wound tight enough to shatter.
“Anything,” he repeated slowly.
“Within reason.” I smiled sweetly. “I’m not going to ask you to rob a bank.”
He smirked. “Just rob my virtue.”
“Do you even have any virtue left to rob?”
That surprised a laugh out of him—a real one, warm and unexpected. “Fair point,” he conceded. His eyes held mine, dark and considering. “All right. You’re on.”
He thought he was going to win. I could see it in the confident way he shuffled the deck, the slight grin playing at his lips. He thought his years of reading criminals and playing poker with his cop buddies had given him an edge I couldn’t match.
He was wrong.
The hand played out in tense silence. Bet. Raise. Call. My heart was pounding harder than the stakes warranted, and not because of the cards in my hand. This was foreplay, and we both knew it. Every ‘chip’ pushed forward was a promise, every raise an escalation.
When we finally showed our hands, Kane stared at my cards for a long moment before letting out a slow, defeated breath.
“Full house,” I said pleasantly. “Queens over sevens.”
His flush had been good. Just not good enough.
Kane leaned back in his chair, an emotion caught between frustration and anticipation flickering across his features. “You’re a card shark.”
“My father was a con man,” I said with a shrug. “Were you expecting fair play when the stakes were so high?”
“I was expecting to win.” His voice dropped to a lower, rougher register. “So. You won. What do you want?”
I held his gaze and let the moment stretch, savoring the power of it. Kane’s jaw was clenched tight, his body coiled with tension. He didn’t like not being in control, that much was obvious. But beneath the frustration, I could see the desire. The same hunger that had been clawing at me for days.
“Stand up,” I said.
Kane’s eyes narrowed slightly, but he rose from the chair in one fluid motion. He stood there waiting, watchful, a predator assessing whether to pounce or play along.
I leaned back against the couch, savoring my victory, and this moment. “Take off your shirt.”
A beat of silence passed before Kane reached back and pulled his t-shirt over his head. He tossed it at me with a playful flick of his wrist, the fabric hitting my chest before I caught it.
I couldn’t help my smile. There he was —the flirtatious, easy man I’d known before everything went wrong. Glimpses of him had been emerging more and more these past few days, and every one of them filled me with an impossible longing for what we could have been.
I let my eyes wander over his bare chest. Toned muscle, a scattering of dark hair, the defined lines of his abs disappearing into his jeans.
I’d seen him shirtless before, but not like this.
Not with him standing in front of me, letting me look my fill of his gorgeous body while waiting for my next command.
“Now get on your knees,” I said, lifting my gaze to his, “and crawl to me.”