Chapter 2
1170 คำ
Freya Sinclair
The rain hadn’t stopped.
I didn’t know how long I’d been standing on the bridge. Maybe an hour. Maybe ten minutes. All I knew was the sound of water below, the smell of wet concrete, and the weight in my chest that refused to lift.
The river beneath was black and slow, rippling faintly in the downpour. I wasn’t thinking about jumping — not seriously — but I couldn’t look away.
A flash of headlights cut through the mist behind me, but I barely noticed. My arms were wrapped around myself, trying to hold my soaked jacket closed, my teeth chattering. I probably looked insane.
Then I heard it.
A voice.
Cool, quiet, cutting through the rain like a blade.
“You’d die of cold before the river took you.” I heard someone say.
I turned slowly.
And froze completely.
The man standing a few feet behind me was not what I expected.
Not a cop. Not a jogger. Not a stranger looking to be a savior.
He was... breathtaking. Breathtaking was an understatement.
Tall. Broad-shouldered. Dressed in a black wool coat that looked expensive even in the dark. His hair was rain-slicked and dark, pushed back from a face that didn’t look real. Chiseled cheekbones, a strong jaw, and eyes—
God, his eyes.
Storm-gray. Like the sky above us, but colder. Sharper.
He watched me with a calm detachment, like he was already bored with whatever answer I might give. He was holding an umbrella as if he had just walked out of a romantic novel.
“I wasn’t going to jump,” I said, my voice hoarse. I had to deny it because it was true I was not going to jump off a bridge just because I had a break up.
He raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t say you were.” he said as he c****d his head to the side eyeing me suspiciously.
I blinked. “Then what was that?”
He stepped forward, slow and deliberate, stopping at the edge of the sidewalk beside me. He didn’t look at the river. He looked at me. Eyes so deep that I thought that he was staring my soul.
“It’s freezing. You’re soaked. And standing on a bridge alone in the middle of the night. Doesn’t take a genius.” he walked closer. He was tall, so tall.
“Do you always make a habit of talking to strangers in the rain?” I asked, folding my arms tighter. I was frustrated from everything right now. From Logan. From my life and definitely from this handsome stranger. “Maybe you should just mind your own business.”
He tilted his head slightly, a hint of something , amusement? flickering across his face.
“Only the ones who look like ghosts.” he simply said. “ and I was minding my own business but I have my own principles that won't allow me to live if I leave you here for dying.”
That silenced me. I must be looking like ghost
I looked away, back toward the river. “I’m fine. And I am definitely not going to jump.”
“Are you sure?.” he pressed
“I didn’t ask you to care.”
“Good. I don’t.” he said as he leaned closer to the railing and said. “If you want to jump you should come at noon tomorrow. The water would be warm by that time.”
He said those words so casually that it made me frown as I looked at him with wide eyes.
A gust of wind whipped past us, slicing through my wet clothes. I shivered, teeth clacking.
“You’re going to get sick,” he muttered. “Do you live nearby?”
I shook my head, not ready to explain I’d walked miles with no real direction. It was giving me whiplash by how fast he is changing his personality. Once second he is advising me with perfect time to jump and next he is telling me not to get sick.
He sighed and muttered something under his breath before reaching into his coat and shrugging it off.
“Here.”
He held it out. The coat. Warm, dry, heavy with cologne and something more expensive.
I stared. “You don’t even know me.”
“Exactly. If you die out here, it’ll ruin my night. I’m not in the mood for police reports.” he informed. “And also because I am able to see your bra from your shirt.”
I looked down immediately, gasping dramatically as I saw how see-through my shirt was right now. My bra was completely visible. Was I walking around the city in this state?
He didn’t wait for my answer. He just stepped closer, slipped the coat over my shoulders like it was nothing, and turned to leave.
I should have let him go.
But something stopped me.
“Wait,” I called. “What’s your name?”
He paused, glanced over his shoulder.
“Rowan.”
Then he walked off into the rain like he’d never been there at all.
Rowan.
I blinked into the rain, the weight of the coat still on my shoulders, heavy with warmth and something I didn’t know how to name yet.
It took me a second to place it. But once I did, the name sliced clean through the fog in my head.
Rowan Thorne.
Not the recluse. Not the outcast.
No , that was the version Logan always tried to paint.
But it wasn’t the truth. I can someone tell now.
Rowan was the firstborn. The golden child.
CEO by thirty. Handpicked to run the family empire.
Flawless record. Impossibly intelligent. Devastatingly handsome.
He was everything Logan hated.
Because he was everything Logan couldn’t be.
I’d never met Rowan , not once in all the years I’d been with Logan. He was always away, or busy, or uninterested in family drama. Logan never spoke his name unless it was laced with venom.
“You wouldn’t like him,” he used to say.
“He’s cold. Calculated. Obsessed with perfection. He thinks he’s above everyone.”
But the man who just gave me his coat in the pouring rain didn’t seem cold.
He seemed… still. Controlled. Sharp. Like he didn’t waste words or movements. Like everything he did was intentional.
And God , he was beautiful.
Not the kind of beauty that made you swoon.
The kind that made you stare.
I bit my lip, my fingers clenching the edges of his coat tighter.
I couldn’t believe I didn’t recognize him right away.
Logan’s brother.
The brother he hated.
The brother he could never measure up to.
And I had just met him — dripping, broken, heart freshly torn out — with mascara down my face and rain in my shoes.
I let out a breathless, bitter laugh.
Of course.
Of course it was him.
And the worst part?
He had no idea who I was.
- ผู้เขียน
