Beneath the Ashes

Ronan

She's here.

In my city. In my world. Breathing my air like she isn't mine.

The sight of her slams into me like a fist to the ribs. She's in a dimly lit bar, seated at a high-top table, laughing at something a man beside her just said.

Laughing.

Like she has a right to be happy when she left me in ruins.

I curl my fingers around the glass of whiskey in front of me, my grip so tight I half expect it to crack.

Five years.

Five fucking years since she ran, since she vanished. I should let her be. Walk out of here. Forget she ever existed.

But I've never been good at letting go.

Ira Sehgal was never meant to belong to me. Not in the way I wanted. Not in the way I still do.

But I made her mine.

And I don't care how long she's been gone.

She still is.

Mine.

The man beside her leans in closer, murmuring something that makes her roll her eyes. He's good-looking in that soft, polished way I've always hated. The type who wouldn't know what to do with a woman like Ira.

A woman meant to be ruined.

The heat in my chest turns sharp, acidic. He doesn't deserve her attention. He doesn't deserve her fucking laugh.

He doesn't deserve to look at her like that.

I force myself to stay seated, to observe. Ira still wears her emotions in the tiniest shifts of her body. The small flicker of discomfort in her shoulders, the tap of her fingers against the rim of her glass—she's tolerating him, but she isn't interested.

Good.

It still doesn't mean he gets to touch her.

I swirl the whiskey in my glass, my pulse a slow, dark drumbeat. The moment he reaches for her arm, I make my move.

---

Ira

I feel him before I see him.

A shift in the air. A current pulling at me, warning me.

Then I hear the voice.

"She's not interested."

The words slide through me like a slow, deliberate blade, slicing open something I thought had long since healed.

I don't have to turn around to know.

I know that voice.

I know him.

Ronan.

For a second, I think I've imagined it. That my mind has conjured him up the way it has so many times before—late at night, in my weakest moments. But then I see the look on David's face, the flicker of unease in his eyes.

And then I feel it.

Him.

Standing too close. A presence too big, too overwhelming to ignore.

I turn, and there he is.

Ronan Vale.

Older. Sharper. The same cruelly beautiful face I remember, but colder. Darker. His dark suit molds to his broad frame, the open collar of his shirt revealing a hint of skin, of heat.

And his eyes—those ice-blue eyes that once saw me when no one else did—hold none of the boy I knew.

Only the man I ran from.

He studies me, gaze dragging over every inch of me, like he's cataloging the differences. Like he's searching for something.

I refuse to fidget under his scrutiny.

Instead, I arch a brow, forcing my lips into a smirk. Fake it. Bury it.

"Still making dramatic entrances, Ronan?"

His lips curl into something that isn't quite a smile. "Still pretending you can outrun me, Ira?"

The words are a weight pressing against my chest, thick with meaning, with memory.

"Ira, who is this?" David asks, shifting beside me, eyes darting between us.

Ronan doesn't even glance at him.

He just tilts his head, gaze never leaving mine. "You didn't tell him about me?"

There's amusement there. A quiet sort of satisfaction.

Because we both know why I wouldn't.

Because Ronan Vale was never something I could explain.

And now, staring into the eyes of the boy who once whispered his love into my skin, the boy who broke for me in ways I never deserved—

I realize something.

I was a fool to think I'd ever escaped him.

---

Ronan

She's just as beautiful as I remember.

No—she's more.

There's a softness to her now. A quiet confidence. But I still see the girl beneath. The girl they all mocked for not being enough—not skinny enough, not pretty enough, not right.

They never saw her the way I did.

I saw the way she glowed.

I saw the fire in her eyes when they laughed at her weight. The fight in her voice when they made her feel small.

I saw the way she belonged to me before she even realized it.

And I never told her.

Never told her how she owned me first.

She thinks I want to hurt her now.

She's not wrong.

But I also want to break every man who has ever touched her since me.

I want to burn this world until she understands—

There is no running from this.

There is no one else.

There is only me.

And I will take back what's mine.

Even if it destroys us both.