My breath stops.
Dark walls.Red velvet.A hand in my hair.
I blink, and the vision is gone, and it’s just me.Just the elevator.Just my heart trying to break itself against my ribs.
When the doors open, I step out before fear can change its mind and crawl up my spine.I walk a few blocks to The Gin Room.The side entrance is locked, but Aldron gave me a key after I got tired of pretending I liked being trapped upstairs.
He called it freedom.Ari called it progress.Knox said nothing.
Knox rarely says anything.He watches instead.From doorways.From corners.From the end of the hallways and across the main floor of the bar.He never stands too close.Never speaks too much.Never asks me questions I might not want to answer.
Somehow, that makes it worse.
Pity would be easier.Pity is familiar enough to sharpen into a weapon.If Knox looked at me the way everyone else does, I could hate him for it.I could bare my teeth, spit venom, and make him regret the softness in his eyes.But Knox doesn’t look at me like I am broken.
He looks at me like something precious was stolen, and he knows exactly where the bodies of the people who did it need to be buried.
That should scare me.It doesn’t.Which is a problem I am absolutely not prepared to deal with at 2:00 in the morning.
I let myself into the bar.
The Gin Room is different after closing.
During business hours, it’s all heat, bodies, and noise.Music throbs through the floor.Laughter spills over velvet couches.Supernatural creatures drink and flirt and threaten each other beneath amber lights while humans dance too close to monsters and call it fun.
Empty, the place feels older.Hungrier.
The long bar gleams in the low security lights, dark cherrywood polished smooth by decades of hands, elbows, and secrets.Black-and-white photographs stare from gilded frames along the walls.Faces I don’t know.Creatures I probably don’t want to know.The air smells like citrus, gin, spilled desire, and old magic soaked deep into the bricks.
I breathe it in.
For some reason, the bar is easier than the apartment, maybe because no one expects peace down here.
I move behind the counter and run my fingers over the polished surface.There’s a nick near the service station, small but deep.Another scar mars the edge by the sink.Proof that beautiful things can be damaged and still remain useful.
Apparently, I am identifying with furniture tonight.Fucking great.
I crouch and open the mini fridge beneath the counter.Rows of mixers, cut fruit, and bottled water stare back at me.No alcohol.That’s a rule I made with myself.
No dulling the edges.The edges are mine.Sharp, ugly, and mine.
I grab a bottle of water and twist off the cap.My hands shake a little, but not enough to spill.Another victory no one will clap for.
The first sip is cold enough to hurt.Good.Pain I choose is easier.
“You shouldn’t be down here alone.”
The voice rolls through the dark like thunder wrapped in gravel.I don’t scream, and that feels important.I do, however, slam my shoulder into the open fridge door hard enough to send pain sparking down my arm.
“Shit.”I whirl around, clutching the water bottle like it might save me from anything worse than dehydration.
Knox stands in the hallway leading to the underground fighting level.Of course he does.Where else would a Minotaur lurk at 2:00 in the morning besides the shadows beneath a supernatural bar?
He is half-hidden in darkness, but there’s no hiding the size of him.Knox is built like violence given a body.Six and a half feet of muscle, broad shoulders, thick arms, and heavy chest.His black t-shirt pulls tightly across him, and gray sweatpants hang low on his hips, doing absolutely nothing to make him less distracting.
One of his hands is wrapped in white tape while the other hangs loose at his side, fingers flexing once.His dark hair is cropped close at the sides, longer on top.His beard frames a mouth that never smiles around me.Maybe never smiles at all.There’s a scar cutting through his left eyebrow and another along his jaw, pale against golden-brown skin.
He looks like the kind of man mothers warn daughters about.Mine would have taken one look at him and moved to another state.
