I pick up the wrench and head back to the Mustang.
Chapter 16
Skylar
The trick to groceries is confidence. You commit to the load, distribute the weight evenly across both arms, and you walk like a woman who has everything under control and is not one rogue tin of tomatoes away from losing the entire structural integrity of the situation.
I’ve been doing this since I was nineteen—three blocks from the store, arms burning, dignity intact—because it was simply how it was, and complaining would not have made the bags any lighter.
Two full bags today, plus flowers for Cassie, because she has been absorbing my chaos for the better part of a week, and flowers are the least I can do, even if she will spend twenty minutes pretending she doesn’t love them before findingthe best vase in the apartment and putting them somewhere everyone can see.
The afternoon light is doing that late-day thing, sitting low and golden over everything and making the street appear kinder than it is. I cut around the corner at my usual pace when I carry groceries—quick enough to get home before my arms give out, slow enough not to lose anything.
I don’t see him until I walk straight into him.
The impact is immediate and solid.
The bag in my right arm lurches sideways, a tin breaking free and hitting the pavement with a hollow, ringing clang. I grab for it on instinct, already saying sorry, already looking up, and then I see his face. The word dies somewhere between my chest and my mouth before it ever reaches the air.
Damien.
Which means he has already tried the apartment. Probably stood at the buzzer long enough to conclude that nobody was answering and now here he is, directly in front of me.
His eyes move over me in that quick, assessing way of his, and then they settle on my neck.
The mark has faded over the past six days and is nowhere near what it once was, but it is still faintly visible. The kind of thing anyone paying close attention would notice immediately. And judging by the way Damien’s face is changing right now, I can tell he is paying very close attention indeed.
I don’t reach up to cover it. I am done reaching up to cover things from him.
“Well,” he says. “That didn’t take long.”
“Damien.”
“Who the fuck is he?”
I crouch to pick up the tin from the pavement, but a young man appears from nowhere, scoops it up before I can reach it,and places it carefully on top of the bag with the quiet efficiency of someone raised with manners.
“Thank you,” I say, straightening up and directing every bit of my attention to the young man, none of it to Damien, who is standing directly in front of me, radiating a mood I know too well and have absolutely no interest in engaging with on a public sidewalk with groceries in my arms.
“Skylar, I asked you who the fuck he is.”
“That is not something you get to ask me about.”
His jaw tightens as he shifts his weight slightly to the left. Not in a way that would look obvious to anyone passing by, but enough that he is now positioned between me and my building.
His hands are in his coat pockets and his eyes are still fixed on my neck. It is a small movement. Calculated.
“You have been gone for a week,” he says.
“I know how long I have been gone.”
“Seven days, and you are already letting someone fuck you and put his mouth on you.” He says it the way he says most things, with that particular controlled quiet he has always used instead of volume, as if keeping his voice down makes what he says more palatable. “That is really something, Sky.”
“Move, Damien.”
“No. We need to talk.”
“No we really don’t.”
