Page 72 of Seven Lost Summers (Broken Oasis #3)

“I’m just here checking if the queen of sarcasm’s still holding court,” he says, voice dripping with lazy confidence. “Looks like I’m in luck.”

His voice scrapes down my spine, gravel-edged and smooth all at once.

The kind of sound turning every filthy thought into something inevitable.

It doesn’t fit here, not in this kitchen reeking of cheap coffee and failure.

His voice belongs in the dark corners of the city, pressed up against walls, whispered through clenched teeth, dangerous enough to make you forget yourself.

I bite back the twitch of a smile and let a slow grin spread across my mouth instead. It’s cold. Controlled. The kind that never reaches my eyes and doesn’t need to. It carries a threat on its own.

His gaze lingers, and I catch the shift in it. The flicker of interest, the dark amusement telling me he likes the fight. Proof I’m not another girl ready to fold.

“Annoying… Cute,” I say, voice dipped in venom. “You’ve got five minutes before I make you regret setting foot in here.”

He pushes off the doorframe and steps closer, closing the distance only enough for the air to thicken between us. Close enough for me to feel it. His laugh is low, curling through the room until it knots low in my stomach, twisting everything I don’t want to admit.

“Is that a promise or a threat?” he asks, his voice edged with amusement. A sound cutting and caressing in the same breath. His eyes stay locked on mine, steady, daring me to answer, to play the game he already knows I can’t walk away from.

“Depends on if you’re smart enough to survive it.” My voice is steady, but the fire behind it burns bright and unashamed.

His grin sharpens with something darker that curls at the corners of his mouth, the spark in his eyes catching flame until it holds me in place.

For a single breath, the world strips itself bare.

There’s no peeling paint, no flickering light, no chairs marked with burn marks. All of it fades beneath the pull between us.

We are two forces staring each other down, neither willing to bend, neither willing to break.

“Oh, I don’t just survive,” he says, voice low and certain. “I break the rules while I’m at it.”

The way he says it is unapologetic, smug, daring. His words slam through me harder than I want to admit.

And fuck, I hate the part of me wanting to see which rules he would break for me. Worse, I hate the thought of which ones he could make me want to break for him.

That gets to me, and he knows it. The grin tugging at his mouth dares me to answer, dares me to keep playing.

This is my territory. My fucking table. The one place I sit where no one dares to touch me or piss me off.

I carved my name into the wood to remind myself I was still here, proof I existed in a world determined to make me invisible.

Every splinter, every crack in this scarred surface is mine, proof I’ve endured, proof I’ve claimed something in this place where nothing belongs to me. Nothing gets in. Nothing shakes me.

Until him.

One look and the ground tilts. One grin and the fire burns to life. I was fine before he showed up in this shitty place where his swagger fills the doorway and his eyes drag me under. Now I’m burning, furious at the way he can walk in here and make me feel everything at once.

And I hate the part of me that doesn’t want him to stop.

I throw punches because it’s easier than letting anyone get close. I’ve perfected the art of pushing people away before they even think about reaching for me.

Being near him is dangerous in ways I don’t want to admit. Not his body or his voice. Not even the grin slipping too easily into my bloodstream and threatening to tear something loose.

It’s the way he looks at me. The way his eyes move past every wall I’ve spent years building, past the barbed wire I’ve wrapped around my skin just to keep the world from getting in.

And fuck, it terrifies me.

Because he hasn’t touched me. Even so, I can feel it. The pull, an unraveling, a fault line shifting inside me beneath his stare. The ache of finally being seen.

He doesn’t say a word, just stares. His gaze moves slowly across my face. Down over the line of my jaw. Lingering on the scar above my brow. The one I don’t talk about, the one no one ever has the balls to ask about.

He sees it. Despite this, he doesn’t look away.

His eyes refuse to rush. Every movement is precise. Intentional. A stare turned into touch. The kind you don’t consent to but feel anyway, sinking under your skin, memorizing the parts of you no one’s ever taken the time to know.

His gaze drops.

Lower.

Fixes on my mouth.

And everything stops.

The noise. The air. The world. It all collapses, suspended in a silence laced with want and warning.

The taste of tension sits bitter on my tongue. Something unfamiliar blooms in the place I’ve kept sealed shut.

My breath catches. My pulse skips. Every instinct inside me screams to move. To shove him back before this crosses a line I won’t come back from.

But my body doesn’t listen. I stay frozen, chest tight, skin humming like it’s waiting to be touched.

He smirks. It’s slow and fucking lethal. The kind of smirk knowing exactly what it’s doing. A promise of everything, daring you to survive it.

The twist of his mouth is cocky, confident, filthy in a way that dares me to call him out. And he knows exactly what the fuck he is doing.

“Not tonight, sweetheart,” he says, then turns.

The words land hard.

He laughs as he walks away, as if he didn’t just tilt my entire world sideways and walk off with the match still smoldering in his hand.

I want to scream at him. I want to chase him down and rip that smug grin right off his face.

I’m furious. Furious with him. Furious with myself. With every broken piece of me that responded to him without permission. He didn’t even touch me, not a single fucking finger, and still I am sitting here, exposed, shaken to the core of bones I have spent years burying under armor.

I hate him. Hate the way he walked in here as if he owned the air I was breathing. The way my skin still buzzes even though he is gone. And now I cannot stop hearing his voice. Not tonight, sweetheart.

The words keep looping through my head, coiled tight around that cocky grin he stamped into me before walking out.

“Careful, pretty boy,” I say, turning in the chair to face him. “Guys who walk around as if they own the room are usually overcompensating for a dick that is not even worth unzipping.”

It is petty and cruel, but for one fucked-up second it makes me breathe easier, as if I have taken something back, even if it is only a scrap of control I never really had. The relief doesn’t last.

He stops, turns, and his eyes find mine again, his grin tugging wider as if he has been waiting for me to snap.

“Oh, sweetheart.”

That fucking word again. Soaked in mock sympathy, dipped in sin.

“You might be the first to call me out, but you will be the last to see what I am really packing.”

And then he’s gone, leaving me here, half furious and half fucked up in the worst way imaginable, pretending I’m not already drowning in the aftermath.

My whole body feels wrong, wired too tight, skin pulled thin over bones that no longer hold steady.

My pulse refuses to settle. It pounds fast and fucked-up, chasing the echo of his stare still stamped across my skin.

That cocky fucker walked in and detonated something inside me, and now I am the one choking on the dust, left to sift through the wreckage while he disappears as if he didn’t set the whole fucking room on fire.

He got under my skin, burrowing deep, spreading through me as if he were a fucking virus I never saw coming. One smirk was all it took. One look. One fucking line, and suddenly he was everywhere I did not want him to be.

And I fucking hate it.

I hate the way my body sparks when he gets close, all heat and nerves and hunger I never gave it permission to feel.

But what I hate most is that for one impossible, goddamn moment, I wanted him to stay.