Chapter 4

Nate’s Pov

I shouldn’t have come.

The thought settled the moment I stepped through the doors.

Too loud. Too crowded. Too careless.

None of it suited me.

And yet, I stayed.

Camilla’s hand rested lightly at my arm, her voice smooth beside me as she said something about the bar, about drinks, about someone she’d spotted across the room. I nodded once.

I wasn’t listening.

Because my attention had already shifted.

Not intentionally.

But not accidentally either.

She was across the room.

Isabel.

It took less than a second to find her, like some part of me had already done the work before I’d decided to look.

She didn’t see me.

Too absorbed in the music, the movement, the way she existed in a room without apologizing for it. Nothing restrained about her. Nothing calculated. She moved like consequences were someone else’s problem like her body knew exactly what it was doing and had stopped asking permission.

The red dress didn’t help.

Short. The hem feathering at her thighs every time she moved. The neckline cutting low across her chest, her brown skin catching the light in a way that made it difficult to look at anything else in the room.

I looked anyway.

Longer than I should have.

My jaw tightened.

Because she wasn’t alone.

Some man stood behind her. Too close. His hands at her waist like he’d earned that. His mouth near her ear, saying something that made her tip her head back slightly her throat exposed, her lips curved into something soft and unbothered.

Something moved through my chest.

Sharp. Immediate.

I exhaled slowly, forcing my expression back to neutral.

It didn’t matter.

It had no reason to matter.

“She’s interesting.”

Camilla’s voice cut through cleanly.

I didn’t look at her immediately. “Who?”

“The girl you’ve been watching.”

A pause.

I turned slightly.

Camilla’s gaze was steady. Composed. She had the particular stillness of a woman who noticed everything and chose carefully what to do with it. Not accusing. Not emotional.

Just aware.

“I know her,” I said.

That much was true.

“Should I be concerned?”

Direct. As always.

“No.”

The answer came immediately.

Too immediately.

And from the way she studied me for exactly one second longer than necessary she heard that too.

“Alright,” she said simply.

Conversation closed.

She looked away.

But mine wasn’t over.

Because my attention had already gone back.

To her.

The man’s hand was pressing slightly firmer at her waist now. She’d turned slightly, her back against his chest, moving with him, easy and unguarded.

She doesn’t see it, I thought. What she looks like right now. What she’s doing to every person in this room without trying.

I looked away.

Counted three seconds.

Looked back.

She was laughing now. Soft. Head tilted. Completely at ease.

And something about that the ease of it, the openness of it, the way she gave it without thinking, made me move before I’d made the decision to.

I didn’t think about it, didn’t examine it, didn’t do what I should have done, which was stay exactly where I was and let the night continue without incident.

I crossed the room.

“Isabel.”

She turned.

And for a moment the room did something it had no business doing it faded. The music, the crowd, the heat of it all pulling back like it had agreed to give us space.

She looked up at me.

Those eyes. That expression, not surprised, not flustered.

Just steady.

Like she’d been expecting me.

“You’re here,” I said.

Pointless. But necessary.

“Last time I checked,” she replied, her voice carrying that particular lightness that meant the drinks had done their job, “I’m allowed to go out.”

That tone.

Unhurried. Unbothered. Like she already knew she had the upper hand and found it more amusing than anything else.

“You should be careful,” I said.

“Why does everyone keep saying that to me?”

Because you don’t see it. Because you walk into rooms like this one and something in the air changes. Because men like the one who had his hands on your waist don’t see you the way you think they do.

“This isn’t your environment,” I said instead.

“You decided that?”

I stepped closer.

Slowly. Deliberately. The kind of movement that I was aware of every inch of aware of what it meant, aware of what I was doing, aware that I was doing it anyway.

The air between us shifted immediately.

I could smell her from here. Something warm and faintly sweet, underneath it the soft trace of body oil that I had absolutely no business noticing.

I noticed.

“And you?” she asked quietly, tilting her chin up slightly to hold my gaze. “This your environment?”

My jaw tightened.

“Don’t push it.”

She smiled.

Slow. Like I’d just confirmed something she’d already suspected.

“Or what?”

Silence.

My eyes dropped before I could stop them.

Down her throat. The line of her collarbone. The soft glow of her skin above her neckline, warm and deliberate, like she’d known exactly what she was doing when she got dressed tonight.

She had.

I knew she had.

I dragged my gaze back up.

And the effort it took the actual, measurable effort of pulling my attention back to her face and keeping it there told me more than I wanted to know about where I was with this.

“You’re making this difficult,” I said.

Low. The words out before I’d approved them.

“I’m not doing anything,” she said.

“That’s the problem.”

My hand lifted.

I was aware of it happening. Aware of the decision being made somewhere beneath rational thought, somewhere that didn’t particularly care about rational thought. My palm settled against her waist light, barely there and the heat of her went through the fabric immediately.

Warm. Soft. Real.

My hand didn’t move.

Neither did she.

And the fact that she didn’t move, didn’t step back, didn’t give me the exit I needed was what made it dangerous. I could feel her breathing. Could feel the slight shift of her body, the way the tension between us had stopped being something in the air and started being something physical. Something with weight to it.

This is a bad idea, I thought.

“This is a bad idea,” I said.

But my hand stayed exactly where it was.

And for the first time in a long time, I didn’t particularly care about the consequences.

“Nate.”

Camilla’s voice.

Soft. Calm.

Like a door closing quietly.

I stepped back.

Clean. Immediate. The space between us restored in a single second like it had always been there.

“I was looking for you,” she said.

Her gaze moved to Isabel — brief, composed, the kind of look that catalogued without reacting then back to me.

“I’ll be there,” I said.

My voice steady. Unchanged.

Like nothing had just happened.

I walked back to Camilla.

Fell back into step beside her. Back into the conversation, the evening, the version of tonight that made sense.

But I could still feel it.

Her waist beneath my palm. The warmth of it. The way she hadn’t moved away.

I exhaled through my nose.

Camilla said something. I responded. Appropriate. Measured.

The whole time, my jaw tight.

Because I’d told myself I wouldn’t go to her.

I’d watched her across the room and told myself it didn’t matter, that it meant nothing, that I was in control of this the same way I was in control of everything else.

And then I’d crossed the room in thirty seconds flat.

For what.

To warn her? To check on her? To stand close enough to smell her skin and put my hand on her waist and call it anything other than what it was?

I knew what it was.

That was the part I couldn’t reason my way out of.

My gaze moved just once, without my permission across the room.

She was still there.

Standing exactly where I’d left her. Drink in hand. Not looking at me.

But aware.

I could tell from here.

The same way I’d been aware of her from the moment I walked through those doors.

I faced forward.

This stops here, I told myself.

It was a reasonable thought.

A necessary one.

The problem was I’d already said it once tonight.

Right before I crossed the room.