Cade:
Sleep wasn’t happening. The clock ticked, loud as gunfire, and the house breathed around me—old wood settling, the hum of the fridge down the hall, the faint rhythm of rain against the roof. Every sound felt amplified, every second stretched thin.
And underneath it all was her. Riley.
Her laugh in the club. The heat of her body against mine in the cab. The look in her eyes when I told her to go to bed. She’d gone, but she’d taken every ounce of peace I had with her.
I leaned back against the wall, hands dragging over my face. I’d told myself it was under control that the kiss had been a mistake, a moment of weakness. But watching her dance—watching other hands on her waist, other men’s eyes tracing the lines that had haunted me for years—had torn something open I didn’t know how
