All Chapters of They Know What She Wants: Chapter 181 - Chapter 190

Hearing him curse felt like watching a statue crack open and bleed. He then sighed and ran a hand through his damp hair, tugging hard enough that strands stood up in spikes. With a soft exhale, he glanced through the window behind us, checking for shadows moving inside, for anyone who might be watching or listening—then grabbed my wrist and pulled me away from the porch railing. “Come on,” he muttered. “Not here.” He dragged me around the side of the house, down the narrow path between the porch and the neighbor’s fence, until we were out of sight of the windows, tucked against the brick wall where the wind couldn’t reach us as easily. The Christmas lights from the street still blinked red and green across his face, painting the bruises on his throat in festive colors that made my stomach twist harder. Then he let go of my wrist, stepped back half a pace, and ran both hands through his hair again. “Look, I’m not angry at you,” he breathed out. “I’m angry at myself for letting

Dr. Harlan wasn’t that type of person.The thought hit me so hard I almost laughed. Hilarious wasn’t it.Here I was, standing in his ex-wife’s driveway, watching her scream about how he “collected broken girls” and “enjoyed talking to them,” and all I could think was how fucking wrong she was. He wasn’t a predator and he certainly wasn’t a collector. He was… good. Quietly, stubbornly, infuriatingly good. The kind of good that sat with my worst days for fifty minutes at a time and never once made me feel small. The kind of good that had let me fall apart in a park and still tried to hold the pieces. I trusted him.Even now—especially now—I trusted him.And that trust made Lisa’s accusations feel like nothing but a ugly static, loud, but a far cry from the truth.I stepped forward, putting myself between them without thinking. “You don’t know him,” I pressed on, looking straight at Lisa. “You think he’s some kind of predator because he listens to women who are hurting? Because he

I couldn’t go out the way I came in; the hallway was too open and the stairs were too visible from the foyer. But fortunately for me the study had a secondary narrow door, almost hidden behind the floor-to-ceiling shelves on the east wall that connected to the private corridor leading to the service stairs. Gage had installed it years ago for “discreet meetings,” which everyone knew meant mistresses and shady business partners. I’d used it exactly once as a teenager, sneaking out after curfew to meet some girl whose name I couldn’t even remember now.I moved toward it, every step measured so my boots wouldn’t squeak on the hardwood. My good hand stayed braced against the bookshelf for balance; the sling kept my left arm pinned uselessly across my chest. Pain ripped out from my shoulder in hot, vicious fucking waves, but adrenaline was screaming louder, drowning the shit out of it.The secondary door was concealed behind a false panel that looked like just another section of shelving

Not really having any destination in mind, I fished my phone out of my pocket and thumbed through to Lex’s number with fingers that wouldn’t stop shaking. It rang twice before he picked up. “Yo,” he answered, voice muffled like he had the phone wedged between shoulder and ear while he was doing something else. “Where are you?” I asked. “What?” “I’m asking where the fuck are you right now?” I repeated, sharper this time, my frustration bleeding through. “Um… I’m at the dive bar on 14th, the one with the shitty pool table and the bartender who never cards anyone,” Lex answered after a beat, his tone shifting from distracted to slightly more alert, like he could hear the edge in my voice and knew better than to fuck around. “Ellis is here too. Why? You sound like hell, man. What’s going on?” I didn’t answer right away. I just sat there in the driver’s seat with the engine rumbling under me, snowflakes melting on the windshield faster than the wipers could clear them, turning the

“But it is.”“Yeah, yeah. Lecture me.”Silence.The silence felt a bit awkward, so I kept stroking my thumb over the back of my hand, waiting for the tension to ease a little. Lucky enough, Mia didn’t waste much time before breaking the silence with a question that came out of nowhere, her voice small but curious: “How are things going between you and Gage?”The question took me by surprise. I hadn’t expected her to jump straight to that. My stomach did a little flip, and I blinked, feeling my cheeks warm a little. “It’s… complicated,” I told her. “But it’s good. Really good, actually.”Mia nodded slowly at what I said, her eyes still a little glassy but softening at the edges. “That’s nice,” she smiled, and there was genuine warmth in her voice. “He seems like the type who would fight for you.”I felt a small rush of relief at her words, but it was quickly followed by that familiar twist of guilt. Here I was talking about my complicated happiness while she looked like she hadn’t