Page 10 of The Scout

“No, I don’t.”

She smirked. “You’re thinking about him right now.”

I clamped my mouth shut.

She cackled, rolling onto her side. “Izzy. This is happening.”

“It’s not happening,” I insisted, shaking my head. “Even if I wanted it to, which I don’t, Ryker is—he’s not like that. He’s …” I trailed off.

Pia waggled her eyebrows. “Intense?”

I hesitated. Too intense. Too sharp, too calm, too in control. But also—too much in my head.

Because long after Pia drifted off to sleep, long after my apartment settled into quiet, his voice was still there.

Low. Rough. Dangerous.

Get some sleep, Isabel.

I rolled onto my side, pulling the blanket higher, pressing my thighs together against the warmth curling low in my stomach.

I hated that I wanted to hear it again.

And the craziest part—he had been there for years.

Ryker wasn’t just some stranger I’d met at a party. I’d known him since I was a kid. He was Will’s best friend, the one who was always there but never really there. Quiet. Watchful. The kind of man who faded into the background until he wanted to be noticed—and then you couldn’t look away.

I’d spent years not existing to him. And that had been fine. Expected. Will and his friends were older, untouchable, operating in a world I had no part in.

I never once thought Ryker would see me.

Not the way he had tonight. Not the way his voice still lingered in my head, wrapping around me like something I couldn’t escape. And definitely not in a way that made me wonder what it would feel like if he ever touched me.

4

RYKER

Istared at my phone, the screen still lit with the call history.

Isabel.

Her name looked wrong there, out of place among the numbers that usually filled my recent calls—brothers, business partners, people who owed me money or favors. Calling her had been a mistake. A moment of weakness I couldn’t afford.

I exhaled sharply, tossing the phone onto the passenger seat as I gripped the steering wheel. My pulse was still uneven, my jaw tight with frustration. What the fuck had I been thinking? I didn’t make calls like that. Didn’t check in. Didn’t concern myself with anything that wasn’t essential. And Isabel—she wasn’t essential. She was Will’s sister. She was soft where I was steel, light where I was darkness. She had no business in my thoughts, let alone my fucking call log.

But something about her had crawled under my skin tonight. The way she looked up at me in the dim light of Dominion Hall’s patio, challenging me with thosesharp green eyes, unaware of just how vulnerable she really was. She thought she could handle herself. Thought she was just another girl at a party, walking away untouched.

She had no idea how wrong she was.

I flexed my fingers, shaking off the tension creeping up my spine, and shifted the car into drive. Gigi was waiting. That was what I needed—something easy. Something I could control. A night that ended with my head clear and my body spent, instead of tangled in thoughts of a woman I had no business wanting.

By the time I pulled up outside Gigi’s apartment, the city had settled into its usual late-night hush. Charleston was always restless—heat curling in from the harbor, the slow hum of tires on wet pavement, distant laughter spilling from bars. I stepped out of the car, my boots solid against the asphalt, and made my way inside without knocking. Gigi knew better than to lock the door when I said I was coming.

She was exactly where I expected her to be—waiting in the dim glow of the living room, stretched out on her couch like she was posing for a fucking painting. Long legs crossed, golden skin bare, her body only half-covered by a silk robe she hadn’t bothered to tie. Her dark hair spilled over her shoulders, her lips curling when she saw me.

“About time,” she murmured, lifting a glass of bourbon from the coffee table and taking a slow sip. “I was starting to think you changed your mind.”

I said nothing, just shut the door behind me and walked toward her. She handed me the second glass, her fingers trailing over mine as I took it. The bourbon was smooth, smoky, cutting through the lingering heat in my chest.

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