Beatrix

The bar was louder than she had expected, though that wasn’t quite right—she hadn’t known what to expect at all, only that wherever Luelle chose to take her would not be somewhere soft or considered, and the moment they stepped inside, the air thick with heat and something stale beneath it, Bea felt it settle against her skin in a way that made her instinctively draw her shoulders in, as though she could make herself smaller without being noticed.

It wasn’t the noise itself that unsettled her, but the texture of it—the way voices overlapped rather than lifted, laughter edged with something sharper than amusement, the low thrum of music that seemed less like background and more like a pulse running through the room. The lighting didn’t help. Dim, but not intimate. Concealing, rather than flattering. It left too many shadows in the wrong places, and Bea found herself aware of them, aware of the way people occupied space without apology, the way they leant, touched, moved without asking permission from anything or anyone around them.

Luelle, by contrast, seemed entirely at ease.

“Don’t stand there like that,” she said, not unkindly, but without softness either, already guiding Bea further inside with a hand at her back that felt less like encouragement and more like insistence. “It’s your eighteenth. Try to look like you’re enjoying yourself.”

Bea nodded, though she wasn’t sure what that was supposed to look like, and allowed herself to be steered towards the bar, her fingers curling lightly around the edge of the counter as though it might anchor her to something solid, something that didn’t shift under the weight of other people’s presence. She became aware, almost immediately, of how she looked in comparison to everyone else—her skinny jeans, her t-shirt, chosen without much thought, now feeling suddenly… insufficient. Not wrong, exactly. Just not belonging.

The drink arrived before she had fully decided whether she wanted it.

“Start with that,” Luelle said, already lifting her own glass. “Loosen up.”

Bea hesitated only a second before following, the burn sharper than she expected, catching slightly at the back of her throat before settling into something warmer, something that spread just enough to soften the edges of her awareness, not removing it, but blunting it in a way that made the room feel a fraction more distant.

It was somewhere between the second and third drink that she realised she was being watched.

Not in the way she had felt when they first walked in—those quick, passing glances that skimmed rather than settled—but something more deliberate, something that held. She didn’t turn immediately. She became aware of it first, the weight of attention, the sense of being fixed in place by something she couldn’t yet see, and when she finally did look, it was almost against her own instinct.

He didn’t look away.

That, more than anything, was what held her there for a second longer than she should have allowed.

There was nothing hurried about him. No attempt to disguise it. He simply watched, as though he had already decided something and was in no particular rush to act on it, and when he finally did move, it wasn’t abrupt. It was inevitable.

By the time he reached them, Luelle had already noticed.

“Well,” she said lightly, her tone shifting in a way Bea didn’t fully understand but felt nonetheless, something sharpening beneath it, something appraising. “That didn’t take long.”

Cruz’s attention didn’t shift to Luelle immediately. It lingered on Bea first, close enough now that she could see the detail of him properly—the ease in his posture, the confidence that didn’t need to announce itself because it was already assumed, the kind of presence that altered the space around it without effort.

“Eighteen?” he asked, though the answer was already clear.

Bea nodded, suddenly aware of everything at once—the way she was standing, the way her hands had nowhere natural to settle, the way his gaze didn’t move away when it should have.

“Just tonight,” Luelle added, a note of something almost approving threading through her voice. “Thought we’d mark the occasion properly.”

Cruz smiled at that, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes, and then his attention returned to Bea, more focused now, more deliberate.

“Well,” he said, “that calls for another drink.”

She should have refused. The thought passed through her, clear enough to recognise, but it didn’t stay. Not when he was looking at her like that. Not when the attention itself felt like something she hadn’t had before, something that made her feel… seen, in a way that was difficult to separate from something else, something warmer, something that edged into flattery before she had the chance to question it.

“Alright,” she said, softer than she intended.

The next drink came easier. And the one after that easier still.

By then, the room had shifted. Not physically, but in the way she experienced it, the sharpness dulled, the edges less defined, her awareness narrowing until it seemed to centre primarily on him—on the way he spoke to her as though she were already part of his world, on the way his hand found its way to her arm, her waist, casual enough to seem unremarkable, deliberate enough that she noticed every time.

At first, she didn’t pull away.

It felt… expected. Normal, even, within the context of everything else. And when she did feel the flicker of discomfort, it was small enough, fleeting enough, that she dismissed it almost immediately, unsure whether it was something real or simply her own unfamiliarity with the situation.

“You alright?” he asked at one point, his voice closer now, his hand resting a fraction too comfortably against her side.

“Yes,” she said quickly, too quickly, and then, softer, “I’m fine.”

He seemed satisfied with that.

Luelle certainly was. Bea caught it, once or twice, the way her stepmother watched the interaction with something like approval, as though this was exactly how the night was supposed to unfold, as though there was nothing in it that required intervention.

By the time they stepped outside, the air felt colder than it should have, the shift from inside to out catching her slightly off balance, her footing less certain than she would have liked to admit. Cruz stayed close, his hand steadying her in a way that might have been considerate, might have been something else.

“Careful,” he murmured, his mouth close enough to her ear that she felt it rather than heard it.

She let him.

The car was already waiting.

That, too, felt like something she should have questioned, but didn’t.

The drive passed in a blur of half-formed thoughts and fragments of conversation she wouldn’t later be able to fully reconstruct, her head resting lightly against the window at one point, the movement of the car smoothing everything into something indistinct. She was aware of Cruz beside her still, of the way his presence didn’t recede even when he wasn’t speaking, of the way it seemed to fill the space regardless.

Luelle hadn’t said much during the drive, which in itself became noticeable the longer it continued, her presence not absent but… settled, as though she had already decided there was nothing here that required her intervention, one arm resting against the door, her attention drifting in and out of the conversation without ever fully engaging with it, and when Cruz spoke, when his focus shifted toward Bea again, she didn’t interrupt it, didn’t redirect it, simply allowed it to continue as though it were expected.

At one point, as the car slowed slightly at a set of lights, Cruz glanced toward her instead, something brief passing between them that Bea didn’t quite follow, not the words themselves but the ease of it, the familiarity of tone.

“I’ll need her number,” he said.

Luelle didn’t hesitate.

“It’s fine,” she replied, already reaching for her bag, pulling her phone free with a kind of absent efficiency that suggested this wasn’t something she considered worth pausing over. “I’ll give it you.”

Bea turned slightly at that, not sharply, not enough to interrupt, but enough that the moment registered, a small flicker of something she didn’t immediately name, something that didn’t sit entirely comfortably but didn’t quite rise high enough to challenge either.

Luelle read the number out without asking.

Cruz repeated it once, committing it, then nodded.

“Easy,” he said.

And that was it.

The car moved again, the moment passing as though it had held no weight at all, though Bea felt, faintly, that something had shifted without her quite understanding how or when it had happened.

When the car finally stopped, she wasn’t quite ready for it.

“Here?” he asked, though again, it didn’t feel like a question.

“Yes,” Bea said, her voice softer now, the word catching slightly.

When the car finally stopped, Luelle moved first, pushing her door open without hesitation, already stepping out as though the night had gone exactly as intended, leaving Bea a second slower to follow, the shift from inside to out catching her slightly off balance—

She turned back before she fully stepped out, not entirely sure why, only aware that something about the moment felt like it required it, and that was when he leaned in.

The kiss wasn’t forceful. It didn’t need to be.

It was brief, controlled, the kind of contact that lingered more in its implication than its duration, and when he pulled back, there was a faint smile at the corner of his mouth that suggested he already knew exactly what it had done.

“I’ll call you,” he said.

Bea nodded, though she hadn’t given him her number, though she hadn’t thought about that at all.

“Alright,” she replied, the word quiet, almost uncertain.

He didn’t correct it.

By the time she closed the door and the car pulled away, she was left standing there for a second longer than necessary, the night settling back around her in a way that felt different now, altered, as though something had shifted without her fully understanding how.

Inside the car, Cruz leant back into the seat, the ease returning to him as though the entire evening had been nothing more than a mild diversion.

Lucien glanced across at him first.

“Well?” he said.

Cruz exhaled something close to a laugh, low, satisfied, his gaze drifting briefly towards the rear window before returning forward.

“Eighteen,” he said, almost idly. “Sweet enough.”

Dagger smirked at that, leaning back with a quiet shake of his head.

“You’re going to leave it there?” he asked.

Cruz’s expression shifted slightly, not in doubt, but in consideration, as though the answer had already been decided long before the question was asked.

“No,” he said simply. “I think I’ll have a bit of fun with this one.”

Lucien’s mouth curved in response, the understanding immediate, shared without needing to be spoken out loud, and the car continued forward into the night, carrying with it the easy amusement of men who had already moved past the moment, even as, elsewhere, it had only just begun to take hold.