Chapter 1: The Wrong Recipient
The glow from Lila’s phone screen illuminated the flush creeping up her neck. Propped against a mountain of pillows, the soft cotton of her sheets felt cool against her skin. The only sounds were the gentle whir of the fan on her nightstand and the frantic tap-tap-tap of her thumbs.
…and his hands, they’re not soft. They’re rough. I imagine they’d feel like warm sandpaper tracing the line of my hip, down my thigh…
She bit her lip, a giddy, nervous thrill shooting through her. Writing it down was one thing. Sending it was another. This was for her eyes only, a secret diary entry in her notes app, a safe place to pour out the fantasies she’d never have the courage to voice. The man in her head was a blurry composite of every brooding hero from her well-thumbed paperbacks, a fantasy to distract her from the very real, very awkward crush she had on Ben from the coffee shop.
A notification from her messaging app popped up, obscuring her text. Ben’s name. Her heart did a silly little flip. Perfect timing. She’d just finished her… composition. She switched apps to reply to his mundane message about the weather, her mind still half in the sensual daydream.
Her fingers, slick with nervous sweat, fumbled. The phone slipped. She gasped, grabbing at it, but it was too late. She watched in horror as her thumb, in its panicked flail, hit the wrong thread. Not Ben’s. The one directly below it.
Cole.
The name stared back at her, stark and terrifying. And below it, the entire, graphic, mortifying paragraph. Sent.
“No. No, no, no, no.” The words were a choked whisper. Her blood ran cold, then hot with a wave of pure, unadulterated humiliation. She stabbed at the screen, trying to recall the message, but the little timer icon just spun mockingly. It was delivered. Read. The two blue checkmarks felt like a death sentence.
Her entire body went rigid. The vanilla-scented air in her room suddenly felt thick and suffocating. She could hear the low, steady thump of music through the wall, the bass line from Cole’s apartment that was as much a part of her evening as the rustle of her own pages. It stopped.
Silence.
A silence more deafening than any music. Her breath hitched. The floorboards in his apartment creaked. Heavy, deliberate footsteps. Then, her own front door. Not the bell. A knock. A rough, solid knock that vibrated through the wood and straight into her bones.
Every instinct screamed at her to pretend she wasn’t home. To hide under the covers and will the world away. But she had seen the read receipt. He knew she was here. He knew she had just written that.
She pushed herself off the bed, her legs feeling like water. She pulled her oversized cardigan tight around her thin nightgown, a pathetic shield. The journey to the front door felt miles long. Each step echoed in the quiet of her small apartment.
She unlocked the door and pulled it open, just a crack.
He filled the doorway, a silhouette carved from the shadows of the hallway. Cole Walker. Her neighbor. The ex-Marine who moved with a quiet, predatory grace and whose eyes never seemed to smile. He was wearing a faded black t-shirt stretched tight across his chest, and worn jeans. The intricate patterns of his tattoos snaked down his powerful arms. The dim light from her hallway lamp caught the sharp line of his jaw, the scar bisecting his eyebrow.
His stormy blue eyes raked over her, from her wild strawberry-blonde hair down to her bare, trembling feet, then back up to her wide, terrified green ones. He didn’t say anything for a long moment, just let the silence stretch, let her sweat in the heat of her own shame.
He lifted his phone, the screen glowing with her words. His voice was a low, gravelly rumble that seemed to come from deep in his chest.
“We need to discuss your… vivid imagination.”
Lila’s mouth went dry. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. She just stared, trapped in his gaze.
He took a small step forward, not enough to cross the threshold, but enough for her to feel the heat of his body, to smell the clean scent of soap and something darker, uniquely him.
“All this time,” he said, his voice dropping even lower, almost a whisper. “All this time I’m trying to be a gentleman, trying not to scare you… and you’re next door writing poetry about my hands.”
He finally moved, pushing the door open just enough to step inside. Her apartment, her sanctuary, suddenly felt impossibly small. He closed the door behind him with a soft, definitive click. The sound sealed her fate.
He didn’t touch her. He just stood there, looking down at her, his presence an physical force.
“So,” he said, his eyes dark and unreadable. “Start talking.”