Page 96 of Unleashed

The bell chimed.

The sound floated up the stairs, faint but unmistakable.

My pulse stuttered. Had I fantasized him into being?

I didn’t need to check the video doorbell. Iknew.

My body recognized him before my mind caught up—shoulders tensing, breath stalling, like my whole system braced for impact. A slow coil in my stomach, nerves thrumming awake. Even the air felt different, charged and familiar in a way I only let myself remember late at night, alone in bed, when the house was quiet and missing him felt safest.

Jack.

I braced even before I heard his steps on the stairs.

He climbed slowly, each step creaking under his weight. Then he stood on the landing, framed in the soft glow spilling up the stairs. A memory in the flesh. Rain soaked his t-shirt, pulling it tight across his muscled chest and shoulders. A few dark curls clung to his forehead, while a single droplet slid along the edge of his jaw.

My throat went dry. “You’re soaked.”

“Storm came in fast.” His voice—low, rough—slipped beneath my skin, curling into places I only let wake with the lights turned off and when the bed felt too big.

The scent of him—wet cotton, warm skin, the faint trace of his achingly familiar soap—wrapped around me, tugging me backward in time.

To that night. The bar. The way his laugh cracked open the air when the rain caught us off guard outside my apartment. To the way he’d surrounded me, protected me from the elements.

Because protection was second nature to a man like Jack Vignier.

I’d coaxed him up to my tiny apartment. Offered coffee, a towel.

But what lodged deepest wasn’t the conversation—it was the moment I tripped over Bright on the way to pass him a towel. One second I was moving, the next I was airborne, his arms wrapped around me.

I’d frozen, still in a way that was bone deep. Breathless and embarrassed, but he didn’t let me go right away and a knowing had filled me then. One I’d fought and that challenged everything I’d thought I wanted. I should have known then. Maybe I did, on some level.

But walking away from a dream isn’t easy. Especially not one you’ve carried for years, letting it twist around your ambition, reshape your sense of worth. Even after it curdled, after it stopped looking likeyou, it still whispered promises that were hard to resist.

Then, slowly, he lowered me to my feet, his hands brushing along my arms in a touch too careful to be casual.

That was the moment. Not the coffee. Not even the kiss.

That was when time stopped and the space between us changed.

That night, we stopped pretending. No polite distance. No more sharp banter or distance disguised as professionalism. No more hiding behind show credits or captain’s stats.

That night, I let myselfwanthim.

And now, he stood in front of me again—soaked, unmoving, gaze locked on mine—and my body answered before my brain had a chance to build walls. Heat surged beneath my skin. Nerves tingled along every edge of me. Thought scattered.

Not memory. Not ache.

Hope.

Bright lifted his head from his shelf, fixing Jack with the same withering stare he reserved for delivery drivers and vacuum cleaners. But then—shockingly—he chirped.

Jack’s mouth curved at one corner. “Hey, buddy.” His voice lowered, gentle but uncertain, a quiet truce offered in cat-speak. “Still on duty, huh?”

Bright blinked once. Not approval. Not disapproval either. Just acknowledgment, which from my gargoyle of a cat, might as well have been a red carpet welcome.

Jack’s gaze moved through the room, quiet but attentive. I saw it through his eyes—the bare brick we’d decided to keep, the display cases we’d dragged in from a resale shop and filled with cameras and cables. The pegboard behind Adele’s desk still overflowed with scribbled notes, the tape peeling in places. The track lighting we fought with for an entire weekend, only to get it straight on a Tuesday night, long past midnight, our laughter fraying at the edges from too little sleep and too much coffee.

His eyes found mine again. “Nice setup.” A small smile. “Definitely an upgrade from that closet in Austin.”

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