craving

CHAPTER 2

The elevator doors closed and I still didn't know his name.

He didn't ask for mine either.

The suite was on the top floor — the kind of room that costs more per night than most people make in a week. Floor to ceiling windows. The city spread out below us like something that didn't matter anymore. He didn't turn on the main lights. Just a lamp in the corner, which left most of the room in shadow.

I stood just inside the door.

He poured two glasses of water from the minibar — not alcohol, which surprised me — and set one on the table near me without a word. Then he loosened his watch, set it down, and looked at me across the room.

"You can still leave," he said.

"Stop saying that."

"I'm saying it until you stop looking at the door."

I hadn't realised I was.

I made myself look at him instead. Really look. The lamp caught the angle of his jaw, the grey threading through his dark hair at the temples, the way he stood like the room belonged to him even though he'd only been in it twenty minutes.

"I'm not leaving," I said.

He crossed the room slowly. No rush. Like he had all night and knew it. He stopped close enough that I had to tilt my chin up to hold his gaze, and he reached out and pushed my hair back from my face — one single unhurried movement — and just studied me for a moment.

"You're angry at someone," he said quietly.

Not a question.

"Does it matter?"

"No." His thumb traced the edge of my jaw. "Just don't disappear inside it. I want you here."

I didn't know what to do with that. With being seen by a stranger when the man I'd been engaged to for months had looked straight through me.

He kissed me slowly at first. No urgency. Just pressure and warmth and complete, devastating patience — the kind that dismantled every defense I'd walked in with before I even noticed they were gone.

Then his hands moved and I stopped thinking altogether.

He knew exactly what he was doing.

That was the thing that undid me completely. There was no fumbling, no performance, no rush toward some finish line. He paid attention in a way I hadn't known was possible — reading every reaction, adjusting, slowing down when I tensed, pressing forward when I didn't. Like my body was something worth understanding.

At some point I stopped being angry. Stopped thinking about Luca and his friends and my mother's voice on the phone. The city outside the windows disappeared. Everything shrank down to this room, this man, his hands and his voice low against my ear telling me to breathe, to stay with him, that he had me.

I have you.

Three words I hadn't known I needed until they were already inside me.

I didn't sleep for hours.

Neither did he.

When I woke up, the other side of the bed was empty.

No note. No number on the nightstand. The indentation in the pillow next to mine was the only proof he'd been real at all. I lay there in the grey morning light staring at the ceiling, waiting to feel something specific — shame, maybe, or relief, or the kind of regret that sits in your chest like a stone.

What I felt instead was quieter than any of those things.

Like something that had been wound too tight inside me had finally been allowed to go slack.

I pressed my face into the pillow.

He smelled like dark cedar and something underneath that I couldn't name. I lay there longer than I should have, not moving.

My phone detonated.

I'd left it on silent but the screen had been lighting up all night — I could see it from here, blinking at intervals in the pale light like an accusation. I reached over and looked at the notifications.

Fourteen missed calls. Six from my mother. Four from my father. Two from a number I didn't recognise. One from my aunt. One from Luca.

I put it face-down on the mattress and stared at the ceiling a little longer.

Then I got up, showered, packed my bag, and booked the first flight home.

My parents were waiting in the living room when I got back, which meant they'd coordinated. My mother was sitting with her hands folded, which was never good. My father was standing by the window with his arms crossed.

"Sit down," my mother said.

"I'd rather stand."

"Zara." My father's voice had that specific weight in it — the one that was supposed to settle arguments before they started. "We've spoken to Luca's family. His mother called us directly. This situation can be resolved quietly if you—"

"His mother." I looked at him. "Did his mother also hear what he said about me in that VIP room? Or just the part where I wanted to cancel the engagement?"

Silence.

"He's a young man." My mother's tone was careful. Measured. "Young men say things in front of their friends to save face. It doesn't reflect how he truly—"

"He said once he sleeps with me he'll leave me." My voice was flat. "Those were the words. There's no version of that which is saving face."

"Zara—"

"No." I put my bag down. "I want to be clear. I am not angry. I am not emotional. I am telling you, plainly, that I will not marry Luca Blackwood."

My parents looked at each other.

That look. I'd seen it my whole life — the silent exchange that meant a decision had already been made and my input wasn't part of it.

"His family is hosting a gathering this Saturday," my father said, like I hadn't spoken. "You will attend. You will be civil. You will give this time to settle."

"You want me to walk back in there and pretend—"

"We want you to think." My mother stood up. "Not about tonight. Not about your feelings. About your future. About this family's future." She picked up her tea. "Saturday. Be ready at seven."

She walked out of the room.

My father looked at me for a moment, something almost apologetic moving across his face — and then he followed her.

I stood alone in the living room.

A bargaining chip. That's what I was. Dressed up in the language of family and tradition and what's best for you, but underneath all of it — a bargaining chip. Something to be leveraged into the right alliance at the right time.

I thought about the man in the hotel room.

I want you here.

I pushed it down.

Luca's family home was the kind of place designed to make you feel small the moment you walked through the gate.

High iron fencing. A driveway long enough to be its own statement. The main house white and imposing behind manicured grounds, with music already spilling from the back. I stepped out of the car in the most conservative thing I owned — a fitted midi dress, sleeves to the elbow, neckline to my collarbone — because if I was being forced to come here, I was coming on my own terms.

The party was already in full swing by the time I reached the back garden.

I stopped walking.

The pool. That's where everyone was — around it, in it — and I use the word everyone loosely because most of the women present were in bikinis so small they were largely theoretical. Luca was in the middle of it all, sitting on the pool steps with a drink in one hand and a woman on each side who were doing their absolute best to keep his attention.

He hadn't seen me yet.

I watched him for a moment — the easy laugh, the way he leaned into the one on his left, the absolute absence of anything that looked like missing me — and something cold settled in my stomach.

Not heartbreak. I'd already done that part, alone in a hotel corridor with my palm flat against the wall.

This was something else.

Clarity, maybe.

"Oh my God." A voice to my right — female, sharp, carrying. The woman in the red bikini was looking me up and down with the kind of smile that didn't mean anything good. "Are you lost? The library's not for another three streets."

The group near her laughed.

"Nice dress, though." This from a man I recognised — Soren, one of Luca's friends, the one with the easy grin that made him look harmless until he opened his mouth. "Reminds me of my grandmother. She had good taste too."

More laughter.

"Soren," I said evenly.

"Come on, I'm joking. You've got a great body, Zara. Why are you always hiding it?" He gestured broadly at the party. "Look around. Live a little."

I looked at Luca.

He was watching now. Had heard the whole thing.

He smiled. Shrugged, just barely. What do you want me to do about it?

"Luca." I walked to the edge of the pool. "Can I talk to you?"

He squinted up at me, unbothered by the sun. "You're here, aren't you? Talk."

"Privately."

"We're all friends." He took a sip of his drink. "Say what you want to say."

Fine.

"I want to cancel the engagement."

The woman on his left made a small sound. The one on his right pulled back slightly. Soren had gone quiet.

Luca looked at me for a long moment and then he laughed — not a short laugh, a full one, like I'd said something genuinely funny. "Zara."

"I'm serious."

"You're not." He stood, water running off him, and reached for his towel. "Your parents would lose their minds. My family has already sent the invitations. We're getting married in five weeks." He looked at me calmly. "Behave."

"Behave."

"That's what I said." He turned back toward the pool. "And if you were actually serious about cancelling, you wouldn't have come tonight. So." He gestured around. "Get a drink. Relax. Stop making things weird."

I stared at the back of his head.

Everything in me was shaking — not visibly, not in any way anyone here would see, but underneath, where it counted.

I opened my mouth.

The back doors to the house opened.

Luca turned. His whole posture shifted in one single second — the lazy entitlement drained out of him, something cautious moving in to replace it, and he straightened in a way I'd never seen him straighten for anyone.

"Father," he said.

The word landed on my spine like a cold hand.

I turned around slowly.

He was standing in the doorway.

Dark suit. No tie. Taller than I remembered, or maybe that was just the daylight — in the hotel bar everything had been dim and close and I'd been looking at him through anger and impulse. Now there was nowhere to hide from the details.

The grey at his temples. The line of his jaw. The way he scanned the party once with complete indifference and then — his eyes found me.

Stopped.

Something moved through his face that no one else would have caught.

I couldn't move.

Couldn't breathe.

Couldn't do anything except stand there while the entire universe narrowed to the six feet of space between me and the man who had told me, twenty-four hours ago, I have you — and who was now standing in his son's garden looking at me like he'd known this moment was coming.

Like maybe he'd been waiting for it.