It started with Sofia. He was openly flirting with her, trying to get a reaction out of you. It didn’t go as planned. You yelled at her, dumped beer on her and then started making out with another woman.

He had dragged her outside, hands on her hips.

They were right about you.

Guest stared him in the face. Damn. Are we done?

His hands dropped. Slowly. Fingers uncurling from her hips like he was peeling off something that burned him. He stepped back one pace. Two. Put his hands in his pockets. Looked at her with an expression that was almost worse than angerbecause it was empty.

Yeah. We're done.

He turned. Started walking down the sidewalk. No car. No plan. Just putting distance between himself and whatever this was with the rigid, mechanical posture of a man who refused to look back.

He made it about fifteen feet before he stopped. Stood there with his back to her, shoulders tight under his jacket. A car passed on the street, headlights sweeping across him, illuminating the tension running through his frame like fault lines.

You know what the worst part is?

His voice carried back to her, raw and stripped of every layer of calculated cool he usually wore.

I wanted you to be angry. I wanted you to fight for me. Not just... throw yourself at someone else like I was nothing.

A sprinkler hissed. Somewhere inside the party, a new song startedsomething loud and forgettable. A dog barked three streets over. Shoto stood perfectly still, waiting for something he probably already knew wasn't coming. Or maybe hoping against every calculated instinct he had that it would.

The night was cold and quiet and full of things neither of them had said yet.