Page 53 of Their Arrangement

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Silence again. Sharp and painful.

I looked away.

Stared at the stone.

“I told her,no,Ibegged hernot to go out that night,” I whispered.

“And she did anyway.” Wolfe’s voice dropped, lower now—dangerous, hollowed out by something deeper. “She trusted you to be there.”

“I was sick.”

“No,” he said. “You were scared.”

The word hit like a strike across the ribs.

I froze.

The rain pounded harder between us. Around us. Soaking everything. But it wasn’t the cold that made me shiver.

It was him.

He stepped closer.

Not fast.

Not threatening.

But heavy.

Intentional.

Close enough that I felt the heat of his fury under all that wet. Like it couldn’t be dampened. Couldn’t be cooled. It just burned beneath the surface, licking up the edges of his control.

“You think I don’t know what this is?” he rasped. “You think I don’t see the game you’re playing?”

I shook my head. “I’m not playing?—”

“You come back here wearing her perfume. Her curls. Her fucking smile. You crawl into our building like a parasite and act like grief gives you a keycard to our lives.”

My stomach twisted.

“I didn’t come for them. I came for me.”

“No,” he hissed. “You came for her. And now you’re tearing the last piece of her apart.”

Then he did it.

He shoved me.

Not hard.

Not cruel.

But too much.

The kind of push that wasn’t meant to land.

But did.

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