Page 12 of Riggs
“Next question,” he says. “Who’s Kellan?”
I roll my eyes, not wanting to think about my ex-boyfriend. Not really even an ex, more like a man who wanted fame so he thought I was his golden ticket there. “Ex-boyfriend.”
“How long did you two date?”
If Riggs followed me on social media he’d have all his answers, but a part of me is glad he doesn’t know every single thing about me. “A year, maybe less. It was stupid. He wanted fame, and I wanted… something else.”
“Where is he now?” His brown eyes lock on mine.
I shake my head. “I’m not really sure. Last I heard he was trying to make it big with a YouTube channel.”
Riggs stares back at the dancefloor, watching the couples dance, all calculation and caution, then glances at me. “Cover,” he says.
“Cover,” I echo, and my pulse rockets.
He stands and holds out a hand like we’ve done this a thousand times. Callused palm, heat like a secret. I let him pull me to the floor, awareness crackling through me like static. We finda corner where the lighting leaves us darker, soft, the kind of shadow that turns everything private.
He sets one hand at my waist, the other threads our fingers. My free hand goes to his shoulder out of necessity and then in no time at all out of need. He’s solid under the thin barrier of cloth. The bass thrums. My insides coil with need.
“Relax,” he murmurs, mouth close to my temple. “Let me lead.”
The words flutter through me, low and hot. “Bossy,” I whisper again, but I do it. I let go a fraction, let him set the arc of our steps. He moves like the music plugged into his bones, unhurried, sure. Every small shift of his hand at my waist maps how to move me with him. Professional. Possessive. Something I shouldn’t name.
Across the room, a woman I don’t know lifts her phone and aims it at us. Riggs feels me stiffen before I do and turns us with a pivot that puts his back to the lens and my face into the shelter of his chest. “I’ve got you,” he says, not even pretending it’s just for the fan.
I breathe him in. He smells like pine and something completely unique to him. Like all man and grit. “We’re going to be a thing by morning,” I murmur into his collar, and my lips brush the barest bit of skin where his shirt is open. His exhale is not entirely professional.
“Already are,” he says. “Use it.”
I tip my head back to look at him. “Then kiss me like you mean it.”
The smallest pause, the longest inch between us. He searches my face like he could find a trap there and springs the onlyone that matters when I don’t flinch. His mouth finds mine with a precision that is nothing like cautious and everything like claimed. It isn’t rough; it isn’t sweet. It’s heat carefully applied, the way he’d lay a charge—exactly where it needs to be to change the room.
My hand fists in his shirt. He makes a sound, quiet and raw, somewhere in his chest, and angles us so the world sees what we want it to see and I get the real thing, the one that pulls my toes off the floor. The music wraps around us, bass and sax and the whisper of rain against a window nobody bothered to shut. We break for air, our bodies still swaying because neither of us remembered to tell our hips to stop.
“You’re trouble,” I whisper, forehead to his jaw because that’s where it lands if I’m honest.
“You started it,” he says, and I can feel the smile.
We dance two songs like that—close enough to pass for one silhouette—and between verses we learn each other in small, specific truths.
“Favorite thing to cook?” I ask, because it’s the quickest way to get to know someone.
“Chili,” he says. “Hot enough to negotiate.”
“I’m a pancakes girl,” I say. “Breakfast for dinner is therapy.”
“Noted.” His breath brushes my ear. “I fix squeaky hinges at two a.m. when I can’t sleep.”
“I hum while I get ready,” I tell him. “To trick my brain into thinking everything’s light.”
“I count exits to trick mine into silence.”
“I know.” I tip my head so I can see his eyes and let the truth sit bare in mine. “I see you doing it.”
Something softer than relief flickers across his face, there and gone. “You shouldn’t have to.”
“I shouldn’t have to be scared either,” I say. “And yet. Here we are.”
