Ella
The silence after my words was worse than any shout.
For a long moment, Kane didn’t move. He didn’t speak. He didn’t even breathe noticeably.
The heat rolling off him didn’t vanish, but something colder slid into his eyes, pressing down on that fevered intensity until it froze into something sharp and distant.
I watched how the warmth drained from his expression, how his jaw tightened, how his shoulders squared as if he were locking something away.
The man leaning over me moments ago vanished, replaced by someone carved from ice.
His gaze stayed fixed on mine, unreadable now.
And in that instant, I knew.
I had hurt him.
I could tell. I saw it in the way his eyes searched my face, as if trying to reconcile the woman in front of him with whatever conclusion he’d drawn before.
