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“I heard. Harvard Law Review, right? You must be swimming in offers.”

A tiny spark of hope catches in my chest. “You’ve been keeping tabs on me?”

He gives a mild smile. “We both work for KMG, don’t we?”

I lean against the counter, drawing closer. “Is that why you’re here? Because we both work for KMG?”

“I’m here because you asked me to come.”

The fact that he doesn’t bother to lie is delicious and mortifying in equal parts. Inexplicably, I want to cry, and maybe laugh, and above all, I want to be in his arms. I’ve waited for so long, and there’s nowhere else in the entire world right now I want to be, nothing else that could bring me more satisfaction, more pure happiness.

I catch my breath. Why won’t he do it? Why isn’t he touching me, reaching for me? Doesn’t he want to hold me, take me, have me? I know he does, because he’s not even bothering to conceal thedesire from his expression, not even stopping himself from looking at me like he wants to devour me.

Iwantto be devoured.Devour me.

“Sorry,” I say, licking my lips nervously. “I was drunk.”

“I know.” There’s a hint of bleak amusement in the curve of his smile, as if he’s thinking,of course you were. But he doesn’t say that. There’s a beat of silence. “You’re sober now.”

“Yes.”

I think of what he said to me, last time I saw him. About the wound inside me, and him being the knife planted in it, and how right now, all I want is to feel the deep stab of him right into my heart. God, is he going to make me beg. I don’t want to beg. But he doesn’t say anything; he watches me, weaponising the silence between us like I know oh so well how to, except that this time I’m the victim, I’m the worm caught on the hook, wriggling in terror and discomfort.

I step around the counter, one hand still gripping the corner. Evan turns ever so slightly and watches me, keeping me pinned under a lazy gaze.

“Well,” I say thickly. “It’s late.”

He nods. “I know. I should go.”

“Why?” I step closer—just one step, just one tiny step across the cool tiles, but a step that somehow feels like crawling on my hands and knees through miles of broken glass. “You’re already here. You might as well stay.”

He says nothing, silent as if he’s considering it, and his jaw twitches, moving under some inner tension I can’t see. I take one more step; nothing between us now except a few inches and the thinnest veil of self-control imaginable. My pride and fear and desire, as raw and touchy as exposed nerve endings, make me hot and restless with horrible energy.

“Unless,” I bite out, “you’re going to take the coward’s way out.”

His eyebrows rise, and he steps into me, amused, eating up the space between us, trapping me between the corner of the counter and his body.

He doesn’t close the distance. He waits arrogantly.

Does he really think I’ll be the first to break?

I reach out and grab him by his fine grey shirt. “You’re going to pretend you don’t want to, Knight?”

“I’m done pretending.” His voice is quiet, calm. Deeper. He’s changed; he changed while he was away from me, becoming a more refined version of the thing I knew him as. It’s destabilising, and terrifyingly, it makes me want him even more than before. “I think the truth is thatyou’rethe one who’d rather pretend.” I open my mouth to protest, glaring up at him, but he continues in the same mild, firm tone. “That’s why you only had the courage to text me when you were drunk, and that’s why you sent me that second text. Such a pathetic manipulation attempt, Sutton—you don’t think I know you’re capable of so much more than that?”

“Since when do you know me so well?” I sneer, but my entire body is in flames.

“I’vealwaysknown you. From the first time I ever met you, I looked at you and knew exactly what you were. Clever, resilient, competitive, prideful, repressed, detached. You want power, but you also want justice. You crave pleasure, but you like discipline. You’re loyal but never soft. You’re passionate, but you’re cold as ice. And you’re stubborn, unforgiving and self-destructive.” I try to pull away as he speaks, but there’s nowhere to go. “I know you, Sophie Sutton, I always have, and that’s the one thing you’ve always failed to understand. I know you, andthat’swhy I love you.”

“Youlove me?” My voice breaks halfway through the sentence.

Evan watches me, steady and unshaken. He doesn’t even flinch.

A long, intolerable silence stretches between us, a silence that somehow feels longer than ten long months.

“Why else would I be here?” he murmurs.

My throat tightens. I swallow thickly.