I held her gaze for a second longer than necessary.
Then looked away first.
“Sit,” I said, nodding toward the couch.
She did, without hesitation.
I poured another glass without asking and slid it across the table toward her.
She looked at it.Then at me.Then picked it up.
We didn’t fill the space with noise just to make it easier.
Instead, we sat there in the quiet.And somewhere between the silence and the slow burn of alcohol, the night stretched out in front of us—long, uncertain, and edged with something neither of us named.
But both of us felt.
12
Tone
Isat curled into the corner of the worn couch, bare legs tucked beneath me, drowning in a shirt that didn’t belong to me and a silence that didn’t feel suffocating.
Sitting there with Archie Popovich felt somewhat… easy.It was surprising, considering how much time I’d spent hating the man.
Archie sat opposite me, one arm stretched along the back of the couch, the other wrapped loosely around a glass that he’d refilled more times than I’d kept track of.I was amazed at his ability to hold his liquor, because he was nowhere near drunk.He didn’t look at me constantly—I don’t think he was that kind of man—but every time he did, it felt deliberate.Measured.Like he was filing something away for later.
“I heard you,” I said, breaking the quiet before it settled too deep.My voice came out lower than I intended.“At the villa.When you told Atlas and Raze who you really are.”
He glanced down, like the floor had suddenly earned his attention, a smile tugging at his mouth that he didn’t quite manage to hide.
I’d just handed it to him—made it obvious I’d been listening in where I shouldn’t have been.And the bastard was enjoying it far more than he should.
“Ah.”He leaned back, unbothered, dragging his thumb along the rim of his glass.“So that’s what this is.”
My brow lifted.“What’s what?”
“This,” he said, gesturing lazily between us, though his eyes didn’t move from mine.“You… playing nice.”
Heat pricked at the back of my neck.I ignored it.
“Nice?”
“Aha.Nice.”His gaze slid over me—unhurried, deliberate.Taking his time memorizing something he had no intention of forgetting.
I held his stare, even as something in my chest tightened.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” I said.
“Too late for that.”He tipped his glass slightly, not quite a toast, not quite a challenge.“Fancy yourself a prince now, do you?”
I let out a quiet breath, close enough to a laugh that it could pass.
“You might be a prince,” I said, meeting his gaze again, holding it there.“But I still have better taste in company.”
That earned me a low, quiet chuckle that settled into the room and stayed there.It did something strange to my chest that I couldn’t ignore.
“I don’t get it,” I said, head tilting as I looked at him.“Why you’re so set on slumming it with us.”