Chapter 1: You Like Flirting With Men That Much? 🌶️

The lights at The Halloway hit you like a slap — neon strobing in violet and red, bass loud enough to rattle the ice in your glass. On the dance floor, men and women were grinding up against each other in tight, sweat-slicked knots, hips moving like they were praying to something profane.
“Sloane Bellamy’s back.”
Holden was lighting a cigarette when the words came. Thumb on the Zippo, the small gust of flame cupped between his hands, gold light flickering up the angle of his jaw. He didn’t look up. Didn’t say anything. Just inhaled, slow, let the smoke fill his lungs all the way before he tossed the lighter down on the glass table and sank back into the leather banquette, one ankle hooked over the opposite knee.
His eyes stayed on a single point in the dance floor. He didn’t look at the man who’d spoken. Didn’t acknowledge he’d heard.
Reid Pemberton had dragged them out tonight. Said there was a new club in River North. Said they should check it out. Felix Whitlock had come along, because Felix always came along. The three of them had been inseparable since prep school — every gossip column and society blog in Chicago knew it. The Ashworth heir, the Pemberton heir, the Whitlock heir. Glued at the hip since they were ten years old.
Felix glanced at Holden’s face, then nudged Reid with an elbow and lifted his brow, a silent what’s his deal.
Reid bit the filter of his own cigarette and lifted his glass to clink against Holden’s. “Why so quiet, Hol?”
Holden flicked his eyes sideways, cigarette still between his fingers. He didn’t answer.
Sloane Bellamy’s back.
The words made another slow pass through his head before he registered what they actually meant.
“I’m just saying what I heard,” Reid said, talking now because Holden wasn’t going to. “You know what kind of mess that whole thing was. Hard not to know she’s back.”
“Mm.”
“That’s it? ‘Mm’?” Reid stared at him. “You’re being a fucking statue. We can talk to you, you know.”
Holden tipped the rest of the whiskey down his throat in one slow pull. Watched his Adam’s apple work. When he set the empty glass down, his voice was bored, even, perfectly flat.
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
Seven years was a long time. It was past tense. Whether Sloane Bellamy was back in Chicago or in fucking Antarctica, it didn’t change a single thing about Holden’s life. He was still the same man this city wanted a piece of. He had been then. He still was.
Reid opened his mouth to say something else — but a bottle smashed against another bottle in the booth beside them, loud enough that half the room turned to look. Reid and Felix turned with the rest, leaning forward to gawk, because that’s what Reid and Felix did. They were nosy as hell.
Holden didn’t look. He didn’t care. He sat exactly where he was, ankle still hooked over knee, eyes still on the same point on the dance floor.
Then Reid and Felix stood up at the same time.
“Holy fuck,” Felix said.
Reid jabbed an elbow into Holden’s bicep. Holden ignored him. Reid jabbed again. Reid jabbed a third time, and finally Holden snapped, “Reid. What.”
“That’s fucking her.” Reid’s voice was low, but it had teeth. “That’s fucking Sloane.”
Holden froze for half a second. Then he turned and looked.
She was standing in the next booth over, drink in hand, surrounded by suited men twice her age. Tall — taller in heels — and the dress was a red so deep it looked black where the lights didn’t hit. Strapless, slit up to her hip, fitted so tight across her chest that she looked one breath away from spilling out of it. Her dark hair was thrown over one shoulder, leaving the long line of her throat bare. A pair of ridiculous, attention-grabbing music-note earrings dangled from her ears. Rhinestoned. Way too much.
She looked, frankly, like trouble in heels.
A lot of women looked like Sloane Bellamy. A lot of women looked nothing like Sloane Bellamy and still got mistaken for her. But the three of them in this booth knew the marker — the marker no one else would catch. It was on her left bicep. A wilted rose tattoo, petals soft and rotted at the edges, deliberately drawn over the round, flat scar underneath: a cigarette burn pressed into skin and held there. She’d inked the rose right over the burn. Made the rose look like the burn was eating it from the inside out.
It was her.
She was clinking her glass against the older man at her elbow’s, laughing at something he’d said, loud enough that Holden could pick the timbre of her voice out from over the bass.
“Mr. Carter, please — you flatter me. I’m just trying to keep your business. Come around more often.”
It was the kind of flirt that wasn’t even pretending to be flirt. Hand on his sleeve. Eyes up through her lashes. Hip cocked in the slit. Shameless.
Holden watched the whole thing and felt his memory of Sloane Bellamy slide, slowly, over the woman in front of him. They almost lined up. Almost. The Sloane in his head was eighteen and thinner and angrier; the Sloane in front of him had something else — a polished, weaponized version of the same thing. Where the eighteen-year-old had been pretty, this one was something close to a fucking weapon. He’d thought she was beautiful at eighteen. Now, watching her work the man in his sixties, watching her own her body in that dress —
He was hard before he’d even decided to be.
Same as the first time.
Seven years ago, at the door of another bar, the first thing he’d wanted to do when he looked at her was fuck her.
The first thing he wanted to do now was the same.
He kept watching, jaw locked, while Sloane finished off two more drinks with the men at the booth and finally peeled away, walking off toward the back of the club. She didn’t look his way. Had no idea anyone was watching. He didn’t blink until she’d disappeared through the corridor.
Reid waved a hand in front of his face. “Hey. Hey. Earth to Hol. Reel it the fuck back in.” When Holden finally looked at him, Reid grinned. “Didn’t think we’d run into her tonight, huh.”
Felix laughed under his breath, a low wheeze of a sound. “Funny. Could’ve sworn someone in this booth was just saying ‘there’s nothing to talk about.’ Took him about half a second to be glued to her ass.”
Holden didn’t engage. He stood up, tugged his suit jacket straight at the shoulders, adjusted his cuff. His face was perfectly empty, but his voice when he spoke was cold enough to flatten the conversation flat.
“Restroom.”
He walked.
Sloane was bracing both palms against the cool marble of the restroom counter, head bent low, retching the last of the whiskey out of her stomach.
When there was nothing left to come up, she ran the water and rinsed her mouth, cupped two handfuls and splashed her face, then slowly pushed herself back upright.
Her eyes were rimmed red from the alcohol. There was a flush sitting high on her cheekbones that almost looked sweet, almost rosy. She caught her own reflection in the gilded mirror over the sink and almost laughed.
Sloane Bellamy looked like Sloane Bellamy. Sloane Bellamy had always looked like Sloane Bellamy. Those long, upturned, foxy eyes that promised more than she meant; the deep V at the neckline of the red dress that pushed her cleavage into a deeper hollow with every breath; the strands of hair coming loose at her temples. Drunk, she was even prettier — sloppier, wetter, her mouth a darker red. The fox-eyed bar owner who had men three decades older than her writing checks for bottle service like it was nothing. She’d built this for herself. Of course she had.
She stayed at the counter another moment, waiting for the room to stop tilting, and then turned to leave.
She didn’t make it three steps.
An arm hooked around her waist, hard and fast, and she was dragged into the nearest stall before she could even process what was happening. The lock thunked closed behind her. Her back slammed into the metal partition and a hand clamped over her mouth before she could scream. Her heart kicked into her throat. Cold sweat bloomed at her temples and rolled down the side of her face. Every muscle in her body locked.
There was a man behind her. Big enough that he caged her completely. The smell of him filled the tiny stall — cigarette smoke, expensive cologne, something darker underneath. Whiskey on his breath.
Memory came rushing in at her like a flood.
She knew this body. She knew this smell.
His breath ghosted slow against the side of her neck, the heat of it spreading down to her collarbone with each pulse of his throat. One of his hands left her mouth and slid down — down her stomach, past the hem of the dress, between her thighs through the thin fabric — while the other came up and cupped her breast through the bodice, kneading hard enough to make her gasp.
He licked the bead of sweat off her jaw, slow, and his voice — low, rough, whiskey-rasped — said into her ear:
“Sloane. You like flirting with men that much, huh? You did seven years ago. You still do.”
Her brain blanked for a beat.
Then it came back.
She fought against the arm pinning her, twisting until she could drag her face around far enough to see who it was.
The second she did, her heart went still.
Seven years was a long time. But she knew, in one look, exactly who was holding her against this stall door.
Her ex. From seven years ago.
Holden Ashworth.