Chapter 11: Careful, Dylan...

I shouldn’t have knocked on Dylan’s door. It was late. Not midnight, but late enough that it counted. I could’ve gone home. Could’ve taken a shower. Slept. Pretended I was a normal person who hadn’t just had slow, tender, eye-contact sex with a Frenchman who called me mon amour.

But no.

I was here. Standing outside Dylan’s apartment like I hadn’t spent the last two hours getting my brains blown out by Elliot.

The door opened fast.

He didn’t say anything. Just stood there, shirtless, in those gray sweatpants he always wore around the apartment. His hair was damp. He’d showered recently. Smelled like clean skin and cologne and maybe mint toothpaste. My stomach flipped.

I tried not to look tired. I was tired. In a very specific way. “Hey,” I said like I’d just dropped by to borrow sugar. “Still up?”

Dylan leaned one arm against the doorframe. His jaw flexed. His eyes moved over me once, slow. “You look like you already had a long night.”

I snorted. “Wow. Thanks.”

“Wasn’t an insult,” he said. “Just an observation.”

I rolled my eyes and stepped past him into the apartment. He didn’t stop me. The place smelled like him. Familiar. Lived in. Unsettlingly comfortable.

He shut the door. Didn’t say a word.

“You always open the door half-naked, or is this a special occasion?” I asked, sinking into the corner of the couch.

“You always show up this late after a date?” he asked back.

Touché.

I gave him a look. “I didn’t say it was a date.”

“You didn’t say it wasn’t.”

Silence hung between us for a second. Then I smirked. “I thought you were above jealousy,” I said, stretching out like I owned the place.

“I’m not jealous,” he said too fast.

I raised a brow. “Sure.”

Dylan crossed the room and stood in front of me. He didn’t sit. Didn’t smirk. Just looked down at me like he was waiting for something. I met his gaze, tried to keep my face unreadable. I knew what he was seeing. Flushed cheeks. Still-rumpled hair. Skin that probably still smelled like Elliot.

And my eyes? Probably tired. In that very specific, very post-fucked way.

“I’m not stupid, Troy,” he said quietly.

“Never said you were.”

“You came from his place.”

I leaned my head back against the couch. “And if I did?”

His jaw flexed again. His hands curled slightly at his sides. I watched him. Waited. Tried to ignore the fact that my body, which should’ve been completely sated, was already reacting. Dylan had that effect. That tension in him. That heat. Even now.