chapter 5: Envelope on her doormat

The knock came a third time, and Draven still hadn't moved.

"You're scaring me more than whoever's out there," Scarlett whispered.

"Good instinct." He didn't take his eyes off the door. "Fear keeps people careful."

"Move."

"Scarlett."

"It's my apartment." She stepped around him before he could stop her a second time, irritation cutting cleanly through the fear. She was done letting men decide what she could and couldn't handle on her own doorstep. She opened the door with her chin up and her heart hammering.

A young man in a wrinkled polo shirt stood there holding a clipboard, looking far more bored than dangerous.

"Scarlett Reeves?"

"Yes."

"Property management. You've got a certified notice." He held out an envelope and a pen. "Sign here."

She signed with a hand that wasn't entirely steady, took the envelope, and shut the door before her brain caught up to what had just happened. Behind her, she heard Draven exhale, low and controlled, the sound of a man standing down from something.

"That's what had you ready to fight someone?" she asked. "A guy with a clipboard?"

"I didn't know what it was. I only knew the knock wasn't Nora's."

"How could you possibly know that?"

He didn't answer, and she was too rattled to push. She tore the envelope open instead, and the letterhead made her stomach drop for the second time that night.

NOTICE OF LATE PAYMENT: Account associated with this lease has returned insufficient funds. Balance due within five business days or eviction proceedings will begin.

"You have got to be kidding me." Her voice cracked. The account she'd used for rent was the same account First Meridian had frozen that morning. One thread pulled, and the whole fragile structure of her rebuilt life was already coming apart. "I signed divorce papers this morning. I lost my bank access by lunch. And now I might lose my apartment by Friday."

"You won't."

"You don't get to promise me that."

"I'm not promising you charity." His voice stayed even, but something fierce moved behind it. "I'm telling you there are options you don't know exist yet, and when you're ready to hear them, I'll be here."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only honest one I have tonight."

Someone knocked again, three quick raps followed immediately by Nora's voice through the door. "It's me, don't shoot."

Scarlett let her in, and Nora took one look at Draven standing in the middle of the living room like a statue someone had accidentally delivered to the wrong address, then one look at Scarlett's face, then held up the wine bottle in her hand like a peace offering to the room in general.

"Okay," Nora said. "Who wants to tell me why Scarlett looks like she's been hit by a truck, and why the truck is also unfairly attractive?"

Despite everything, Scarlett laughed, short and startled and real. It was the first time she'd laughed since the bar, and it loosened something tight in her chest.

"Eviction notice," she said, holding up the letter. "And apparently a stranger who won't tell me how he keeps knowing things before I do."

"Fantastic. Very normal Tuesday." Nora set the wine on the counter and poured three glasses without asking anyone's permission, then handed one to Draven with a look that dared him to refuse it. He took it, which seemed to surprise her more than anything else that had happened all night. "So. Draven. That's your whole name? Just Draven? Like Cher?"

"Draven Ashcroft."

"Ashcroft." Nora tested it like she was deciding whether to trust it. "Okay, Draven Ashcroft, my best friend has had the single worst month of her adult life, and you have shown up in the middle of it knowing things about her bank account that her own mother doesn't know. So before I let you anywhere near her, I need you to answer one question honestly."

"Ask it."

"Are you going to hurt her?"

The room went very quiet. Scarlett watched Draven's face, watched the flicker of something raw pass through his eyes before he answered.

"I would burn down anyone who tried," he said. "Including myself, if I ever became someone who did."

Nora blinked. "Okay, wow, that was not the answer I expected, but also I'm somehow both terrified and moved."

"That makes two of us," Scarlett muttered.

"So what do you actually do, Draven Ashcroft?" Nora asked, swirling her wine like she already expected him to dodge it. "For work. For money. For a living."

"It's complicated."

"Everything about you is complicated." She didn't miss a beat. "How do you know Scarlett's bank account got frozen before she even finished processing it herself?"

"I have people who watch out for her."

"Since when? You met her yesterday."

He didn't answer that one at all, and Nora let the silence sit just long enough to make her point before she leaned forward, resting her chin on her hand, all mock casual.

"Last question," she said. "Are you in love with her?"

Scarlett nearly choked on her wine.

Draven didn't flinch. "I don't think love is the right word for what I feel yet." His eyes cut to Scarlett, steady and unguarded for one rare second. "But I intend to find out."

Nora looked at Scarlett with an expression that said she had officially picked a lane.

By the time Nora left with a promise to call in the morning and a whispered he's terrifying but I like him on her way out the door, Scarlett was exhausted down to her bones.

"You should go too," she said. "It's late."

"I know."

He didn't move immediately. He stood near the door the way he had all night, but something in his posture had shifted, some careful distance he was holding against his own will.

"Draven."

"I'm not staying," he said, like he was reassuring himself as much as her. "I want to. That should probably worry you more than it does."

"Why won't you stay?"

"Because some part of me doesn't fully trust myself around you yet." He said it plainly, no drama in it, just a hard fact he wasn't going to dress up. "And you deserve better than finding that out the hard way."

"Trust yourself how?"

He opened the door instead of answering, pausing on the threshold with his eyes catching the hallway light again, that same flash of impossible gold flickering and gone.

"Lock this behind me," he said. "And don't open it for anyone else tonight. Not even if they know your name."

Then he was gone, footsteps fading down the stairwell too quickly for a man his size.

Scarlett shut the door and reached for the lock, and that was when she saw it.

An envelope on the floor of the entryway, just inside the threshold, where it had no business being. No stamp. No return address.

Her name written across the front in handwriting she didn't recognize.