Kai
The door shuts hard enough to rattle the frame, and for a moment the silence feels like it might split me in half. I should let her go. I should laugh it off, drown the taste of her defiance in another drink, another nameless body.
I can still see her.
The black dress clinging to her hips, the straps thin over her shoulders, her lips painted red like she wanted me to smear them with my mouth.
Scarlett doesn’t dress like that for ‘just a friend’.
She dressed like that to kill me — to remind me that every inch of her is temptation carved into flesh, and I’m the one sin-sick enough to want it.
My hand remains braced against the door where I pinned her, and my skin burns from her heat. I flex my fingers as if I can scrub her ghost from me. It doesn’t work. It never works.
She thinks she got away clean. She thinks walking out into the sunlight makes her safe, but I saw the way her voice broke, the way her pulse stuttered under my hand, the way her body betrayed her when I asked if she was still a virgin. She can snarl, she can spit venom, but she can’t hide that.
I move to the window, pulling the curtain back just enough to watch her cross the drive — those heels clicking sharply against the pavement, her bag slung over her shoulder, hair catching the light. She doesn’t look back. She doesn’t have to. She knows I’m watching.
My jaw locks so hard it hurts. Just a friend, she said.
No.
Whoever he is, he’s already dead.
Scarlett doesn’t get to offer herself to anyone else.
Not when she’s mine.
Ava’s perfume still lingers in the kitchen — cloying, sweet, sharp enough to stick in the back of my throat.
Last night she leaned into me at the bar, her laugh too loud, her hand sliding over my thigh like she already knew where she wanted the night to end.
She followed me home without hesitation, heels clicking against the pavement, eyes full of expectation.
She thought she’d won. Thought I’d take her upstairs, press her against the wall, fuck her until her lipstick smeared across my sheets. She thought she was the kind of girl men couldn’t resist.
I didn’t touch her.
Not once.
She’ll tell her friends Kai Everly is a gentleman — that he let her stay, let her flirt, let her paint his morning in red and sugar and laughter, but didn’t push for more. She’ll think I was being polite.
I’m not polite. I’m not a gentleman. I’m not interested in sweetness or easy smiles.
The truth is simpler. Uglier.
I just didn’t want her — because while she sat on my counter, swinging her perfect legs and giggling into my ear, all I could think about was Scarlett upstairs: hair loose, mouth sharp, eyes that cut me open every time she looked at me.
All I could hear was the echo of her door closing, the phantom sound of her breath catching when she saw me in the hall.
Ava could’ve stripped bare in front of me and it wouldn’t have mattered. I’d already chosen my ruin, and she has no idea.
None of them do.
They see Kai Everly and they see a smile, a body, a distraction. But Scarlett? Scarlett sees the monster underneath — and still, she lingers.
I can’t stop picturing it.
Scarlett walking into a café, black dress cutting sharp across her thighs, lips still stained red.
Him waiting for her — some faceless bastard sitting at a table, grinning like he has any right.
She’ll slide into the chair across from him, tilt her head the way she does when she’s pretending to be interested, tuck her hair behind her ear while he makes her laugh.
I hate him for it. I hate her for it — because I know how she looks when she laughs: head thrown back, throat bared, eyes lit like a dare — and it kills me to think of her giving that to anyone else.
I know how her legs cross when she’s nervous, how she fiddles with her rings when she’s lying, how she bites her lip when she’s trying not to say what she wants.
He doesn’t know any of that. He doesn’t deserve to.
My hands clench into fists at my sides.
Will he lean across the table, touch her wrist, brush his thumb across her skin like he has the right to claim it? Will she let him? Will she smile back at him like she doesn’t have a monster at home who’d burn the world for her?
I see it too clearly — his hand sliding higher, under the table, fingers skimming the hem of her dress. Scarlett’s breath caught; her thighs pressed together.
The thought makes my chest burn, my vision blur.
No.
No one touches her. No one laughs with her, no one whispers to her, no one gets close enough to breathe her air.
If he tries — if he even looks at her the wrong way — I’ll put him in the ground.
Scarlett thinks she’s walking free, thinks she’s safe in the sunlight, thinks she’s clever slipping out with her secrets. But there’s nowhere she can go I won’t follow. No friend she can hide behind who won’t bleed for daring to stand too close.
Scarlett isn’t theirs.
She’s mine.
Even if she doesn’t know it yet.
The spiral burns too hot, my pulse hammering in my throat until it feels like it’ll split me open. I can’t sit here and wonder. I can’t picture her with him and not know.
I drag my phone out of my pocket, thumb swiping across the screen until the familiar app opens — the one she doesn’t know about, the one I installed months ago when she borrowed my charger and left her phone unlocked. Just a minute was all I needed — a minute to tie her to me forever.
The map loads slowly, each second a knife twisting deeper, and then her name lights up on the screen — a little red pin, pulsing steadily.
There she is.
I zoom in until the streets sharpen, until I can see exactly where she’s going, exactly where she’s planning to meet him.
A café two miles away, tucked on the corner with enormous glass windows and too many shadows.
I can almost see her already, sliding into a chair, tossing her hair, licking that red lipstick off her mouth while he watches.
My grip tightens around the phone. My jaw aches from how hard I’m clenching it.
He’s not going to touch her. He’s not even going to get the chance.
I grab my keys from the counter, the metal biting into my palm, and shove my phone back into my pocket — her location still glowing in my mind like a beacon.
Scarlett thinks she’s sneaking off to see her friend.
What she doesn’t know is that I’m already on my way.