Claimed for one last night

Chapter 4

Ethan POV

Sydney Airport - 5:23 PM Sunday

The moment the private jet's wheels touch down on Australian soil, something shifts inside my chest. It's not exciting. It's not the familiar rush of closing a business deal or launching a new product that's going to make me another hundred million. It's something darker. Something I've been running from for seven and a half years.

The tarmac stretches out beneath us and I'm already regretting this decision.

Ben starts barking orders before the cabin door even opens. He's all business—my bodyguard, my handler, the closest thing I have to a best friend even though our relationship exists entirely within the framework of employer and employee. Lucas is already checking his iPad, making sure the eight computer technicians and their equipment are accounted for. This is what my life has become. Logistics. Details. The administrative burden of being someone important.

And underneath it all, the reason I'm actually here.

The lie I told myself was that I needed to be in Sydney for my brother's wedding. That the three-month visa reorganization required my personal attention. That there was simply no way around coming back to Australia for an extended period.

But we both know that's bullshit.

"The tech guys are set up at the Sheraton for now," I tell the lead computer tech, watching his eager face as he nods. These kids are brilliant but completely lost in their own world. They live and breathe code the way I used to before I became too busy making money to actually create anything. "Lucas will handle the accommodations and get you all to the office space by nine tomorrow morning."

They scatter like leaves, relieved to have clear direction, and I stand with Lucas watching them go. He's scrolling through maps, his face scrunched in confusion as he turns his iPad upside down like that's going to somehow make the navigation app make sense.

"That app is s**t," I say, and there's no affection in my voice. Just a statement of fact. "We should rebuild it. Make something that actually works."

He glances up at me. "Thought you were too busy being a billionaire to design apps anymore."

He's not wrong. That's the thing about Lucas—he knows exactly where to cut. He knows that somewhere underneath the Rolex and the tailored suits and the carefully constructed persona of Ethan Blackwood, mogul and playboy, there's still a guy who loved building things more than having things. There's still someone in here who preferred the challenge to the victory.

I push that thought away and scan the airport terminal. Women everywhere. Australian women. My body registers this fact with an efficiency that's become as automatic as breathing. The blonde in the red dress over there. The brunette by the coffee kiosk. The girl in the sundress who keeps glancing at her phone like it holds the secrets of the universe.

None of them are her.

"Forget how hot Australian girls are," I say to Lucas, and I'm not even sure why I'm saying it. Maybe to normalize my presence here. Maybe to remind myself that there are other women in the world. "Plenty of fish in the sea and all that."

"Yeah, yeah," Lucas grins. "I'm actually more interested in men. Apparently the Aussie guys are—"

"Conceited arseholes," I finish for him, and we both know I'm speaking from experience. Australian men have a way of thinking their accent and their casual confidence makes them charming. It usually just makes them unbearable.

Ben returns with the car keys and I try to focus on the logistics. The wrong side of the road. The new phone number I've programmed into the GPS despite every rational part of my brain screaming at me not to. The address I've memorized so thoroughly that I could probably recite it in my sleep.

Apartment 5B. Rose Bay. A dark brick building that's probably seen better days, sitting across the road from a park where old men read newspapers on stone benches.

"So where exactly are we going?" Lucas asks as we pull away from the airport, and I can hear the suspicion in his voice. He knows me. He knows that detours aren't usually my style.

"Quick stop," I answer, programming coordinates into the navigation system with more focus than strictly necessary. "Before we head to Bondi."

"Really?" Lucas's whining starts immediately. "Because I actually need to take a piss, and I would prefer to do that in a bathroom rather than in a cup on the side of the road."

I ignore him because there's nothing to say that won't sound crazy. How do I explain that I need to drive past her apartment? That I need to know she's actually here, that the information I paid someone to gather six months ago wasn't outdated?

Ben mercifully stops asking questions and just drives, and the Sydney streets start to look familiar in a way that makes my chest tight. Nothing's changed. Everything's changed. The city is exactly as I remember it, frozen in time like a photograph, except I'm not the same person who left it seven and a half years ago.

Twenty-five minutes later we're turning onto the one-way street in Rose Bay, and my heart starts doing something dangerous and irregular in my chest. I lean forward, craning my neck to look up the road.

"Where the hell are we?" Lucas asks from the backseat, and Ben is already pulling the car to the side of the street where I've gestured.

I don't answer because there's no answer that makes sense. Instead, I sit with my elbow propped on the door, my thumb under my chin, my finger tracing the outline of my lips over and over again while I stare up at a window on the fifth floor.

There's a light on. Apartment 5B. The layout of the building—two apartments per floor, the right side is B—tells me everything I already knew but needed to confirm with my own eyes. She's home. At 5:30 on a Sunday evening, she's in that apartment.