Chapter 10

Eve's POV

He didn't pick up.

The phone was still warm in my hand when the screen went dark.

My thumb was still hovering over the screen.

I made myself put it down.

He saw it ring. He had to have seen it.

I didn't call again.

I already knew where he was.

A year of this, and I knew his bad moods the way you learn to read weather.

The particular stillness before something broke.

I changed into a high-neck sweater, checked the mirror once to make sure nothing showed, and got in a cab.

The club was loud the way it always was on nights like this, bass moving through the floor, voices layered over each other until they blurred into something shapeless.

The hostess recognized me and didn't ask questions, just tilted her head toward the back.

I followed the familiar path without thinking about it, which was its own kind of answer to a question I hadn't let myself ask.

The booth came into view.

Theo spotted me first.

His expression did something complicated for about half a second before he smoothed it over.

Darius looked up, then quickly looked back at his drink.

Felix gave me a nod that was just a little too careful to be casual.

Renault didn't turn his head when I sat down next to him.

I shifted closer to him on the seat, close enough that my shoulder was against his arm, and I lifted my hand and pressed my fingers into the base of his skull, slow and even.

He didn't lean into it.

He didn't pull away either.

His jaw stayed set, his eyes on the table, like I wasn't there.

I kept going anyway.

"How much did you drink before I got here? Do you have a headache?" I asked.

He didn't answer.

I tilted my head just enough to rest it against his shoulder for a second, the kind of small affectionate gesture that reads as natural if you don't think about it too hard.

"I should've gotten here earlier. Then I could've paced you."

I let my voice go softer, warmer, the kind of warmth.

Darius laughed, the kind that's mostly relief, "She really loves you, you know that?"

"Showing up and dragging you home counts double," Theo added.

I smiled at all of them.

And I felt it then, under my hand where it rested against Renault's side—the shift in his breathing, the way the tension in his shoulders had loosened just slightly, not gone but no longer coiled tight.

The anger I'd felt radiating off him had dulled to something quieter, something manageable, something he could carry home without breaking anything on the way.

The booth found its rhythm again, the easy noise of people who'd had enough to drink that the silences didn't feel loaded anymore.

Then Cain leaned forward with the particular loose confidence of someone three drinks past his limit, and said, loudly and without any preamble, "Hey, Renault. Is it true? About the northern family thing. The arrangement."

The word hit the table like something dropped from a height.

Felix moved first.

His hand came up and caught Cain by the shoulder, pulling him back, and Darius leaned in from the other side and said something low and fast that I didn't catch because the blood in my ears was suddenly very loud.

But I'd heard it.

All of it.

Every word.

I smiled anyway.

I turned toward Renault and let my hand settle back at the nape of his neck, my thumb tracing the same slow path it had been tracing all evening.

"You okay?" I said quietly, just for him, like the last thirty seconds hadn't happened.

"Done," Renault said, and pushed his glass toward the center of the table with one finger. "I'm going home."

His voice had that particular texture to it, just a little slower than usual, just a little heavier, the kind of drunk that announces itself without making a scene.

I slipped my arm around his side, fitting myself against him the way I'd done a hundred times, and he let his weight shift toward me, not much, just enough to sell it.

He was warm and solid and not swaying even slightly, but I kept my hold steady and my expression easy, like I was concentrating on getting him out without incident, like this was just the end of a normal night.

"Come on," I said softly. "I've got you."

The driver opened the door.

I guided Renault in first, then slid in after him.

The door shut.

And his hand closed around my waist.

Not the loose, unthinking grip of someone half-asleep.

Deliberate. Exact.

Two fingers finding the gap between my hip and the seat like he'd already mapped the distance before I'd sat down.

I barely had time to register it before he moved, and then my back was against the door and his arm was across my body and I couldn't shift an inch in either direction without pushing into him.

I looked up.

His eyes were clear.

Clear and level and watching me with the particular patience of someone who has been waiting a long time and is in no rush now that the waiting is over.

He hadn't been drunk at all.

"You smell like someone else," he said. "A male. Close contact."

Not loud.

Not a question.

I felt the arm around my waist shift, almost imperceptibly, the way a hand tightens around something it hasn't decided whether to hold or crush.