Addicted to the Wrong One

He was everything she should avoid. She became everything he couldn’t control.

Landon Angelo Malik is not a man people survive twice. Feared across their town, he is known for his brutality, his silence, and the way problems simply disappear when he decides they should. He doesn’t threaten. He ends things. Cleanly. Permanently. Without hesitation. He has spent his entire life becoming untouchable. Until her. Layla Valentina Summers is the opposite of everything he is. Loved, radiant, and effortlessly warm, she moves through life like she was never meant to understand darkness. People are drawn to her without effort — like she is something pure the world is afraid to ruin. And yet she looks at him like he is not a warning. But a question she wants to answer. Landon doesn’t believe in softness. He doesn’t believe in people like her belonging anywhere near him. But the moment her green eyes meet his grey ones, something inside him shifts — something sharp, unfamiliar, and impossible to silence. It isn’t affection. It is obsession learning how to breathe. Layla should run from him. Everyone in her life would tell her to. But fear never comes first when she looks at him. Instead, there is curiosity. Pull. Heat she doesn’t understand and doesn’t know how to name. Because Landon doesn’t touch her like he wants her — not yet. He watches. Waits. Holds himself back like control is the only thing keeping him from becoming the very thing people already think he is. But control always cracks. And when it does, he won’t ask her if she can handle him. He will decide for her. And by then… it will already be too late. Because addiction doesn’t feel like danger when you’re in it. It feels like need.