4

Emma's question barely registered.

Kai was already moving, fingers locked around Emma's wrist, pulling him toward the stairs without a word.

Room one. Voices inside. Room two. Same. Room three. Worse  someone laughed right as Kai reached for the handle. He let go without knocking.

The last door at the end of the hall swung open.

Dark. Quiet. Good enough.

He shoved Emma in first, stepped in after, and threw the door shut. The frame rattled.

"Somebody's impatient." Emma's grin was slow, unbothered.

Kai dropped his jacket on the floor and said nothing. He knew himself well enough to know what happened when he started thinking  he'd already talked himself out of this twice this week. Once over Alex. Once over that stranger whose face he still couldn't place. Two people who weren't his, had never been his, and still somehow took up more space in his head than anyone who was actually standing in front of him.

Not tonight.

He closed the distance between them and kissed Emma before the thought could finish forming.

Emma didn't hesitate. Hands on Kai's waist, steady and unhurried. He pulled back just enough to speak. "Your heart's going fast."

Kai shrugged. "So?"

"I don't mind slowing down."

It was the right thing to say. Kai knew that. Emma was exactly the kind of person Kai should want  calm, considerate, no sharp edges. So why did something keep refusing to settle?

Emma's shirt came off. Kai's eyes dropped to the ink along his ribs  dark lines curling into letters he couldn't read from this angle.

"What's that?"

Emma looked down. "Didn't expect you to notice that."

Kai pressed two fingers against the script, following the curve of it. "What does it say?"

"Nothing I can explain in under five minutes."

"Fine." Kai pulled his hand back. "Later, then."

Emma's expression shifted  something warmer underneath the easy confidence. "You have no idea what you do to a person, do you."

Heat climbed the back of Kai's neck. He never knew what to do with that  being seen, being wanted, without the noise of whoever he was still trying to forget.

"Try the pheromones," he said.

Emma's brow lifted. "You asking or telling?"

"Asking."

A pause. Then Emma stepped closer, and the scent came with him  slow at first, then present in a way that settled into Kai's chest like a hand pressing gently down. His shoulders dropped. His breathing evened out.

This is working. It's actually working.

For the first time in longer than he wanted to admit, he thought he might be capable of this. Of moving. Of not being stuck.

Emma's palm was flat against his ribs. "Still here?"

"Still here," Kai said.

The wall exploded.

Not literally  but that's what it felt like. A crash. Then shouting, tangled and sharp, bleeding through the door. Kai's head snapped toward the sound.

Then one voice separated from the rest.

Low. Familiar. Close.

Every muscle in Kai's body locked.

He knew that voice before his brain caught up to knowing it. Knew it the way you know a scar  not because you look at it, but because it's always there.

He hadn't heard it in years.

The footsteps slowed. Stopped.

Right outside the door.

Alex.