YARA I come downstairs late the next morning, exhausted from a night that barely let me sleep.
Every time I’d closed my eyes, I’d seen his hand glowing against mine, and every time I’d opened them, I’d found myself wondering what it meant.
The house is quiet.
Not peaceful.
There’s a difference, and I’ve learned to tell them apart the hard way.
Beau has already disappeared into his study, which means everyone else has decided to leave him alone.
That’s how things work here.
When that door closes, you don’t knock unless the house is on fire, and even then, you’d better have a good reason.
Dean’s coat hangs by the side entrance, where the staff leave guests’ things.
He’s been here since early, probably before breakfast.
Lately, he and Beau have spent more and more time locked away in that study together – three or four times a week, sometimes more.
I’ve stopped asking what they discuss.
Nobody in this house gives a straight answer to questions like that.
Not even Beau, who used to at least pretend to indulge my curiosity when I was small.
I’m not looking for Dean.
That’s what I tell myself as I head down the back hallway toward the kitchen.
It’s a route I’ve taken a hundred times, and I know exactly where Beau’s study is without having to think about it.
Still, my steps slow as I approach the door, some instinct pulling my attention toward it before I’ve even decided to listen.
I strain to hear a voice.
Nothing.
Then I round the corner, and my breath catches.
Dean is standing outside the study.
He hasn’t noticed me, or maybe he has and simply doesn’t care enough to turn around.
Either way, I stop, because I’ve never seen his face look like that.
My hand finds the wall beside me, and I lean against it without meaning to, as though my body understands before my mind does that something has shifted.
Dean’s head is slightly bowed.
One hand rests against the doorframe, his fingers spread over the wood.
He looks…
I don’t even know how to describe it.
Not angry.
Not exactly.
There’s grief in the tightness around his mouth, and beneath it, a fury so deep it seems to have settled into his bones years ago.
But it’s the desperation that gets me.
That doesn’t belong on Dean.
Dean is always in control.
Even when he’s being an asshole.
Especially when he’s being an asshole.
Right now, he looks like a man who doesn’t know whether he has the right to walk through a door, and the sight of it makes something in my chest ache in a way I don’t want to examine too closely.
His fingers flex against the frame.
I hold my breath, half-afraid that even that small sound will shatter whatever fragile moment I’ve stumbled into.
He looks as though he’s trying to make a decision.
Whether to knock.
Whether to demand something.
Whether to walk away before he does something he’ll regret.
For a second, I think he’s going to go inside.
Instead, his hand slowly curls into a fist.
A low sound escapes him – not quite a word, not quite human, either.
My stomach tightens, and some primal part of me recognizes that sound for what it is, even if the rest of me refuses to admit it.
Then he drops his hand to his side.
The movement is controlled, deliberate, like he’s forcing himself to stop.
I’ve never seen him fight himself before, and it frightens me more than any temper ever could.
I should leave.
I know I should.
Whatever is happening here has nothing to do with me.
At least, that’s what I tell myself.
But I don’t move.
I’m too busy trying to understand the man standing in front of me, trying to reconcile this raw, wounded creature with the composed stranger who dances with perfect posture and speaks in careful, measured sentences.
Then he turns.
And sees me.
It happens in an instant.
The grief disappears.
The anger vanishes behind a cold, composed expression.
By the time he’s fully facing me, Dean is back to being Dean.
Polite.
Distant.
Unreadable.
I almost wonder if I imagined the whole thing.
Except my heart is still racing, and my palms have gone damp against the wall.
“Yara.” His voice is even, too even.
“Didn’t hear you coming.” “Are you all right?” My voice sounds small in the empty hallway.
“Fine.” He answers too quickly.
I don’t believe him.
“Just waiting on your father.
Business.” Business.
I’ve sat through enough of Beau’s actual business meetings to know what that looks like.
Ledgers.
Contracts.
Calm voices.
Men discussing numbers until I want to fall asleep in my chair.
Whatever I just saw on Dean’s face had nothing to do with mineral rights, and we both know it.
“You looked like you’d seen a ghost.” His eyes shift.
For half a second, I catch it again – that flash of grief, raw and unguarded.
I almost think he’s going to tell me the truth, and part of me leans toward him, wanting desperately for him to.
Then the wall goes back up.
“Long morning,” he says.
“That’s all.” “Dean – ” “Excuse me.” He walks past me before I can finish, his shoulder coming close enough that I catch the scent of sweat and whatever soap he uses.
Normally, I’d notice.
Normally, I’d hate myself for noticing.
This time, I barely register it.
I’m too busy watching him leave.
His shoulders are rigid beneath his shirt.
His hands hang at his sides, but there’s tension in them, in the way he holds himself, like a man walking a tightrope over something none of the rest of us can see.
He’s not calm.
He’s holding himself together, one careful breath at a time.
I wait until he disappears down the hall before turning toward Beau’s study.
Business.
Sure.
Nobody looks like that over paperwork.
Nobody clenches their fists over a conversation about contracts.
I take a step toward the kitchen, then stop.
There’s something on the study door, near the handle.
I crouch to get a better look, my pulse already quickening before I fully understand why.
Four deep lines run through the old wood.
My stomach drops.
They’re perfectly parallel, gouged straight through the varnish and into the grain beneath.
The edges are pale and splintered, the damage too fresh to have been there for long.
I reach out and touch one.
My fingertip sinks into the groove.
It’s deep.
Too deep.
I pull my hand back slightly, staring at the marks.
They aren’t scratches from a key.
They aren’t damage from a piece of furniture bumping into the door.
They’re four clean, deliberate cuts.
Four lines.
Four fingers.
My mouth goes dry.
I think of Dean in the woods, the low, guttural sound he made when his horse shied at the snake.
I think of his eyes flashing gold across the fencing strip.
And then I remember the first night we touched, the way I thought I’d seen that same gold beneath his skin, and dismissed it as a trick of candlelight because the alternative had been unthinkable.
My hand starts to shake.
I pull it away from the door and press it against my chest, as though I can hold myself together by force alone.
No.
That doesn’t make sense.
None of this makes sense.
I brace my other hand against the wall as the hallway seems to tilt beneath me.
If Dean did this, if he was capable of carving through solid wood with his bare hands, then what else could he do?
What else had he already done?
My mind flashes to his hands on me.
His fingers around my waist in the ballroom.
The brush of his knuckles against my collarbone during the storm.
The way he’d touched me so carefully, even when everything between us felt wrong, as though he’d been holding something back the entire time without my ever realizing it.
I swallow hard.
I don’t feel afraid of him.
Not exactly.
That might be the problem.
I feel as though the ground beneath this entire house has shifted, and I’m the only one who’s noticed, the only one standing here with my hand pressed to a wound in the wood that shouldn’t exist.
I look down the hallway where he disappeared.
Then back at the door.
Four fresh grooves stare back at me, silent and damning.
Whatever stood outside this door wasn’t only a man.
I don’t know whether I’ll ask Dean about it.
Maybe I’ll watch him instead.
Keep my mouth shut and pay attention, the way I’ve learned to do with everyone else in this house.
It’s a skill I’ve had years to perfect, and one I suspect I’ll need now more than ever.
But one thing is certain.
The next time Dean reaches for me, I’m going to look at his hands.
And I’m never going to see them the same way again.