Bound By His Rules

Eight

The house was silent when the door slammed behind them.

Not the quiet kind that came with late nights and sleeping neighbors.

This silence was thick, alive, pressing in from every wall.

Ava froze just inside the entryway, sand still clinging to her shoes, heart drumming against her ribs. Brian dropped the keys on the table, the sharp clink echoing through the hallway like a warning. His jaw was set tight, shadows cutting hard lines across his face from the low light above.

“Take off your shoes,” he said, voice flat, controlled. Too controlled.

Ava toed them off quickly, her hands trembling. “Brian ”

“Don’t,” he snapped.

The single word landed like a slap. Ava shut her mouth. He’d barely said a thing on the drive home, only stared at the road like if he looked at her, something would break.

He turned away from her and stalked toward the living room, pacing once like a caged thing. She followed hesitantly, hugging her arms around herself. She still smelled like the ocean, salt, smoke, a little like trouble.

“You think I wouldn’t notice you were gone?” Brian’s voice rose now, rough and low. “In the middle of the night? From my house?”

Ava swallowed. “I wasn’t trying to ”

“ What? Get caught?” he cut in, turning to face her. His eyes were burning. “Jesus, Ava. You’re Lily’s friend. You’re a guest here. You could’ve gotten hurt. Do you even realize ”

“I’m not a kid,” she bit out. Her voice cracked a little, but she stood her ground. “I just wanted to breathe for a second, okay? It was too much ”

“Too much?” He stepped closer, close enough she could feel the heat coming off him. “What’s too much about staying in a safe house for one damn night after a trip? What’s too much about being under a roof where someone actually gives a damn if you disappear in the dark?”

Her breath caught. That was the thing with Brian he didn’t yell in the way most people did. He didn’t have to. He had a voice that carried weight, that carved through the air and left nothing untouched.

“It’s not about you!” she snapped back. “It’s just, I didn’t want to stay in that room. I couldn’t sleep. I just needed air.”

“And you couldn’t tell me that?”

She laughed bitterly. “Right. Because you’d be so calm about it.”

For a heartbeat, neither of them moved. The space between them felt like a live wire.

Brian scrubbed a hand down his face, exhaling sharply. “You’re not Lily. I don’t… I don’t know how to deal with you when you do this.”

The words stung, sharper than she expected. She shouldn’t care. She wasn’t his responsibility. But some part of her, a part she didn’t want to admit existed, did.

“I didn’t ask you to,” she muttered, looking down at her bare feet.

“Yeah, well, that doesn’t change the fact that you’re under my roof,” he said, quieter now but no less intense. “And when someone’s under my roof, I make damn sure they’re safe. Whether they like it or not.”

She bit her lip hard enough to taste blood. The way he said it, steady, unyielding, made something in her chest twist. Nobody had ever said that to her like it meant something.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” she said finally, barely above a whisper.

His shoulders dropped, the anger dimming just a fraction. “You did.”

For the first time, she saw it, not just anger but fear. His hands were still clenched, but not in rage. In something closer to panic.

“I thought. ” He broke off, jaw flexing. “Doesn’t matter. You’re here. You’re safe.”

The room felt too small. Ava wrapped her arms tighter around herself. “I didn’t think you’d notice.”

He let out a humorless laugh. “Of course I’d notice.”

The air between them shifted then. The storm had passed, but the static remained. Brian moved toward the kitchen, grabbed a glass, filled it with water, and pushed it toward her without looking up. “Drink.”

She took it, fingers brushing his. The contact was brief but enough to send a pulse through her she couldn’t explain. She drained half the glass just to have something to focus on.

“Next time,” he said, steady now, “you come to me. You talk. You don’t sneak out into the damn night.”

Ava nodded, though it wasn’t exactly agreement. More like surrender.

“You promise?” he pressed.

Her throat felt tight. She wanted to say no. She wanted to say she didn’t owe him that. But something in his voice, low, steady, carrying the weight of someone who’d lost too much already, made it impossible to do anything but whisper, “Yeah.”

He nodded slowly, as if reining himself back in piece by piece. “Good.”

For a moment, neither of them moved. The only sound was the hum of the fridge and the faint crash of waves carried through the cracked window. It should’ve been awkward. It wasn’t. It was too sharp, too charged, the kind of silence that made her too aware of everything, his nearness, the roughness of his breathing, the way the night wrapped around the two of them like it was listening.

“You should get some sleep,” Brian said finally. His voice was rougher now, low in a way that slid under her skin.

She nodded, but she didn’t move. Neither did he.

“You’re still mad,” she said softly.

His gaze met hers. “Yeah,” he admitted. “Because I care. Don’t mistake that for something else.”

Her heart stuttered. He didn’t say who he cared about exactly, but the way he said it made it hard to breathe.

“Goodnight, Ava.”

She turned to leave, bare feet silent on the hardwood. But when she reached the hallway, she paused and looked back. Brian was still standing in the kitchen, shoulders broad, hands braced on the counter like he was trying to keep something contained.

“Goodnight,” she whispered, more to the empty space between them than to him.

Then she disappeared into the guest room, closing the door quietly behind her.

But sleep didn’t come easily.

Because even though the night had ended, something had shifted. Something neither of them wanted to name.

And they both knew it.