Page 21 of Hostile

My stomach did the thing I’d strictly forbidden it from doing.

“Wyatt—”

“I know.” He held up one hand. “I know what you’re going to say.”

“Do you?”

“You’re going to tell me we’re friends. That this is nice and you enjoy my company, but you didn’t come to Harvard to get involved with anyone. That you have a plan, and the plan doesn’t include complications, and that I’m a complication.” He tilted his head slightly. “How am I doing?”

Too well. “Reasonably accurate.”

“Thought so.” He didn’t seem bothered by it. He picked up his coffee, took a slow sip, and set it back down. “Can I tell you something?”

“You’re going to anyway.”

“Probably.” He smiled. “I think your plan has a flaw.”

“My plan doesn’t have flaws. My plans are thoroughly researched and carefully constructed.”

“I know they are. But you planned around a version of me you made up before you knew me.” He leaned forward, his forearms on the table, his eyes steady on mine. “The version that was my sister’s brother and my family’s name and everything you spent twelve years watching from a parking lot. You planned around that guy.” He paused. “But that’s not who I am, Megan. And I think part of you already knows that.”

The café was quiet enough for me to hear the rain that had started outside, tapping against the window. Someone in the kitchen dropped something metal; it clanged once, then fell silent.

I looked at him.

This was the problem with Wyatt Aldridge—the real, actual problem, the one I couldn’t neatly file under a category and manage from a safe distance. He didn’t argue. He didn’t push. He didn’t try to talk me into anything with charm or persistence, or the easy confidence that usually came with a face like his. He just told the truth in a quiet voice and waited.

I’d spent most of my life around people who used words to maneuver. Wyatt used them to mean something.

That’s the most dangerous kind, I thought, because manipulation could be identified. You could map it, anticipate it, and defend against it. Sincerity was harder. Sincerity slipped through the places armor wasn’t designed to cover.

I looked down at my tea, now mostly cold.

“You’re doing it again,” he said.

“Doing what?”

“Leaving.”

The observation wasn’t accusing. That somehow made it worse.

“I’m sitting right here.”

“Physically, yes.”

I hated that he was right. More than that, I hated that he’d noticed it.

The conversation had drifted somewhere dangerous without either of us explicitly steering it there. We’d started with business law and ended up discussing plans, ambition, and the quiet assumptions people built their lives around.

Worse, I’d enjoyed it.

Not because he was handsome. Not because I’d spent two years watching him from a distance in Savannah. Because talking to him felt unexpectedly easy, and easy things had always made me suspicious.

I was eighteen years old, rebuilding my life from the ground up. I had goals. I had a future. I had a carefully constructed understanding of what mattered.

Wyatt Aldridge fit into none of those categories.

That meant I should leave. Immediately.