11. THIS KIND OF DISTRACTION

The words leave me before I can stop them, low and hoarse in the doorway. For a second, neither of us moves. The city hums somewhere behind him, muted by the brownstone’s old brick, and Maddox just stands there, framed in the spill of light like he’s stepped out of a memory and into my life again.

His smile wavers at the edges, tired but real. Then he says, softly, like it costs him something to admit it:

“I came because I needed… the kind of distraction that makes you forget everything else.”

The words hit me square in the chest. Familiar. Too familiar. My pulse kicks hard, and suddenly I’m back in that Charleston hotel room, staring at a faceless profile, the same phrase glowing on my phone screen.

Maddox’s brow furrows. “What?” he asks, catching the way I stiffen. His voice is careful, searching. “You look like I just said something wrong.”

I shake my head too fast. “No. Not wrong. Just…” I can’t finish. The air between us hums with it—this uncanny overlap, this negative space collapsing in on itself.

He watches me a moment longer, eyes narrowing like he wants to push. Then, mercifully, he doesn’t.

Instead, he steps past me into the brownstone, his presence filling the silence in ways words never could.

I shut the door, and the click felt like a seal. The world outside gone. Just us.

For a moment, neither of us moved. The city’s light filtered through the tall windows, laying pale stripes across the hardwood. Maddox’s gaze swept the room, lingering on the bookshelves, the art, the clean lines. “This is where you live,” he murmured. “It feels like you.”

I opened my mouth to answer, but his hand was already on my jaw, rough, warm, pulling me up into a kiss that broke me open. My back hit the wall. His chest pressed hard against mine, all muscle and heat. My breath tore free as he pushed me up the stairs, shedding clothes along the way—his shirt, my belt, a breadcrumb trail of us.

By the time we stumbled into the bedroom, I was shaking, cock straining, every nerve livewire.