Falling In Love With You

Chapter 19

Kayla

I watched the way her throat moved as she swallowed. She looked like she wanted to run, but her feet were glued to my floor. She was wearing a suit the color of expensive cream, and against the gray, grimy backdrop of my shop, she looked like a hallucination.

"I told you," she said, her voice a little too high, a little too defensive. "I was concerned about the healing process. I have a very busy schedule, and I can't afford an infection."

"Bullshit," I said, the word hanging in the air between us.

I stood up from the desk, closing the distance between us until I could see the tiny, faint freckles on the bridge of her nose. I was tall, but she didn't shrink. She tilted her chin up, meeting my gaze with a stubbornness that was starting to become her trademark.

"You’re here because you can't stop thinking about it," I murmured, my voice dropping an octave. I let my eyes wander down to her ribs, where the suit jacket hid my work. "You’re here because that bird is the only thing in your life right now that you didn't have to ask permission for."

Her eyes flashed—not with anger this time, but with a raw, exposed vulnerability that made my chest tighten. I wanted to push her away. I wanted to tell her to go back to her glass tower and leave me to my needles and my ghosts. But I also wanted to see how far she’d bend before she finally broke.

"And what if I am?" she whispered. "What if I just wanted to see the person who did it?"

The honesty of it caught me off guard. No games. No corporate doublespeak. Just a girl standing in the rain, admitting she was drawn to something she didn't understand.

I felt a surge of something dangerous—a pull I hadn't felt since Diana. But where Diana was a vacuum that sucked the air out of the room, Sera was a spark. She was light looking for a place to catch fire.

"You’re playing with things you don't understand, Princess," I said, my voice rough. I reached out, my fingers hovering just inches from her jawline, but I didn't touch her. I couldn't. "You think this is some romantic adventure? You think I’m some project you can study?"

"I don't think you're a project," she said, her voice gaining strength. She stepped even closer, her chest almost brushing mine. "I think you're the first person in a long time who hasn't looked at me and seen a 'McBurry.' You looked at me and saw someone who was trapped. And you gave me a way out."

I laughed, a short, humorless sound. "I gave you a tattoo, Sera. I didn't give you a key to the city."

"Didn't you?"

She reached out then, her hand trembling slightly as she touched the sleeve of my hoodie. It was a tiny gesture, but it felt like a landslide.

I looked down at her hand, then back at her face. The silence in the shop was heavy, vibrating with the unspoken tension that had been building since that night at the bar. I could feel her heart racing—or maybe it was mine.

"Go home, Sera," I whispered, though I didn't move away. "Go home before you do something you can't undo with a laser."

"I'm not going anywhere," she replied, her eyes locked onto mine.