LUKE
The past few days had stripped everything down to its bones. The days after Darren Langley’s body surfaced moved faster than anything I’d ever seen in Blackwood.
Investigations inside corporations our size usually crawled through years of procedure and legal maneuvering before anything visible happened.
This one didn’t.
Federal agents had a body now. They had Darren’s documents from the storage unit. And suddenly, the quiet war that had lived beneath the surface of both King Enterprises and Dunn Industries was spilling into daylight.
For several minutes, neither Mila nor I spoke as we sat together on the arena’s roof beneath the stars. Mila’s silver star pendant blinked in the moonlight, a quiet reminder of the promise I’d made to her in what felt like another lifetime.
Her eyes held mine a second longer than usual, long enough that I knew she felt that thread that tied us together.
The air on the roof had gone still, the ocean somewhere beyond the arena breathing in the distance. The stars stretched wide above us, cold and bright against the black sky.
My attention dropped to her mouth. Then back to her eyes. I gave her the space to stop it if she wanted. Space, in case she needed it—even from me.
She didn’t. So I kissed her.
The moment our mouths met, something inside my chest snapped tight. It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t careful. The need for her locked in just as hard. My hand threaded into her thick, long hair, holding her there as she grabbed the front of my hoodie and pulled me closer.
That single movement lit every nerve I had.
Her breath caught against my mouth, and the sound went straight through me. Desire tangled with something heavier—relief, maybe. Or the realization that after everything we’d torn apart around us, she was still here. Still choosing this. Still choosing me.
I kissed her harder before I could stop myself.
Her body pressed into mine, warm through the cool night air, and the familiar rush flashed through me. The same pull I’d been fighting since the moment she came back to Blackwood. The one I’d never actually stood a chance against.
When I finally drew back, our foreheads stayed together, both of us breathing harder than we should have been.
I kissed her again. Slower this time. My hand cupped the back of her neck as her fingers gripped my hoodie again, pulling me down until there wasn’t an inch of space left between us.
The world beyond the roof disappeared for a while. No school. No families. No history clawing at both of us.
Just her.
Then my phone vibrated in my pocket, and the moment snapped apart. We broke away reluctantly. Mila leaned back slightly, her lips flushed, breathing uneven as she looked up at me.
Mila sighed then asked, “Do you need to get that?”
I pulled the phone from my pocket, the screen lit with Marcus’s name, which locked in my focus.
Mila shifted slightly beside me, noticing the change in my posture. “You should answer.”
I swiped across the screen. “King.”
Marcus didn’t waste time with greetings. “Investigators finished processing the documents from the storage unit.”
“Already?”
“They moved faster than expected once the body was identified.”
I glanced at Mila. She watched me closely, tension already tightening the line of her shoulders. I tapped the screen and switched the call to speaker.
“You’re on speaker. Mila’s here with me,” I told him.
A brief pause followed. “Good,” Marcus replied. “You both need to hear this. They’ve verified financial records. Encrypted files. Internal communications.”