I looked at my thumb again. The sharpie text stared back. ASK > ASSUME.
I grabbed the marker from my pocket and retraced the letters, making them darker, deeper.
"Boundaries are punk," I agreed.
The bus engine rumbled to life beneath us. We were moving. Away from Seattle. Away from where she was hiding. But out there, in the digital ether, my voice was finding hers, carrying a message that no contract could contain.
We want to learn, not take.
Ball's in your court, fox.
I closed the laptop. The upload was done. The signal was out. Now came the hardest part of the rock and roll lifestyle.
Waiting.
FIVE
Zia
The user interface of my phone looked different when you viewed it through the lens of a panic attack. The icons were too sharp, the backlight too blue. I had just sent the text to Rowan.
Can't do it. Cancel the contract
Then, with hands that felt like they belonged to someone else, I had systematically blocked every number associated with Riot Theory.
Rowan Quill. Blocked.
Alfred King. Blocked.
Euan Onyx. Blocked.
Kit Wilde. Blocked.
Even the official band account. Blocked.
Then I threw the phone onto the duvet like it was a live grenade and curled into the smallest ball physics would allow in the corner of my loft.
Four in. Six out.
Rain lashed against the warehouse windows, the familiar Seattle percussion that usually soothed me. Tonight, it soundedlike static interference. Like a signal trying to punch through a noise floor that was too high.
I had just walked away from the biggest payday of my career. I had walked away from a contract that offered me protections I hadn't even known how to ask for.
First clause kills, second clause cures.
Rowan’s words echoed in the empty space of my apartment. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to banish the memory of the green room. The way Euan had looked at the mixing board, like he was memorizing it. The way Kit had made himself small in the doorway. The way Alfie had looked at me with that devastating, open-wound hope.
They had been perfect. That was the problem.
If they had been assholes, if they had postured and demanded and tried to scent-mark the air around me, I could have handled it. I had a script for assholes. I had a folder full of polite refusals and a lawyer on retainer for harassment suits.
I didn't have a script for three Alphas who looked at me like I was the frequency they’d been trying to tune in their whole lives, and thenbacked off.
My brain kept replaying the moment in the hallway. The citrus-ozone scent I couldn't smell but clearlytheycould. The medical reality of my scent-blindness colliding with their biological imperative.
They’re terrified of contaminating you,Rowan had said.
What did that even mean?
