His POV

I only came because they wouldn’t shut up about it.

The club is loud in that way that isn’t fun—music pounding too hard, bass vibrating through the table legs, people yelling just to hear their own voices. I’m not drinking. Never planned to. I nurse the same glass of soda while the others rotate shots like it’s a sport.

We’re crammed around a circular table near the edge of the floor. Cheap lights. Sticky surfaces. My kind of place to leave early.

That’s when I notice the shift.

It’s subtle at first—one of the guys leaning forward, another going quiet mid-sentence. Then I follow their line of sight and see her.

“She’s insane,” someone mutters. “At the bar.” “Older. Definitely older.”

She’s sitting alone at the bar.

Older than us. Not by much, but enough that it shows in the way she moves—calm, unhurried, like she belongs here without needing to prove it. She’s drinking, but not sloppily. One glass. Controlled. Elegant in a way that makes everything around her look messier.

She’s… a lot.

The kind of woman my life was never built to run into.

They start talking. Whispering, laughing, doing that thing guys do when they want to look brave without actually doing anything. I don’t join in. I don’t need to. I already know how this goes—she’s out of our league, end of story.

I lean back in my chair, eyes drifting anywhere but her. When her dress is simple, but it fits like it was made with intention. Hair loose, falling over one shoulder. When she laughs at something the bartender says, it’s soft—controlled.

I'm lying if I'm not feeling the way how she carries herself in the place where everyone's literally eyeing on her.

The way the air changes when someone like her exists nearby.

“She’s totally clocking us,” someone mutters.

I don’t respond. I don’t look.

But then I feel it—eyes on me. Not the group. Me.

I glance up before I can stop myself.

She’s looking straight at our table now. No embarrassment. No hesitation. Just curiosity, sharp and deliberate, like she’s already decided something and is waiting to confirm it.

Our eyes meet.

I expect her to look away.

She doesn’t.

Instead, she tilts her head slightly, lips curving around the rim of her glass, and for a second it feels like the rest of the club blurs out. Like I’m the only thing she’s actually paying attention to.

That doesn’t make sense. It shouldn’t.

I look away first.

My friends are still whispering, still watching her like she’s a dare no one wants to take. I focus on the condensation sliding down my glass, on the music, on anything that keeps my heart from doing something stupid.

Then the chair across from me scrapes softly against the floor.

The talking stops.

A familiar scent—clean, expensive, not from this place—cuts through the smoke and alcohol.

I look up.

She’s standing there now. Right in front of our table.

And for the first time that night, I realize she didn’t come over for them.

She came for me.