~ Becca ~
Stephen Hale noticed me the way men like him always did.
Not all at once.
Not with certainty.
With irritation first.
I felt it across the room at the gallery opening his attention snagging, slipping, returning. Like a splinter he couldn’t ignore. The kind of discomfort pride mistook for curiosity.
I didn’t look at him.
That was the mistake he couldn’t forgive.
The space was crowded, low-lit, humming with quiet money and curated conversation. Art on the walls that existed more as status than meaning. I stood near the bar with a glass of white wine I hadn’t touched, listening to a woman explain something she’d read about an artist she’d never met.
Jace was beside me, close but not possessive. His presence grounded, deliberate. He didn’t hover. He never did. That alone set
