Page 71 of Controlled Burn
She was disposable.
A threat to be neutralized.
A body to be buried.
A ghost.
She didn’t remember saying yes to the bar. Jake had mentioned it. Ryan too. It didn’t matter who asked. What mattered was why she went.
She didn’t want to feel better. She wanted to feel worse—worse enough to justify the guilt crawling up her throat. Worse enough to drown the humiliation heat in her chest when she remembered his voice saying,She’s just some rookie.
She needed to set fire to something—someone—and watch it fall.
At home, she scrubbed her skin raw in the shower, watched bruises bloom on her hips and ribs. Stared at her reflection in the mirror—a long, brutal stare. The kind that asks,Are you really going to do this?
She was.
She curled her chestnut brown hair into wild, riotous waves. Painted eyeliner in a sharp wing, mascara heavy enough to darken her mood. A slash of red lipstick—defiant, unashamed. She picked the black ribbed tank top because it was tight. Because it showed skin. Because it saidfuck youbefore she even opened her mouth. Low-rise Levi’s clung to her hips like a dare, and a barely-there black balconette bra completed the look. Let her nipples show. She spritzed on Chanel and laced up combat boots like she was gearing for a street fight.
Because she was.
She looked like a girl about to start a riot. She felt like one, too.
The bar wasn’t a decision. It was a reaction. She didn’t remember the drive. She remembered only the blare of music as she shoved through the doors—neon lights slicing sweat-shined faces, voices roaring, off-duty badges glinting in the haze.
The bar was a furnace—packed, heavy with sweat and the swagger of post-inspection relief. Every station in the district was here, loud, loose, half already drunk, and the rest hungry for the kind of trouble you find when you stop looking for an exit.
The air reeked of spilled beer, cheap cologne, smoke, and regret. The floor sucked at her boots. The lights burned red and blue across her eyelids every time she blinked.
She wasn’t in control. Not tonight.
Jake handed her a shot without asking. Ryan slung his arm around her shoulders, easy as breathing. They pressed too close, too familiar, smelling like sweat and bravado and something a little bit dangerous.
She let them.
If she was going to be ruined, she might as well ruin herself.
Jake’s mouth brushed her ear, hot and hungry. “You look dangerous tonight.”
She smiled. “Good.”
She drank. She danced. Let Jake press against her, let Ryan’s hands linger on her waist. Let the music shake her bones, let the alcohol loosen the fury burning in her chest.
But it wasn’t Jake she was thinking about.
It was Maddox.
Dean, with his flat voice and colder eyes. Dean, who’d come in her mouth like he was dying for it—like she was the oxygen he’d been denied for years—and then walked past her the next day like she was invisible.
It wasn’t regret she felt.
It was rage.
That rage was a live wire, buzzing under her skin.
It hummed every time someone touched her, every time she danced with Ryan under too-bright lights, every time she felt eyes on her body and wanted them to look.
She wanted Maddox to look.
