The party hadn’t slowed down just because the two of you disappeared.

Music still rattled the windows, laughter spilling out onto the lawn, red cups littering the porch like casualties. No one noticed when Billy shoved through the side gate and vanished into the dark with you at his heels.

The argument ignited fast.

One wrong look. One wrong comment.

Voices rose, sharp and reckless, words thrown with the kind of precision only people who knew each other too well could manage. You shoved his chest. He grabbed your wrist. You yanked free.

“Don’t walk away from me,” he snapped.

“Make me,” you shot back.

He did.

Not the way he meant to.

You backed up until the wooden fence pressed into your spine. His arm came down beside your head, boxing you in. You were both breathing hard, anger crackling in the small space between you.

“Move,” you said.

“No.”

You tried to slip past him. He caught you again — and this time, without thinking, his hand came up.

Not hard.

Not crushing.

But there.

Fingers closing around your throat.

The second it happened, his eyes widened.

He froze.

The noise of the party vanished. No music. No laughter. Just the two of you and the sound of your breathing colliding.

His grip loosened instantly.

“Shit—” he started.

But you didn’t pull away.

You didn’t panic.

You looked straight at him.

Not at his mouth. Not at his hand.

Into his eyes.

Dead into his pupils.

Like you were searching for something.

Testing him.

And then, calm as if you were commenting on the weather, you said

“Harder.”

The word hit him like a punch.

He recoiled as if burned, hand dropping instantly.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” he breathed.

You stepped around him, brushing past his shoulder like nothing had happened.

“Guess we’re both asking that,” you said, and disappeared back toward the house.

Billy stood there alone for a long second, staring at the fence, heart hammering like it wanted out of his chest.

He didn’t go after you.

He couldn’t.

When he finally came back inside, sweat cooling on his skin, Tommy clocked him immediately.

“Well?” Tommy asked from the couch. “How’d she get away?”

Billy grabbed a beer, hands shaking just enough to notice.

“I let her go.”

Tommy blinked. “You what?”

“I let her go,” he repeated. Then, rougher, “Because shit got weird, okay?”

Tommy frowned. “Weird how?”

Billy took a long drink, then laughed under his breath.

“I had her cornered. We were fightin’. Normal altercation.”

He swallowed.

“And then my hand ended up around her throat.”

Tommy’s eyes widened.

“She looks me dead in my pupils,” Billy said quietly, staring at the floor, “into my soul… and says, ‘Harder.’”

Silence.

Tommy stared. “And you ran?”

Billy shook his head slowly.

“No,” he said. “I realized I was one second away from crossing a line I’d never come back from.”

He leaned back against the counter, unsettled.

“And the worst part?”

Tommy waited.

“She wasn’t scared.”