Page 33 of The Scout

I exhaled sharply, tearing my gaze away from both the snake and the man who was just as dangerous. “So, seven of you live here?”

Ryker nodded, but his expression shifted slightly, growing more serious. “We built Dominion Hall a few years ago. It’s not just a house—it’s headquarters.”

“For what?”

He held my gaze, unreadable. “The company.”

I frowned. “And what exactly does the company do?”

He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he stepped closer, his presence pressing into me without even touching me. “It’s not important.”

I swallowed. “Ryker?—”

“You didn’t come here to ask about business.”

The tension snapped tight between us, coiling like a wire ready to break.

No. I hadn’t. I’d come for him. Judging by the way his gaze dipped to my lips, by the way he stood so close I could feel the heat radiating off him, he knew it, too.

I hadn’t come here for answers about the company. I had come because I didn’t want to be alone.

Because with Will out of town, the city felt too quiet. Because Pia and Sasha were both at work, and the idea of sitting in my empty living room all day felt like it might crush me. I had other friends, sure, but they were more like acquaintances, the kind yougrabbed drinks with but didn’t call when you felt untethered.

For a split second, I had even thought about driving to Sumter to see Aunt Maude, but that would have meant sitting at her kitchen table while she grilled me about Will—about where he was, what he was doing, if he was safe. Questions I didn’t have the answers to. Questions that would have made my chest tighten with the weight of everything I didn’t know about my own brother’s life.

So instead, I had come here.

I licked my lips, meeting Ryker’s eyes. “I didn’t want to be by myself today.”

His expression shifted. He exhaled through his nose, his gaze flicking over my face before dropping—just for a second—to the delicate slope of my bare collarbone. His voice was quieter when he spoke.

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me, Isabel.”

Maybe not. But I felt like I needed to.

“I thought about visiting my aunt,” I admitted. “But I knew she’d ask about Will.” I let out a short, humorless laugh. “And what am I supposed to say? That I don’t even know what country my brother is in right now?”

Ryker’s jaw ticked. “She doesn’t need to know.”

I swallowed hard. “Yeah, well. She’d still ask.”

His eyes darkened. “You don’t like not knowing.”

It wasn’t a question.

“No,” I admitted. “I don’t.”

For a moment, we just stood there. Too close, too aware, too much unsaid.

Then—he moved.

A slow, deliberate shift, his palm grazing the small of my back as he led me down the hall. The touch waslight, barely there, but electric. Like he was testing something. Like he was waiting for me to react.

God help me, I reacted.

A slow pulse of heat rolled through me, my skin prickling with awareness, my mind flashing back to the way his fingers had felt wrapped around my wrist yesterday—possessive, certain, unyielding.

I swallowed against the warmth blooming in my chest. “So where are we going?”

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