The song ends.
For one full beat I stay pressed against Beckett's chest, and his heartbeat is still moving through the fabric of his shirt and into my skin. My cheek is near his collarbone. My hand is in his. I can feel him breathe.
What am I doing?
I know the answer.
I'm standing on a dance floor in a crowded club, fourteen weeks pregnant, legally still married to a man who slapped me in front of hundreds of people, letting Beckett Morrow's heartbeat talk me out of every boundary I built specifically to survive men like him.
The self-awareness arrives fully formed and absolutely useless, the way it always does about four seconds too late.
I look up to see he's already looking down. Of course he is.
And that's what does it — the fact that he's been watching me this whole time, waiting for exactly this moment, and I let him manufacture it. I handed him the raw material and stood back and watched him build the trap.
I step back and slap him.
The sound cuts through the bass line. My palm stings from the heel up, and his head turns with the force of it.
"I'm not one of your rotation girls, you smug jerk." My voice comes out low, which is good. Low means I mean it. "Did you actually think that was going to work on me?"
Beckett doesn't answer or touch his cheek.
He doesn't narrow his eyes or step toward me or reach for the charm he usually deploys when a situation needs managing.
He just looks at me, and I wish he would do something — argue, deflect, perform — because the stillness is worse than any comeback he could land. I don't know what to do with a man who takes a hit and doesn't flinch.
I turn away from him and push through the crowd toward the place I last saw Sloan.
She’s near the edge of the dance floor, her hand on the arm of the guy she's been talking to all night. She reads my face before I've said a word — that is what years of friendship looks like, the ability to translate the exact geometry of my expression without subtitles.
"I'm leaving, alone. You don’t have to go with me, better have fun here," I say.
She doesn't argue. She doesn't ask the question I can see sitting behind her eyes. She just squeezes my arm once and says, "Text me when you're home."
I nod and push toward the exit.
The street outside is quiet, city streets typically go this quiet after midnight — not empty, just emptied of the daytime version of themselves. I pull out my phone and open the rideshare app. The circle spins. Spins again.
‘No drivers available in your area.’
I scan both directions for a cab. There are none. So I start walking toward the main avenue.
"Waverly, wait!" The words find the exact frequency of my nervous system and I hate Beckett for knowing it.
My stride falters — a single missed beat in my own body that I immediately resent, but I don't stop. "Go back inside, Beckett."
"No." His footsteps land even on the pavement behind me, not hurrying, not crowding. "I'm not letting you walk alone in this neighborhood at midnight."
"I don't need your protection."
"That's fine," he says, and I can hear the straightforward quality of it. "I'm walking in the same direction."
He stays a full stride behind me. He doesn't try to close the gap or insert himself beside me, and I walk faster anyway, because the alternative is admitting I can hear him breathing and it is bothering me more than it should.
Four blocks. Then five. My heels have been making their opinion known since the third block, and by the sixth they win the argument my pride has been losing.
I slow without announcing it, my stride shortening, and Beckett falls into step beside me as naturally as if we'd planned to walk together all along.
I don't acknowledge it. He doesn't make me.
The charge drains out of the silence between us and what's left is just tired — two people walking a city block at midnight after a night that didn't go how either of them planned.
"Did you eat anything tonight," he asks, "besides bar water?"
"Sloan made pasta before we came out."
"Sloan's pasta is probably terrible."
I glance at him despite myself. "It was, actually."
"What was wrong with it?"
"Too much salt." I pause. "And not enough conviction."
He laughs, and I almost smile. I catch it before it arrives and redirect my attention to the pavement.
"I stayed at a hotel in Lisbon last year," he says. "Rooftop garden. The chef grew herbs between the air conditioning units. Oregano in a soup can, parsley in a paint bucket. Best meal I've had in a decade."
"My grandfather grew tomatoes on the fire escape of his first hotel. Twelve rooms on the East Side, full occupancy every weekend. When guests complained about the continental breakfast, he'd bring them a plate of tomatoes with olive oil and salt." I pause. "Nobody complained twice."
"Smart man."
"He was."
The conversation settles between us warm and weightless, with no agenda underneath it, and that is somehow the most dangerous thing that's happened tonight.
My feet ache and the city is quiet and I let it exist because fighting takes energy I've already spent.
The man comes from the alley between a dry cleaner and a shuttered restaurant. Fast. Too fast, the way the body understands danger a full second before the mind names it. The adrenaline fires from my chest down both arms before I've consciously registered why.
His hand reaches for the strap of my bag and I jerk away, stumbling off the curb, my heel catching the edge and pitching me sideways. The pavement tilts. My hands come up on pure animal instinct and the noise that leaves my throat is small and humiliating.
Then Beckett is between us.
He moves before I've finished falling, stepping in front of me and shoving the man back with both hands.
The mugger slashes. Beckett's arm comes up to block and the blade catches his forearm — I hear the fabric tear and see the flash of the knife in the streetlight, and then the man is running, shoes loud on the pavement, turning the corner and disappearing.
The whole thing lasts less than ten seconds.
My hands are shaking, and I cannot will them into stillness no matter how hard I press my palms against my thighs. My pulse is in my ears, my throat, my fingertips.
Every individual nerve ending is filing its own separate report and none of them have calmed down enough to be useful. I am standing upright on a public street and my legs are informing me this was a group decision they did not consent to.
Beckett turns to face me. "Are you okay?"
His voice is steady of someone suppressing the opposite.
His left hand is clamped around his right forearm, fingers pressed tight over the torn sleeve. Between his fingers, blood seeps through the pale fabric in a dark, spreading stain that moves fast.
Too fast.