John Shelby had fought in France, where mud, smoke, and blood pressed into his skin until he could no longer tell where he ended and the battlefield began. He knew the sound of men screaming, the weight of a comrade’s body collapsing against him. But none of those memories clung to him half as fiercely as you did.

Beverley.

He said your name like a punctuation mark in his life. It cut through the shouting of the Shelby brothers, through the endless clatter of business and war, like a steady drumbeat. You were the one certainty he allowed himself in a world that shifted constantly under his boots. And he was obsessed with you. He never bothered to hide it.

You were twenty-one, short, average-built, white-skinned, and to him, utterly unmatched. He was undone by your electric blue eyes—small, but sharp, so alive it was as though sparks leapt from them. Those eyes could pin him down better than any gun ever had. Your hollow cheeks and puffy lips marked your face with a kind of fragile severity, and yet when you laughed, when your lips curved at some comic foolishness, the whole hardness of life fell away.

He worshipped your hair—platinum blonde, straight, long enough to brush your elbows. He loved the way it tangled in his fingers, loved the light it caught even in the dim corners of the Garrison. He loved the contrast of your short legs and long arms, the way you carried yourself in washed, fine clothes that never screamed wealth but whispered resilience. And that bronze amulet you wore—always—drove him near-mad with tenderness. It was your mark, your sign, something he imagined pressed against your skin when he wasn’t there to do it himself.

Your scent—sweet cotton candy shampoo, green as freshly cut grass, sharp as tea tree—clung to him even when he stumbled home drunk or stormed away angry. He carried it into fights, into business meetings, into nights when the guns kept him awake. It steadied him like no prayer could.

You were loving, though sometimes grumpy, always apprehensive when the Shelby chaos crept too close. He watched the way you scratched your head when you were confused and smiled at it like a fool—your smallest gestures were treasures. Comedy drew your laughter, and gambling drew your fire, and he adored both sides of it.

And then there were the secrets. He knew, even if you thought he didn’t. He had seen the way you could blend into a room like smoke, unseen, unnoticed—like a spy. He had seen the way your fists clenched, the sharpness of your stance, the hidden truth of your skill at boxing. He never spoke it aloud, but it thrilled him. Because it meant you were dangerous in a way that belonged only to him.

You liked red and Tiffany blue, and he had begun to notice those colors everywhere, weaving them into gifts, ribbons, trinkets, tokens. He wanted to see you wrapped in them, shining in the shades you loved.

And the hamster—God, the hamster. He had never thought he’d love a creature like that, but watching you fuss over it, watching your electric eyes soften as you cared for the small thing—it made him ache with love for you all over again.

His family saw him as reckless, hot-headed, a fighter who could not sit still. But with you, John slowed. He became tender, almost shy. He was obsessed, yes—completely. He called your name more often than necessary, said it like a reminder to himself that you were real, that you were his.

Because for all the blood he had spilled, for all the chaos of the Shelby name, you were the only thing in his world that felt like peace.

Trepidation, exuberance and a deep sated desperation with relief filled John as the fucking war finally ended. John stepped back to Birmingham eagerly with his brothers and fellow soldiers. His eyes searched for yours amidst the streets filled with women and children, eager to see you.