Page 78 of Controlled Burn
Her eyes darkened. “More?”
Jake nodded. “You. Alone. My place. No Ryan. Just you and me. Tonight.”
Talia tilted her head. “And if I don’t?”
He didn’t answer. Just lifted his brows.
She walked forward until their chests nearly touched. “You want me?” she whispered.
His breath hitched.
“Fine.”
But then she leaned in, lips brushing his ear. “And if you ever try to use me again,” she murmured, “I’ll burn you down before you see it coming.”
She left him speechless. Shaking. Dick hard. Heart racing.
She didn’t look back.
She wasn’t afraid.
She was angry.
Angry that someone thought this would be her undoing.
Angry that Maddox wouldn’t even look at her, and wouldn’t claim what they both knew he wanted.
Chapter 28
Smoke In The Blood
Talia
She felt the shift the second she walked into the truck bay. It wasn’t loud. No one said a word. But the air had changed. Eyes darted her way, then away again—like she was a stain no one could scrub out. Whispers curled around corners like smoke.
She kept walking. Shoulders back. Face unreadable. Her black undershirt clung to her skin, already heavy with sweat from her gear. But it wasn’t the heat that made her stomach twist.
It was the silence.
Jake didn’t look at her. Ryan barely did either. Brooks seemed oddly on edge.
Dean? He stood on the far side of the bay, jaw clenched, giving orders without a single glance in her direction, like she wasn’t even there.
She’d never felt more seen—and she hated it. Not seen in a way that meant understood or safe. Seen like a mark, a spectacle. Like every rumor and whisper was suddenly wearing her skin.
It hit like a punishment. Like judgment. Like the weight of every story ever told about girls like her—being pinned to the wall with nothing but their own choices.
But she held the line. She always did.
She was fraying. Not in the dramatic, visible way. Not the kind that made people pause and ask if she was okay. No—Talia came undone quietly—a thread at a time.
She scrubbed her skin like it owed her an apology. The bruises rose to the surface, dark and unforgiving—proof she hadn’t imagined any of it. Bit her cheek until she tasted copper, ran scalding water until her skin stung, but nothing washed away the feeling of his hand, his mouth, the secrets still humming under her skin.
In the mirror, she stared at her own eyes like they belonged to someone else. Blank. Dark-circled. When she tried to imagine herself months from now, she saw nothing—just static, just smoke.
At the station, she moved through drills and checklists like a woman sleepwalking through her own life. Nodded at Kennedy. Ignored the whispers. Her body remembered everything, even if her mind tried to forget. Every time she bent to pick up a hose or reached for a nozzle, muscles twinged with reminders. The ache between her legs. The sting of Jake’s teeth. The pulse that wouldn’t fade, low and shameful, every time she was alone.
She was halfway through gear checks when Kennedy stepped up beside her, quietly setting another hose on the rack.
