After that confession, things should have become simpler.
Instead they became sharper.
More intense.
More dangerous.
Because once a man like Evan says he loves you, what he really means is that he has already built his world around you.
And once a woman like me allows that, what it really means is that she has no intention of leaving either.
It didn’t change how he behaved in public.
If anything, he became more restrained.
Black Harbor knew he belonged near the Prescott family now, but no one was foolish enough to joke about it in front of him. They only saw what was obvious: if I pointed, he moved. If I spoke, he listened. If someone offended me, they disappeared from my field of vision so quickly it was almost elegant.
People called him my dog behind closed doors.
They stopped when they learned dogs can bite through bone.
Julia visited Harbor City often after that. Sometimes for work, sometimes just because she liked me, and perhaps because she found it amusing to make Evan jealous without trying very hard.
She would drape herself over my shoulder and call me sweetheart just to watch his jaw lock.
He would smile politely and then look at me afterward with that wounded expression he used only when he wanted something.
One evening, after Julia had left laughing and waving from the front gates, Evan came up behind me, slipped his arms around my waist, and said in a low voice, “You can’t keep collecting people.”
I turned in his arms. “Why not?”
“Because you only need one dog.”
I stared at him for a beat.
Then I burst out laughing.
He looked even more offended.
“Julia isn’t a dog,” I said. “Julia is Julia.”
His expression fell in such a tragically sincere way that I almost felt bad.
Almost.
“Don’t make that face,” I said, patting his cheek. “You’re still my favorite.”
That helped a little.
Not much, but a little.
In private, he was less reserved now. Still careful with me, always careful, but no longer pretending that caution meant distance. He kissed me like a man who had spent too long starving. Touched me like he had memorized every place I softened under his hands and intended to keep proving it.
There were nights when I lay awake afterward listening to his breathing and thinking how absurd it was that everything had begun with a lie, a tracker, a bar, and a boy bleeding under a streetlamp.
There were other nights when I thought about how close things had come to ending differently.
If I had pushed open that private room door.
If I had fought Julia.
If I had gone back to Shen Yili.
If I had walked past the curb without noticing the blood.
Any of those choices, and maybe I really would have become the novel’s villainess.
Maybe Evan really would have become its final monster.
Maybe Julia would have fought alone.
Maybe Shen Yili would still be standing where he always expected to stand.
Instead, he was overseas, politically buried, his family’s favor gone and his reputation hollowed out. Not dead. Just irrelevant.
Frankly, I found that more satisfying.
One afternoon, Julia called to tell me a rumor had reached New York—that Shen Yili had tried to maneuver his way back into domestic business and failed so spectacularly that even his own relatives were embarrassed to help him.
I put the phone on speaker so Evan could hear.
He only said one thing.
“Not enough.”
I smiled. “Greedy.”
He kissed the inside of my wrist. “Only where you’re concerned.”
The comments, when they appeared these days, were less frantic than before. More delighted. More shameless.
I never thought I’d root for the villainess, but here we are.
Same.
Honestly, she was never the villain. The story just didn’t know what to do with a woman who refused to stay humiliated.
That one lingered in front of me for a while.
Then I reached out and touched it, though of course my fingers passed through air.
Maybe that was true.
Maybe the difference between a villainess and a heroine was sometimes nothing more than whether the woman in question had anyone worth protecting beside her.
Or whether she chose herself soon enough.