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I answer in a bitter snap, too fast, too defensive, and I hate that I’m riled up, angry and restless and embarrassed, and I hate that this guy’s hand is on my waist where I don’t want it, and I hate that Evan’s not even looking at him, as if he can see right through my pathetic, paper-thin scheming.

LA guy, who’s looked up at the sound of Evan’s voice, blinks glassily, gaze shifting between me and Evan. He doesn’t remove his hand from my waist, and his grip tightens ever so slightly, a wordless claim. Brave. Stupid, but brave.

“Are you done playing yet?” Evan asks me.

Oh, I hate him, I could kill him, I could do unspeakable things to him.

“Hey, man,” LA guy says, finally letting me go and turning fully towards Evan. “You’re kind of interrupting, so—”

“No.”

Evan finally looks at him. Just a glance. Up. Down. Disinterested. Dismissing him not as a rival but as some mild inconvenience.

“You’re done here.”

He says it with such deadly, dismissive calm that for a moment, there’s nothing but a stunned, heavy silence. Then LA guy steps towards Evan, hands curling at his sides.

“She came here withme.”

Evan’s mouth quirks at the corner, almost pitying.

“But you’re not what she wants.”

And then Evan steps into the coatroom: it felt small before, but the moment he’s inside, the space and air is sucked out of the room, everything reduced down to the breadth of his shoulders, the thickness of his limbs, the blazing blue of his eyes, the sheer heat of his skin.

He bypasses LA guy without so much as looking at him, standing right in front of me, and it takes every morsel of strength in my soul to resist the urge to flinch back into a pile of fur coats.

“Tell him,” he says to me, voice so low it’s almost a whisper. “Tell him what you really want.”

I shake my head. The air is so heavy, so warm that I can barely breathe, chest heaving as I squeeze in sharp, shallow intakes of air.

“No.”

He tips his head back, looking at me through half-lidded eyes, blue irises glinting through gold lashes.

“Lie, then.” His breath glides over my lips. I can tell he’s not been drinking, and the realisation that we’re both stone-cold sober sends a wave of panic through me. “Tell me you want him.I dare you.”

I shove him hard, but he doesn’t move so much as an inch, his body a warm wall of muscle blocking out the rest of the world.

“Arrogant asshole,” I bite out.

“So what, if you like it?”

“I don’t like it—I hate it.”

His fingers slide up. He grips the back of my neck firmly but without force, tilting my head back.

“Two years since we left Spearcrest, and you’restilllying toyourself.”

“I’m not—”

My voice breaks, snapped in half under the cutting blue of his gaze, melted to nothing in the heat of his hand on the nape of my neck, his fingers digging into the base of my skull, his touch, commanding but not cruel, possessive but not forceful.

“Say it, Sutton.”

His voice is low, silken, laced with promise and authority.

I spit out the words like poison.