Prologue
Four weeks ago
Cameron Walters
I hadn’t dressedfor this.
I’d told Ben I’d go. Of course I had. Ben had been vibrating with nerves all week at the thought of a leather night, his cheeks blotchy, his hands clammy.
“You don’t have to like it,” Ben had said. “Just… make sure I don’t run away.”
So I’d pulled on my nicest jeans and a black hoodie that didn’t have paint on it and told myself confidence was mostly posture.
I could posture.
The second I stepped into the bar with its dark wood, low red light, the warm-sweet smell of sweat and beer permeating the air, I knew I was out of my depth.
The men here didn’t look dressed so much as put together. Harnesses framed chests like they belonged there. Boots had real weight to them. Leather looked worn in, like it actually meant something.
I felt like a tourist who’d wandered into the wrong part of town.
I leaned towards Ben. “Are you all right?”
Ben swallowed. “Ask me again in five minutes.”
I smiled, making it big on purpose. “I’ll be right here.”
I meant it. I also meant to breathe. I’d do one drink, keep Ben calm, and pretend not to notice the way my pulse kept jumping at everything.
It wasn’t exactly attraction, more like… awareness. I was twenty-two, still figuring things out and still, somehow, a virgin, which felt like both a secret and something to be embarrassed about. I wasnothere to have a grand revelation in front of some stranger in a harness.
I stood beside Ben, trying not to look like a gooseberry, and laughing way too loud at a joke. I gazed at the bar’s other patrons—and froze.
Theo Sinclair was at the table in the corner, with a whole bunch of guys.
Oh fuck.
For a second, my brain went blank.
All those years of trying to forget him—of telling myself I’d grown out of that stupid, aching teenage crush on Gary’s best friend—burned away the moment I saw him here. Not a memory or even an Instagram scroll.Here.Theo was taller than I remembered, his shoulders broad under a black shirt. And he’d clearly attacked his hair with gel and a hairdryer, because it had finally given up its lifelong fight with gravity.
And he was staring right at me.
Theo’s mouth was set in the line it always fell into when he was guarded. He’d always had a serious face. Now it looked almost like armour. The five-o’clock shadow didn’t help. It made him look a little dangerous.
I knew the exact shade of Theo’s blue eyes. I still remembered the shape of his hands when he waved people into line without even trying.
None of that should still matter, but it did.
My eyes had to be like saucers, but I couldn’t do anything about it. My first instinct was to duck. My second was to grin like I’d just seen the sun for the first time.
The grin won.
“Hey, Theo,” I called out in an easy voice, as if my stomach hadn’t dropped through the floor.
Theo looked at me—really looked—and I swear I caught a flicker of shock in his eyes. Whatever it was, it sharpened.
My brother’s best friend.