If anyone ever asks—and God, I hope they don’t—yes, I should’ve walked away. I absolutely should not have ended up in Elijah Drake’s penthouse on a Thursday night, sitting barefoot on his ridiculously expensive marble counter while he poured us drinks like he wasn’t the most emotionally unavailable man in the entire city. But in my defense? The man smells like cedar and slow ruin. And I was having a stupid week. He wasn’t supposed to look at me like that, either. Like he’d finally stopped thinking about Avery Shore for five minutes and realized there was an actual woman sitting in his kitchen. A woman wearing a silk top and a “go ahead and make a bad decision” kind of smile. “I don’t usually do this,” Elijah had said, voice low, eyes on my mouth. “Yeah,” I’d shot back. “Me neither.” Total lie. He kissed me anyway—slow, consuming, like he’d been starving and I was finally giving him permission. And I let it happen. I let all of it happen. The kisses. The hands. The heat. The blurred line between what was stupid and what felt too good to stop. When the sun came up, Elijah was staring at the ceiling, looking like a man who remembered exactly who he was supposed to be heartbroken over. So I did what any self-respecting woman would do. I slipped out before he could apologize. The end. Or… it