Chapter 92

Ezra’s POV

When the door closed behind me and the apartment fell back into that fragile hush, all the noise was suddenly internal—the scrape of my heartbeat in my ears, the raw thrum beneath my ribs.

I could still feel the ghost of her lips on mine, the way her body had leaned in without thinking.

For a second I thought the world had narrowed to that breath, to the tiny heat between us, and I wanted to make that smallness last forever.

She was trembling when she stepped back, eyes wet, lashes stained with tears.

I wanted to fix it the way you fix a broken thing but this wasn’t a broken vase I could glue.

It was a web of choices and betrayals and loyalties, and my thumb could not smooth over the consequences.

“Ava,” I said, because the silence had teeth.

She swallowed and wrapped her arms around herself again, the motion not to block me but to try to hold herself together. The want in my chest turned into something.

“I shou