Page 113 of For the Plot

Because when a man like Reece Blackwood looks at you like you’re his entire world, it’s very, very hard not to fall straight back into orbit. Even if that orbit almost destroyed you once.

“You’re doing that look again,” Maya says softly.

“What look?”

“The one that says, ‘I’m fucked, but I’m pretending I’m not.’”

I sink back into the couch and drop my head against the cushion. “It’s infuriating.”

“What is?”

“That he’s doing it right. That I’m not mad at him. That I’m mad at myself for not being mad at him.”

“Maybe because you don’t actually want to be mad anymore.”

I close my eyes. The truth of that sits heavy in my chest. I don’t want to be mad. I don’t want to keep replaying the moment he told me to leave. Or the look on Archer’s face. Or the sting of silence that came after.

But I also don’t want to give in too fast. Don’t want to hand my heart back to a man who’s only just realized he’s holding the match that burned it down.

“I’m trying to be smart about this,” I say. “Trying not to confuse the effort with the endgame.”

“Skye.” Her voice softens. “He’s not trying to win. He’s trying toshow up.For you. And I think maybe he always wanted to. He just… didn’t know how.”

I turn my head and meet her eyes. “You think people like him can change?”

She pauses, then nods. “I think people don’t change for the world. But they do for the one thing they don’t want to lose.”

I swallow hard. My phone dings from the coffee table. It’s a new message from Reece.

Just a photo of a bookstore window display, new arrivals in historical romance. One of the covers features a heroine in a ridiculous red ballgown.

Reece:This looks like one of the ones you said leave you hot and bothered.

I bite back a grin.

“You’re already gone,” Maya says, watching me.

“No, I’m not.”

She shrugs. “Maybe not completely. But you’re slipping. And we both know it.”

I close the message thread and toss the phone onto the couch cushion between us. But even as I try to breathe through the chaos in my chest, the truth rings like a bell in my head. I am already so far gone there’s zero hope for me at this point.

I should’ve knownit wasn’t an accident. No one like Reece Blackwood ends up in a dusty corner bookstore on a Wednesday afternoon just by chance.

But I’m too distracted by the glossy stack of romances I’ve just picked up to notice anything’s off until I round the display table and see him.

Leaning against the poetry shelf like sin made flesh.

Dark jeans. A black sweater that hugs his broad chest like it was sewn onto him. One hand shoved in his pocket, the other trailing lazily along the spine of a Bukowski book he has no intention of buying.

He looks up. And fuck me. That smirk. Like he’s been waiting for this exact moment.

“Fancy seeing you here,” he says, voice low, sinful, the kind of tone that curls inside your bloodstream and makes it hard to walk straight. My mouth goes dry.

“What are you doing here?” I manage.

He shrugs. “Browsing. Or maybe fate.”