SORRY, SIS

Vance didn't throw me out of the kitchen. He couldn't.

Instead, he did exactly what any stubborn green-flag man under immense psychological pressure would do—he forced himself to start cooking. He turned his back to me, turned on the gas stove, and began chopping vegetables for a pasta dish with frantic, aggressive precision.

But I wasn't going to let him hide behind a cutting board.

I walked over, hopped up, and sat right on the marble kitchen counter, directly next to the hot stove. The hem of his oversized flannel shirt rode up even higher on my thighs as I swung my bare legs casually against the cabinets, completely crowding his personal space.

Vance froze, his knife pausing mid-air over a tomato. He didn't look at me, but I could see the muscle in his sharp jaw twisting. "Ren, get off the counter. It’s not safe. You're right next to the heat."

"I like the heat," I purred, leaning forward until my shoulder was almost brushing his. I rested my chin in my hands, looking up at his handsome, stressed profile with a sharp, calculating glint in my eyes. "Besides, I wanted to ask you something. I heard a rumor about you from Roxy the other week."

Vance let out a long, ragged breath, finally turning his head to look down at me. "Roxy talks too much. What did she say?"

"She said you like both," I murmured, my voice dropping into a soft, intensely heavy tone as I locked my gaze onto his dark gray eyes. "Men and women. Is that true, Vance? What's your actual type?"

Vance’s breath hitched completely. His body went entirely rigid against the counter. A straight, completely devoted boyfriend would have laughed it off or told me to mind my business. But Vance? His face flushed a dark, panicked crimson, his gray eyes darkening with an intense, suffocating heat that told me my arrow had hit a very hidden, very real target.

Before he could recover his green-flag composure, I slid my bare foot slightly closer to his thigh. "Because I know what my type is. I like someone older. Someone who looks perfectly stable on the outside, but is completely feral behind closed doors. Someone... exactly like you."

Vance swallowed hard, his throat bobbing as he stared at my lips, his hands gripping the edge of the marble counter so hard his knuckles turned white.

"But forget about your type for a second," I whispered, reaching out to gently trail my fingers down the sleeve of his flannel shirt on my arm. "Let's talk about the future. Next month is my high school graduation."

"Graduation... right," Vance managed to stammer, his voice a pitch lower than usual, completely thrown off balance by my interrogation.

"Maya is going to be backstage helping with the decorations all day," I purred, looking up at him through my eyelashes with pure, manipulative vulnerability. "I want you in the audience, Vance. I want to look out into the crowd and know you're the one watching me cross that stage. Will you come for my graduation? For me?"

He was completely trapped between his loyalty to my sister and the raw, unhinged obsession radiating off my body. He opened his mouth to answer, his hand slowly rising from the counter, instinctively moving toward my knee—

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

The digital timer on the stove blasted through the kitchen, completely shattering the heavy spell between us.