“Yes.” His voice doesn’t shake. His eyes don’t leave mine. “Dead serious. Please, Willow. Back off on Saint Shade.”
My pulse stutters. For the first time all night, the edge in me dulls just a little. I don’t know what the hell tomorrow looks like, but in this second, standing behind my shop across from the world’s most mysterious magician, I know one thing for sure:
Neither of us is walking away untouched.
The silence between us stretches, thick as blood. His plea still echoes in my head, raw and unpolished in a way that makes my chest ache. He isn’t bluffing. And for reasons I don’t want to unpack, I can’t brush it off.
“So that’s the deal then.” My voice is quieter than I mean it to be. “I keep your secret, you keep mine. A stalemate.”
He nods once, slow, deliberate. “A pact.”
The word lands heavy, final.
I huff out a laugh that sounds nothing like humor. “Do people usually seal blackmail pacts with a handshake or just… finger guns across a corpse?”
He finally cracks a smile, and damn, it’s a really nice smile. And how weird is it that his teeth are familiar? I’ve seen that teasing smile on screen hundreds of times. “You’re funny, Dagger Kitten. That doesn’t come out enough in your videos.”
And there he admits it. That he’s watched my videos just as much as I’ve watched his. “You know, it doesn’t quite seem fair,” I say as I fold my arms over my chest. “You know my name. How about you share yours? Or do you want me to go digging for it on the internet?”
His expression sobers a little bit. He debates, I see it in his eyes. “Kade,” he finally says.
I literally roll my eyes. “No, it’s not.”
His gaze narrows and he huffs a laugh. “What do you mean?”
“You’re the most un-Kade-like Kade that never existed,” I say as I look him up and down again. Everything in me riots against the name. I feel it with every ounce of confidence in me that he’s lying. “There isn’t a chance in hell your name is Kade. It just doesn’t fit.”
He shrugs his shoulders and looks away, which is a tell. “I don’t know what to tell you. My name’s Kade Arden. You can go ask any of my staff. Though they might not confirm. They all had to sign NDA’s as soon as they were hired.”
“Very convenient,” I say, deadpan.
He just smirks and shrugs.
Behind the fence that blocks off the other side of the block, I hear a door slam shut, and then loud, ruckus voices as they head out into the night, All Hallows Eve still young.
“I need to get this taken care of,” I say, feeling awkward all of a sudden. I nod my head toward the wrapped body in the bed of my truck. “Do you, uh… need a ride home or something?”
One of his brows kicks up and he actually blushes. “I drove here.”
“Of course you did.” I roll my eyes. “Stalker.”
That pulls a short, rough laugh out of him, and against my better judgment, it eases something in me. It shouldn’t. He didn’t deny it when I called him a stalker. Why the hell does that word feel hot?
“Look, you obviously know what you’re doing,” he says, his tone softer. “But I’m going to say it anyway. Back roads only. Don’t drive the Strip with that thing in the back. And go to a random carwash when you’re done, somewhere outside the city. Make sure that truck bed shines.”
My eyes narrow. He’s suspiciously good at this shit. “So, what now?” I move on, because I know he won’t answer if I ask him why he seems to know what he’s talking about. “We just… walk away? Pretend we didn’t just become the weirdest kind of partners-in-crime?”
His mouth curves, not quite a smile. “Blackmail you later?”
The ridiculousness of it almost makes me laugh. Almost. Instead, I nod once. “Guess so.”
I pull the driver’s door to the truck open, my boots crunching against the gravel at my feet. Not-Kade takes ten steps down the alley, toward the main road. But he turns back just before he steps out onto the sidewalk. Green eyes, serious, unreadable.
Dammit. Why is he even more beautiful than I imagined?
Breaking the eye contact, I pull myself up and into the truck. When I yank the door closed and pull my seatbelt on, I check the rearview mirror, and he’s gone.
I grip the steering wheel before I start the engine. My whole body hums with adrenaline and something else I really don’t want to name.
