Riley:
My lungs still tasted like the club when the cab door slammed shut. Bass. Smoke. His cologne—sharp and familiar, cutting through the chaos. Cade was a wall of heat across from me, too big for the backseat, too close, too everything.
And he’d kissed me.
God, he’d kissed me.
Not a soft, I'm-sorry-for-dragging-you-out kiss. Not a sweet, friends-to-lovers slip. A kiss that said I’m done pretending.A kiss that left my lipstick on his mouth and my heartbeat somewhere under the heel of his boot.
I should have been furious. I should have been smug. I should have been anything but sitting here with my pulse rabbiting against my throat and my hands still trembling from where they’d clutched his shirt.
Outside, the city slid by in a smear of neon and streetlight. Inside, silence stretche
