7:25 a.m.
I was already downstairs, fully dressed and ready.
I had on a hoodie and baggy jeans today, something simple and comfortable enough for school, even though nothing about how I felt was simple or comfortable. My hair was packed up into a high, messy style, with a few soft strands escaping and falling around my face. I'd left them that way on purpose. They made me look less like I had spent half the night not sleeping and more like I just woke up naturally pretty.
Not that anyone at school deserved that kind of effort.
I hadn't slept much.
Again.
This time it wasn't because I was excited about going back to school. It was because every time I closed my eyes, I kept seeing blood. The cut on Malakai's side. The way his body had tensed when I cleaned it. The heat of his skin under my hands. The low, rough sound of pain he'd tried so hard not to let out.
And because my brain apparently hated peace, it kept replaying that moment over and over again, making me wonder if he was alright now. If the injury was still throbbing. If it had bled through in the middle of the night. If he'd torn the stitches by being the exact kind of stubborn man I already knew he was.
He had almost been halfway to death's door and still acted like it was a mild inconvenience.
I tore a piece of toast in half and dipped it into the egg yolk on my plate.
Bridget had overslept, which honestly wasn't surprising. I'd gone to her room earlier and banged on the door until she answered with an angry groan and a threat to bury me alive in one of the flower beds. I told her to shower quickly and that she'd better not make me late. She'd cursed at me lovingly and shut the door in my face.
Now I was downstairs alone, eating breakfast and trying not to think too hard.
Nana Rose was better this morning.
I had seen her once already when I came down, and though she still looked a little pale, she was at least on her feet. She'd smiled when she saw me and asked how school had gone yesterday, and I'd told her it was fine. A lie, obviously, but a useful one. There was no point worrying her with details she couldn't fix.
Besides, compared to the thing I was currently hiding, school gossip barely even qualified as a problem.
I hadn't seen Malakai since last night.
Not after I had helped patch him up.
Not after he'd looked at me with that hard, unreadable stare while bleeding through his shirt and acting like pain was something beneath him.
I stabbed a piece of egg with my fork, still thinking.
His job was dangerous.
That much was obvious. It had always been obvious. Men like Malakai didn't come home bleeding for normal reasons. They didn't carry injuries like that because they'd tripped over something stupid on a staircase. Whatever he did, whatever he dealt with, it was violent enough that wounds like that had probably become normal to him.
That thought unsettled me more than I wanted to admit.
Because it wasn't normal to me.
Yes, I knew what to do. Yes, I'd managed to clean and bandage him without completely losing my mind. But that didn't mean I was used to it.
I only knew those things because I had spent years being fascinated by the human body — by biology, surgeries, medical cases, all of it. Long before I knew the proper names for any of it, I had been the weird girl sneaking downstairs at night to watch medical documentaries, crime reports, autopsy reconstructions, anything that showed how the body worked and what it could survive.
Maybe that was why I didn't panic last night.
Maybe that was why I saw blood and thought of pressure, depth, tissue, risk.
Still, knowing what to do and being okay afterward were two very different things.
I was still thinking about all that when Bridget finally came downstairs.
She looked half-finished and fully offended by morning.
Her sweat shirt was on. Her short pleated uniform skirt that showed off her legs. Her hair was done, but her eyes still looked sleepy and slightly dazed, like her soul hadn't yet caught up with the fact that her body was awake.
I looked up and laughed.
"Girl, what happened to you?"
She dropped into the seat beside me with a dramatic groan. "You happened to me."
I raised a brow. "Me?"
"Yes, you." She pointed accusingly at me before reaching for the juice pitcher. "Do you know how deeply, spiritually asleep I was before you came knocking on my door like a debt collector?"
I smiled, trying not to laugh too hard. "Are you going to have breakfast?"
"Nah." She poured herself some juice. "I'll just drink this. I'm not really hungry."
"Okay."
She took a sip and still looked wrong.
I studied her face. "You slept earlier than me. Why do you look like that?"
Bridget lowered the glass very slowly and gave me a long, tragic look.
"Because," she said with deep seriousness, "I was in the middle of an incredible dream."
I already knew this was going somewhere insane.
"What kind of dream?"
She leaned closer. "A threesome."
I nearly choked.
Bridget, encouraged by my expression, continued with full confidence. " A boy. A girl. My ex was there too."
I blinked. "What?"
She nodded solemnly. "Watching. In chains."
I stared at her.
She sighed dramatically and pressed a hand to her chest. "And it was really good, Chiara. Really vivid. Really emotional. I was about to see where things were going..." She narrowed her eyes at me. "And then you woke me up."
I looked at her for two seconds before laughing so hard I had to put my fork down.
"Oh my God."
"I know."
"I'm so sorry," I said through laughter. "I'm so sorry for interrupting your sex dream."
Bridget lifted her juice. "Apology accepted."
That only made me laugh harder.
For a moment, it was easy. Just me and her, joking at the breakfast table like the world outside the mansion didn't exist and men didn't come home bleeding in the middle of the night and I wasn't carrying around secrets too heavy for breakfast.
Eventually I finished eating, and Bridget was still slowly nursing her juice like waking up was a private war she hadn't agreed to fight.
Then I remembered.
"My book."
She looked at me. "What?"
"I left one of my books upstairs."
She waved a hand. "Go get it. I'll be here."
I nodded and got up, heading back upstairs while she stayed at the table.
The hallway upstairs was quiet.
Too quiet.
My steps slowed as I reached the stretch where his room was.
Malakai's door was shut, and I should have kept walking. I knew that. I knew it with perfect clarity. If I had any sense at all, I would've gone straight to my room, grabbed my book, and come back down.
But sense had clearly abandoned me sometime around last night.
Because I stopped.
And stood there.
Just looking at the door.
He was probably sleeping. Or maybe already gone. Maybe in pain. Maybe not. Maybe he was completely fine and I was being ridiculous. But the thought of that cut, of how deep it had been, of how much blood there had been—
Before I could think myself out of it, I lifted my hand and knocked.
Once.
Nothing.
I waited.
Still nothing.
I exhaled quietly and turned to leave.
Then his voice came through the door.
"Come in."
It wasn't friendly.
It wasn't warm.
It wasn't even really an invitation.
It sounded like an order.
I turned back, opened the door, and stepped inside, shutting it quietly behind me.
And then, for a second, I forgot why I was there.
Because it was my first time seeing his room.
It was exactly what I should have expected — dark, luxurious, expensive in that controlled, masculine way that didn't try too hard because it didn't need to. Black and ash tones everywhere. Deep charcoal walls. Clean lines. Minimal clutter. The space was huge — almost offensively huge — with a bed so large it made mine look modest, dressed in dark sheets that looked both dangerous and comfortable at the same time.
There was a desk on one side with papers arranged in perfect order, a large flat screen mounted across from the bed, and tall windows opening out to a balcony that let in a thin blade of morning light. The room smelled faintly of something woody and expensive, mixed with clean linen and whatever scent seemed to belong only to him.
Two doors stood on the opposite side of the room — one probably leading to the bathroom, the other to his closet. Everything was neat, precise, controlled.
Except for one thing.
The clothes from the night before had been tossed carelessly to the floor near the chair by the bed — black shirt, dark trousers — like even his order had limits.
And then there was him.
He was lying on the bed, propped partly against the headboard, hair messy and ruffled in a way that made him look more human and somehow more dangerous at the same time. His face still held that sleepy heaviness, but it didn't soften him much. If anything, it just made him look rougher. More male. More real.
He had on a dark shirt again, partly undone at the collar, and I could see the edge of ink peeking beneath the fabric — tattoos disappearing under the material and making my curiosity worse.
And, annoyingly enough, he looked—
hot.
Truly, deeply, irritatingly hot.
Which was not useful information for me to have this early in the morning.
I realized too late that I was staring.
His eyes were already on me.
I looked down quickly, heat rushing into my face, and forced myself to speak.
"Good morning," I said, trying for casual and probably missing by a mile. "I just wanted to check on you. To see if you're okay and all."
Silence.
I looked up again.
He was watching me.
Not speaking. Not moving much. Just looking — slowly, thoroughly, from my face to the rest of me and back again, like he was taking me in piece by piece without hurrying about it.
It made me suddenly, painfully aware of my body.
Of the hoodie. The jeans. The loose strands of hair. My hands. My breathing.
"I, um..." I tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. "Bridget and I are going to school now. I was passing by and just thought I'd check on you."
Still nothing.
Just that same unreadable stare.
My self-consciousness doubled.
"I'll leave now."
I turned slightly toward the door.
"Stop."
His voice cut through the room like something physical.
I froze.
Then turned back.
He had shifted now, sitting up properly at the edge of the bed. One forearm rested on his thigh, the other hand loose by his side. His posture was relaxed in theory, but with him, even stillness looked dangerous.
"Come here," he said.
My brain immediately objected.
My legs, however, were traitors.
Because before I could properly think through what I was doing, I was already crossing the room.
And then I was standing directly in front of him.
Too close.
He was sitting down, and he was still almost my height. I became very aware of that. Very aware of the shape of him, the size of him, the heat rolling off his body, the fact that I could smell him now — soap, skin, something dark and expensive and unmistakably male.
I looked down at him, and he looked up at me.
No smile.
No softness.
Nothing obvious in his face at all.
Just those cold, dark eyes fixed on mine with an intensity that made the air between us feel strangely thin.
He looked at me for a long moment.
And then he said, "Thank you."
I blinked.
"What?"
For a second, I genuinely thought I'd heard wrong.
His jaw moved once. "For last night."
I just stared at him.
Malakai Blackwood was thanking me.
The fact felt so absurd that my brain took a full second too long to process it.
He looked away briefly, then back at me. "I don't know what would've happened if you hadn't been there."
Something in my chest shifted.
"It's no problem," I said quietly. "You needed help. I just... helped."
His eyes stayed on me.
Then he said it again, lower this time. "Thank you."
There was something strange about hearing gratitude from a man like him. It didn't soften him exactly. It just made him feel more dangerous in a different way — because it proved there were parts of him he kept buried so deep most people probably never saw them.
Then his expression hardened again, just a little.
"And don't tell Bridget."
I frowned. "What?"
"About last night." His voice was flat, controlled. "I don't want her worried. She doesn't know how to let things go once she starts."
That part, at least, made sense.
I nodded immediately. "Okay."
His gaze remained on me, as if checking whether I actually understood.
"I won't tell anyone," I said. "I promise."
He held my eyes for another second, then gave one short nod.
"Good."
And then—
Nothing.
Just silence again.
But it was different now.
He was still sitting there, looking up at me, and I was still standing between his knees, close enough that if either of us moved even slightly, we would touch. I could almost feel the heat of his legs against mine. My heart had started doing something embarrassingly dramatic in my chest, and I hated that I couldn't make it stop.
Apart from last night, this was the closest we had ever been.
Close enough to notice the faint stubble shadowing his jaw. The slight roughness in his voice from just waking up. The way his hair fell over his forehead in dark, careless pieces. The way his stare made me feel both pinned in place and strangely seen.
It was too much.
Too close.
Too quiet.
Too something.
My mind snapped back first.
"I should go," I said quickly. "I'll be late for school."
He didn't answer.
He just watched me.
So I stepped back, then another step, my skin still warm from the strange intensity of standing there. I turned, opened the door, and left the room without waiting for a response.
He didn't say goodbye.
Of course he didn't.
By the time I got downstairs again, my thoughts were in complete disarray.
Bridget was by the door now, one hand on her bag, looking impatient in a way that was almost artistic.
"What took you so long?" she asked.
I tried for normal. "I was looking for my book."
She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "And did the book run away?"
I forced a laugh. "Something like that."
She kept looking at me for a second longer, then shrugged. "You're weird."
"You literally dreamed about a threesome."
She gasped. "Do not weaponize my truth against me."
That made me laugh again, thankfully enough to hide whatever still lingered on my face.
We headed outside together, the driver already waiting for us.
And as I slid into the car beside Bridget, one thought kept circling in my head no matter how hard I tried to shake it:
Malakai had said thank you.
Not because he had to.
Not because it was polite.
But because he meant it.
And somehow that felt more dangerous than if he'd said nothing at all.