Page 59 of Crave

No. I couldn’t.

Surely, I’d have known.

Leaning back in my chair, I sighed then grabbed my phone. I needed a distraction. Something to drown out Oliver’s voice. His lies. And the worse one replaying under it. Razor. The way he’d looked at me. The way I’d looked back. I told myself I needed noise, so I opened an app I hadn’t touched in years.

Grindr.

Ollie and I had downloaded it once, “just to look.” It had ended with an argument and me pretending I didn’t care he’d enjoyed it a little too much. Now it felt like pulling a fire alarm just to see what would happen. I chewed on my thumbnail, updated the bio — single, curious, probably a mistake — and started scrolling. Swipe. Swipe. Bored faces. Torsos. Bathroom mirrors. Was I really doing this? Apparently so.

A sharp clatter at the window made me jump. Before I could move, the sash shot up, and someone climbed through. I might have screamed. Definitely leapt, because the phone flew out of my hand, skidded across the floor, and stopped dead at the boots of the man now standing in my room.

Razor.

All in black.

All menace. And impossibly, devastatingly hot.

Every rational part of me said move. The rest of me forgot how. Or even why I should.

He cocked his head. “Did I scare ya?” He grinned. All teeth. All cocky swagger.

I swallowed hard. “You could’ve knocked.” I tried to reach for my phone as if my heart wasn’t about to punch through my ribs. Fear? Definitely. Shock? Completely. Turned on…?

Unfortunately, yes.

“And miss that face?” He crouched, picked up my phone and looked at the screen.

Never had I wanted the floor to open and swallow me as I did right then.

Razor grimaced. “What you scouting Grindr for?”

The only answer there was left my lips, “I’m newly single.”

“Huh.” The glow lit his grin as he swiped for a while. “Don’t let the bed go cold for long then, do ya?”

I sat back in my desk chair. “Well, they do say to get over one man, you should get under another.”

“Do they?” Razor dropped onto my windowsill, the whole frame bowing under him, his presence blotting out the night. “Wouldn’t know.”

I tilted my head, clinging to a scrap of bravado to match his. “Because you’ve never been newly single… or never been under another man?”

He lifted his gaze from the screen to meet my eyes. Gradual. Unreadable. Devastating. And his stare stripped every thought I had bare, peeling logic from my skin until nothing was left of me but pulse. Those eyes had seen things I couldn’t begin to imagine. Violence, maybe. Loss. Survival leaving marks under the skin. And still, some stupid, reckless part of me wanted to dive straight into them. To see if I’d come out the same on the other side.

He smirked, then turned the screen around to show me the photo of a naked man posing in a mirror. “You wanna get under that one?”

No. No, I didn’t.

I wanted to get under him.

“I’m gonna do you a favour.” Razor turned the phone back to himself, gave it a few taps, a couple of swipes, then he stood and crossed the room towards me.

He moved as if he owned space. Big, solid, leisurely steps making the air thicken. When he stopped in front of me, the world narrowed to the sound of my heartbeat and the scent of him. Smoke. Sweat. Metal.

He held out the phone.

I took it and glanced at the screen. “You deleted Grindr.”

“I did. You’re welcome.”