CHAPTER TWO

“AND SUDDENLY WE WERE STRANGERS AGAIN.”

MAYA.

I was not fast enough.

That was the honest truth of it. By the time I heard the front door and registered that the voice was already inside the apartment and not outside in the hallway, it was too late to do anything useful. I had barely gotten one leg off Yulian's lap when the living room light shifted and I knew I just knew by the way the air in the room changed, that someone was already standing in the doorway.

I scrambled the rest of the way off my husband's lap so fast I nearly knocked the wine glass off the coffee table.

"Whoa ...okay—" Kayden's voice hit the room at the same time his eyes did, and he stopped dead in the entrance to the living room, taking in the scene in front of him in about half a second. Me, clutching my robe together at the chest. Yulian, whose shirt was untucked and whose expression had gone from heated to carefully neutral in record time. The dim lighting. The candles I had apparently left burning on the side table.

Kayden turned around immediately.

"Fuck  I'm sorry, I didn't" He faced the wall, one hand coming up to the back of his neck. "The door was unlocked, I just walked in, I didn't think—"

"It's okay, man." Yulian was already straightening up from the couch, fixing his shirt, completely unbothered the way only Yulian could be. Composed. Always composed. "We didn't know you were already on your way up. Give her a second."

I was already moving. I turned slightly away and pulled the robe tighter, fingers working quickly at the loose tie, knotting it properly this time and pulling it firm at my waist. Then I reached for the top of my robe where it had fallen open at my chest and started doing up the single button at the neckline.

And that was when I saw it.

The mirror.

We had a large decorative mirror mounted on the wall just across from where I was standing, one of those big antique-framed ones that I had picked out because it made the living room look bigger and the light look warmer. I had loved that mirror from the day we hung it.

Right now I wanted to take it off the wall and put it face down on the floor.

Because in the reflection, over my own shoulder, I could see Kayden.

He had turned around.

Not fully. Just enough. Just enough that his eyes were on my reflection in that mirror as I was trying to button up, and I watched those eyes move, slow, unhurried, like he had all the time in the world  and then I watched him press his tongue briefly to his lower lip.

I felt heat rise to my face so fast it made me dizzy.

I finished the button in one sharp motion, smoothed the front of my robe down, and turned around.

What a pervert.

I kept my face completely clean. Neutral. Easy. The way I had learned to keep my face around Kayden Hale years ago because it was the only way to survive being in the same room as him without giving yourself away.

"Hey, Kayden," I said, like I hadn't just watched him look at me like that in my own mirror in my own home. Like my heart wasn't doing something stupid and irritating in my chest. I even smiled, which I thought was honestly a very impressive performance on my part.

He looked at me directly now, and his expression had shifted into something casual and easy, like nothing had happened. Like he hadn't just—

"Hey," he said simply.

And that was it. That was Kayden. He could do that, flip the switch and look at you like butter wouldn't melt and you'd almost believe you had imagined the whole thing.

Almost.

I was grateful, deeply and sincerely grateful, that Yulian had been looking the other way. My husband had his back to both of us for a moment as he grabbed his jacket off the arm of the couch and I used those three seconds to look at Kayden with an expression that I hoped communicated exactly what I thought of him without saying a single word.

He smiled.

I looked away first.

I always looked away first.

Yulian turned back around and crossed the room, and the two of them did that thing they always did — that hug that was more like a collision, arms around each other, a firm hand on the back, genuine in the way that only people who had known each other their whole lives could be. 

Yulian was grinning and Kayden was grinning and for a moment they were just two men who had missed each other and I stood to the side of it feeling like I was watching something through a window.

It had been two years and three years since I got married to Yulian.

Two years since I had been in the same room as Kayden Hale. Two years since I had gotten very good at making sure that didn't happen,  turning down events when I knew he'd be there, keeping myself busy when Yulian mentioned he was coming to the city, finding very reasonable and perfectly believable excuses every single time. I had been so good at it. I had been an artist at it.

And then Yulian had told me three weeks ago that Kayden had a race tournament here and that he was staying with us and I had said oh, great, sounds good in a voice so calm I should have won some kind of award.

I looked at Kayden now while his attention was on Yulian and I tried to be objective about it. Like a person examining a situation plainly and without any kind of feeling attached.

He was bigger.

That was the first thing. Kayden had always been built — tall, broad, the kind of body that came from years of actual physical punishment rather than a gym membership — but two years had done something extra to him. His shoulders filled out his leather jacket in a way that made the jacket look like it had been custom made, which it probably hadn't been. 

His forearms where his sleeves were pushed up were covered in tattoos that I didn't remember being there before, dark ink running all the way down to his hands. His jaw was sharper. His hair was longer on top and shorter on the sides, pushed back loosely in that mullet-adjacent way that somehow only worked on certain people and Kayden was infuriatingly one of them.

He had a small cut above his left eyebrow that was mostly healed. Probably from training.

Number one on his back for three consecutive years in bike racing. The top of the circuit. His face had been on billboards across the city for months and I had been taking alternate routes to avoid three of them specifically.

I pulled my eyes away and fixed them on a very neutral and interesting point on the wall behind them.

He was an Alpha, technically. That part always made people do a double take when they found out because Kayden Hale looked like the last thing on earth he should be responsible for was a pack. He was wild in a way that ran bone deep, unpredictable in a way that wasn't careless so much as it was just completely and utterly untameable. Short tempered. Explosive when pushed. The kind of man who would make a decision at full speed and deal with whatever came after it later.

Yulian had once said that if Kayden ever led a pack the whole thing would collapse inside a week and he had said it with complete affection and Kayden had laughed and said you're probably right.

So Kayden had handed his pack, the one his bloodline said was his to lead — to his younger brother. Signed it over like he was passing off something that had never quite fit him and walked back to his bikes and his fights and his life and never looked back.

Which was so completely and utterly Kayden that it wasn't even surprising.

I was still looking at the wall when I caught the tail end of what Yulian was saying.

" I thought you were supposed to come with her? Where's your girl?"

I glanced back over.

Kayden scratched the back of his head. He had the decency to look slightly sheepish, which on him was a very small expression. "Yeah, about that." A short pause. "We broke up."

"What?" Yulian's head pulled back. "I thought you two were good. Like two days ago you said she was coming with you."

"Yeah." Kayden shrugged one shoulder. "You know how these things go."

Yulian looked at him for a long moment with the expression of a man who absolutely knew exactly how this had gone and was deciding how much to say about it. "Whatever happened, I'm pretty sure it was your fault."

Kayden laughed. It was a real one, the kind that crinkled the corners of his eyes. "It kind of was, honestly." He shook his head. "Relationships, man. They are so — I don't know how you keep yours intact. Actually I genuinely do not know how you do it."

He was teasing. His voice had that lightness to it that meant he was being playful, just joking around with his best friend the way they always did. But I felt his eyes flick toward me for just a half second as he said it and I felt my jaw tighten.

Yulian smiled. He reached out and clapped Kayden once on the shoulder. "The secret, my man, is to find a wife who loves you." He glanced over at me and there was something warm and easy in his face when he did it. "A very gorgeous wife who loves you."

I felt Kayden's eyes on me before I even looked up.

I knew that look. I recognized it the way you recognize a song you haven't heard in years — immediately and in your whole body before your brain even finishes processing it.

I smiled at Yulian, quick and bright, and then I was already moving.

"You boys keep chatting," I said, keeping my voice light, breezy, completely normal. "I'll get you both something to drink."

And I walked away.

I walked to the kitchen with my shoulders straight and my breathing even and I did not look back. I turned the corner and let the kitchen island put itself between me and the living room and I exhaled so slowly it barely made a sound.

This was why I hadn't wanted him here.

Not in this apartment. Not under this roof. Not in the place where I lived my life and slept in my bed and had built something that felt solid and real and mine.

The problem was never Yulian. Yulian was good. Yulian was steady and he loved me and he had wanted Kayden here because that was the kind of man my husband was — the kind who thought it was disrespectful to let his best friend sleep in a hotel while he was in his city, who had looked at me almost hurt when I had gently, casually, very carefully tried to suggest that maybe Kayden would be more comfortable with his own space. We had gone back and forth on it for three days. Yulian had won, obviously.

Because I couldn't tell him the truth.

The truth was not something I could put on the table and explain, not without pulling on a thread that would unravel things I had spent years keeping carefully stitched together.

So Kayden was here.

I opened the wine fridge under the counter and pulled out a bottle without really reading the label, setting it on the marble with a soft clink. I found the glasses. I started pouring. I focused on the pour — the sound of it, the color of it, the simple straightforward task of filling a glass because focusing on simple things was how I had gotten through the last three years just fine.

I was fine.

Completely fine.

I reached for the second glass.

"Hey, Maya."

The voice came from right behind me.

Low. Easy. Like he had always stood in my kitchen. Like no time had passed at all.

"Long time no see."