Chapter 9: Claimed in the Rain
The rain was a cold shock, needling through her thin cotton shirt, plastering her hair to her skull. Sloane didn’t care. She just needed to move, to put space between herself and the wreckage she’d made of her kitchen, of her friendship. The cobblestones of the alley were slick, gleaming under the flickering red neon of the speakeasy’s sign.
She heard the door slam shut behind her, a sharp crack that echoed off the close brick walls. His footsteps were faster, heavier. She walked quicker, a futile attempt at an escape she didn’t truly want.
“Sloane.” His voice was low, a rumble that cut through the patter of the rain.
She kept walking, her arms wrapped tightly around herself.
“Sloane, stop.”
A hand closed on her elbow, not rough, but firm, an anchor in her storm. He spun her around. Her back met the wet, cold brick of the alley wall. He crowded her, his body a solid wall of heat against the chill, his hands flat on the wall on either side of her head, caging her in.
“Let me go,” she spat, but the fight was leaking out of her, replaced by a trembling exhaustion.
“No.” His face was inches from hers, rainwater tracing the lines of his jaw, dripping from his dark hair. His green eyes were narrowed, intense, searching hers. “You just blew up your life for me. You don’t get to just walk away into the rain.”
“I didn’t do it for you,” she shot back, her voice cracking. “I did it for me. Because I’m tired of everyone telling me what this is, or what it isn’t. Viv, Elara… everyone has a fucking opinion.”
“And what is it, Sloane?” he demanded, his voice dropping, the words a raw challenge. “What are we?”
She shook her head, tears mixing with the rain on her cheeks. “I don’t know! How can I know? You’re a fortress, Kieran. You told me you don’t do this. You avoid attachments. So what was that in there? What was that ‘he’s with me’ bullshit if it doesn’t mean anything?”
He leaned in closer, his forehead almost touching hers. His breath was warm against her cold skin. “It means everything.”
The air left her lungs.
“You think I let just anyone paint me? You think I drink coffee in anyone’s kitchen?” He released one hand from the wall, his fingers tracing a slow, possessive path from her temple down her jawline, his thumb brushing over her bottom lip. The touch was electric, a stark contrast to the cold seeping into her bones. “You think I follow anyone into a rainstorm?”
“I don’t know what you do,” she whispered, her defiance crumbling. “You don’t tell me things.”
“I’m telling you now.” His grip tightened on her jaw, just enough to make her look directly into his eyes. There was no mystery there now, only a stark, terrifying honesty. “You don’t get to walk away from this. From us. Not when I’ve just fucking found you.”
The words weren’t pretty. They weren’t a romantic declaration. They were a claim, gritty and real, torn from a place deep inside him he usually kept locked down. They were better than poetry.
A shuddering sob escaped her. He didn’t shush her. He just watched her, his gaze holding hers, letting her fall apart against the brick wall with only his body keeping her upright.
“Viv hates me,” she choked out.
“Viv is scared for you,” he corrected, his voice softer now. “There’s a difference. She’ll come around.”
“And if she doesn’t?”
“Then you still have me.” He said it simply, as if it were the most obvious truth in the world. A fact. Like rain being wet or brick being hard.
He shifted then, moving his hands from the wall. One arm slid behind her back, the other under her knees, and he lifted her as if she weighed nothing. She gasped, her own arms instinctively looping around his neck. He was soaking wet, his t-shirt clinging to the hard planes of his chest, his tattoos a blurred map beneath the fabric.
“What are you doing?”
“You’re freezing. And we’re done talking in alleys.”
He carried her back toward the speakeasy door, not inside to the noise and the crowd, but up a narrow, external iron staircase she’d never noticed, slick with rain. He shouldered open a heavy door at the top, into a space that was all shadows and silence.
It was his apartment. It had to be. A large, open loft overlooking the main bar area through a one-way window. It was sparsely furnished—a large bed in the corner, a worn leather sofa, a guitar propped against a amplifier. It was neat, almost austere, and smelled like him—soap, whiskey, and old wood.
He set her down on her feet in the middle of the room, his hands staying on her hips, steadying her. The only light came from the red neon sign below, washing the room in a bloody, pulsating glow.
“Your clothes are wet,” he said, his voice rough. “You’ll get sick.”
He reached for the hem of her soaked shirt. She didn’t stop him. He peeled it over her head, his movements efficient, his eyes never leaving hers. Then his own shirt followed, landing on the floor with a wet slap. His skin was hot to the touch, a furnace in the cool, dark room.
He led her to the bed, pushing her down onto the crisp, cool sheets. He lay down beside her, on his side, propped on an elbow. He didn’t try to kiss her. He just looked at her, his gaze tracing the lines of her body in the dim light, his fingers following the path his eyes took, from her collarbone, over the curve of her breast, down the dip of her waist.
It was more intimate than anything they’d done before. This quiet, deliberate mapping. This claiming without possession.
“The fortress has a drawbridge, Sloane,” he murmured, his fingers splaying across her stomach, his palm warm against her skin. “It’s down. For you. It’s only down for you.”
She reached up, her hand finding the intricate ink on his chest, her fingers tracing the lines she couldn’t decipher in the dark. A story he wasn’t telling, but was letting her touch. Letting her in.
Outside, the rain continued to fall. Downstairs, the faint pulse of jazz was a distant heartbeat. And in the red-dark of his room, with the ghost of her best friend’s worry still hanging in the air, Sloane Hayes finally stopped running.