I didn't come to the city to start over. I came to survive. A job at a marketing firm. A cheap apartment, I only got because they thought I was someone else. It was supposed to be temporary. Quiet. Safe. Then Theo Cross came home. He was the kind of man you don't get close to. Bruised knuckles. Inked skin. A temper he kept on a leash. The kind of man who looks at you like he already knows how things end. He didn't want me there. Didn't trust me. Didn't even try to pretend he liked me. But he stayed. And somewhere between late nights and the quiet moments he thought I didn't notice, I started to see him. Not the fighter everyone feared, but the version he hid in the pages he never meant anyone to read. He calls me sweetheart like it's a joke. Like, it doesn't mean anything. But I hear it in the way his voice softens. In the way he looks at me like I'm something worth protecting. Like I'm something worth staying for. I should've known better. People like Theo don't get happy endings. And girls like me don't get to keep them. But if there's one thing I learned from him It's that the most important part of us are written between the lines.