Chapter 2
1121 Words
The bass still pulsed faintly beneath their feet, a distant reminder of the world they’d just stepped away from. But here, in the shadowed booth tucked into the back of Club Vortex, everything felt slower. Softer. As if the noise had dulled to make space for something else entirely — the unspoken tension hanging between them.
Alara leaned back against the faux leather seat, trying to calm the flutter in her chest. Kade sat across from her, elbows resting casually on the table, his drink untouched, fingers tapping gently to an invisible rhythm. The club’s dim red lighting made his eyes look darker, deeper, like secrets waiting to be told.
“So,” he said finally, breaking the silence, “do you always dance like that with strangers?”
She tilted her head, eyebrow arching. “Do you always stare at women across the room like you’ve already figured them out?”
He chuckled. “Touché. But I’m not that good. I didn’t figure you out. Just noticed you looked like you didn’t want to be here.”
Alara gave a small, tired smile. “I didn’t. Not really.”
Kade watched her for a second longer, then nodded like he understood. “Me neither.”
The music shifted again — a slower, sultrier beat in the distance — and Alara glanced toward the crowd they had just come from. The lights over the dance floor flickered like fireflies trapped in glass. Bodies swayed together in a blur of motion, limbs tangled in momentary freedom. She felt like she’d stepped out of a movie scene and into something more fragile, more real.
“So why are you here then?” she asked, turning back to him. “If you didn’t want to be?”
Kade looked away for the first time, his gaze drifting to the rim of his glass. “Sometimes I come here when my head gets too loud. The music helps. And the strangers.”
Alara frowned slightly. “Strangers?”
“They don’t expect anything from you. They don’t know your history, your mistakes, your regrets. You can just exist for a while.”
She nodded slowly. That made sense — in a strange, painful kind of way.
“I guess that’s what I wanted too,” she said. “To exist without being questioned.”
“And yet here we are,” Kade said, a small smile tugging at his lips. “Questioning each other.”
She laughed softly, and something inside her loosened. For the first time in months, the laughter didn’t feel forced. It didn’t feel like armor.
“You don’t seem like the club type,” she said, studying him.
He raised a brow. “What type do I seem like?”
Alara paused, taking him in fully now. The faint scar just beneath his left eye. The silver ring in his right ear. The tattoos peeking from beneath the sleeve of his jacket — lines and symbols that hinted at stories she hadn’t heard yet.
“The kind that keeps to himself,” she said. “The kind that’s seen too much.”
Kade’s smile faded into something quieter. “That’s not a bad guess.”
“You want to talk about it?” she asked, surprising even herself with how gently the words came out.
He shook his head, but not unkindly. “Some nights I do. Tonight... I think I’d rather listen.”
Alara looked down at her drink, the lime bobbing slowly in the glass like a forgotten dream. Her fingers traced the rim absently.
“He cheated on me,” she said, voice flat. “My fiancé. A week before the wedding. I found out through a friend, not even from him.”
Kade didn’t flinch. He just listened, still and steady.
“I moved out. Canceled everything. Went back to my parents’ house for a while like I was seventeen again. Everyone kept saying, ‘At least you found out before the wedding,’ like that made it easier.” She looked up at him, eyes sharp. “It didn’t.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and it wasn’t just sympathy. It sounded like regret. Like he’d seen that pain before in his own mirror.
She swallowed hard. “And now here I am. Sitting across from a man in a club at midnight, trying to remember what it feels like to be wanted without being used.”
Kade didn’t reach for her. He didn’t offer hollow comfort.
Instead, he said, “I don’t want anything from you tonight, Alara. I just want to be here. With you. If that’s okay.”
Her breath caught slightly.
That wasn’t a line.
It was real.
She stared at him, trying to read between the lines of his face. Every curve, every shadow. He didn’t push, didn’t flirt. He was just… present. And that, more than anything, made her heart ache in the best way.
“You know,” she said softly, “you’re not at all what I expected.”
Kade chuckled. “Good. Expectations are overrated.”
He leaned forward a little, resting his forearms on the table. “What were you expecting?”
“A guy who would try too hard. Someone who’d brag about his car or his muscles or his job. Not someone who listens.”
“I’ve been told I listen too much,” he said with a half-smile. “Makes people nervous.”
“Not me.”
A silence settled between them, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. It was charged. Like the calm right before a summer storm.
“Do you want to get out of here?” Kade asked suddenly.
Alara blinked. “Out? As in leave the club?”
He nodded. “No pressure. I’m just—this place is loud. And you don’t seem like noise suits you.”
She considered him. Every part of her should’ve screamed no. He was a stranger. This was reckless. But somehow, sitting across from him felt safer than being alone.
“Where would we go?”
“I know a place nearby,” Kade said. “Late-night coffee. Open-air terrace. You can see the whole city from up there.”
Alara stared into his eyes for a long moment.
And then she nodded.
“Okay,” she said, standing slowly. “Let’s go.”
As they slipped out of the booth and walked through the crowd, she felt his hand brush against hers—not grabbing, not pulling. Just... there.
And for the first time in a long time, Alara didn’t feel like she was running from something.
She felt like she was walking toward something.
Something she hadn’t known she was missing.
---
- Writer
