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“Home?”
His hand remains wrapped around my arm.
“Well, the house I’m staying at,” I say quickly. “You know the Bolton family?”
Irritation tightens his jaw. The tips of those oddly long canines peek out when he flicks his tongue across his teeth.
“I do.”
The space around us feels charged with his intensity, but I don’t know why. I try to pull away, but his grip won’t loosen.
I nod casually, like he doesn’t send a nervous flutter through my stomach.
“They’ve been kind enough to let me stay with them.”
Edwin studies me. “Why don’t you want to go home, Zaiya?”
The humid air somehow freezes around us.
His voice is calm, but the question feels too sharp. I open my mouth, yet the words hesitate, caught somewhere between my chest and my tongue.
“Without my brother, it wouldn’t feel like home.”
That’s the truth I cling to. It’s all he needs to know.
His eyes don’t soften. “Without your brother to protect you, your parents will be ruthless.”
A startled sound slips out of me. I take a step back, and he allows it. “How do you—”
“What happened three years ago?”
He moves towards me and I retreat without thinking.
“Nothing.”
The lie comes too fast. My hands tremble at my sides and I know he sees them.
“Someone touched you,” he says.
Heat flares into my cheeks. Shame always finds a way to crawl through me when that memory surfaces.
“It was a mistake.”
Before I can move again, he closes the distance and pins me to the wooden rack. One hand at my waist, the other braced beside my face.
“What did you do, Zaiya?”
I shake my head and stare at the floorboards. I can’t look at him.
He catches my chin and forces it up.
“Your father’s office Christmas party,” he says softly. “You and Jordan Thomas in a conference room.”
The memory hits with full force. The long table. The cold glass walls. My own nervous hope. The clumsy way I let myself be touched because I wanted so badly to understand what every other girl at school already seemed to know.
I breathe through my nose, trying not to splinter.
“You were curious,” he says. “Desperate for someone’s hands on your body.”
