Cassius:
My kind of violence.
You?
Cassius:
Meetings and pretending I don’t hate them.
Something tells me you wear a suit well.
Oh.Wow.That was bolder than I am.I don’t flirt with strangers.I don’t flirt, period.I wait for the shame to show up and find only a little thrill.The truth is, I’m having fun.I’m allowed to enjoy this.I’m allowed to be curious.
He sends a photo.It’s closely cropped.His dark sleeve.His silver cufflink catching light.My breath snags.Heat slips low.I shouldn’t like this, but I do.I zoom in on the back of his hand and feel ridiculous and alive at the same time, also a little dizzy.
Cassius:
To help your imagination, Lindy girl.
three
I watchthe sky go from bruised to gold and stare at Melinda’s last text like a dumbass.It’s not the subtle flirting that undoes me.It’s the unknown.It’s the mystery of her.I never get my dick in a twist, so it has to be because I don’t know what she looks like.Hell, she could be hideous.I’m losing sleep over some ugly bitch.
But she’s not a bitch.
In a handful of messages, I know she’s kind and smart.I want to know everything about her.No, Ihaveto know.
If I’m honest, what she looks like matters a hell of a lot less than what I know.My bones have already stamped her beautiful, sight unseen.Beauty that’ll match the way she texts: precise, a little feral at the edges.What I wouldn’t do to see her when she’s rattled, unraveled.From a handful of texts I can almost see her.All clean lines and quiet curves.Maybe reserved.Her words read literal, but there’s a catch in them too.I want to find where her control frays, where the editor unbuttons.I want to see the moment she stops apologizing for wanting; I want to cause it.Maybe my imagination is running wild with what I want to read between the lines, but I don’t think so.I think I’m right.Either way, I can’t stop imagining it.
But every time I close my eyes, the same picture plays: a woman under a streetlight, chin up, the gold ring of it skimming her silhouette like somebody painted her to be noticed.She didn’t flinch when the dark looked back.That image keeps sliding in where it doesn’t belong, but my body already decided whose gravity I’m in and forgot to ask my permission.
I’m split down the middle.The woman under the streetlight hit me like a live wire; the woman on my phone threads a calm I can’t put down.I can’t reconcile them.One drags me under, one pins me in place.It’s about knowing too much and not enough at the same time.Words gentle in my palm.A shadow under a streetlamp sparking through me like a current.I don’t know how to hold both.I want the woman who writes and the woman who feels like a blade still nicking my skin.I want both.I want them to be one.Keep Melinda, and somehow still find the girl under the lamp.If I manage both, I don’t know whether I’ll kneel or burn; if I burn, the city goes with me.
Adrian is probably going to erase my identity and slap me with a fake criminal record for this shit.He’s got enough on me to lock me up for the rest of my life just to prove a point.I dial his new burner number anyway.
“Cassius.”He answers on the first ring.It’s not even six in the morning, but he probably didn’t sleep either.Atlas is the only one who sleeps.He doesn’t carry the baggage the rest of us do.
“I need a favor,” I say, putting my phone on speaker.
“Lay it on me,” Adrian says.
“I’m going to give you a cellphone number.I want to know everything there is to know about the person who owns it.Everything.”
“Fuckin’ hell, Cassius.Is this the number that texted you?”
“Yes.”There’s no point in lying.We’re a lot of things, us Ashenheart brothers, but we aren’t liars, especially not to each other.It’s the only way all the shit we do works without exploding.
“Caleb said this would be a problem,” Adrian mutters.“Told me you’d get too curious.I should’ve made you get a new burner the second it happened.”
“Fucking tattletale,” I grunt, leaning back against the counter.“Anyway, she won’t be a problem.Right now she has no clue who I am, and you’re going to figure out who she is.”
“Jesus.What happened tonever engage with civilians?You’ve drilled that shit into us almost daily since we were kids.”
“I didn’t plan this, Adrian.She just texted the wrong number.Don’t make it more than it is.”
“But you texted back.”
“I don’t know why I did,” I admit.“It’s tiring only talking to people who want something from me.She doesn’t want anything.She asked me about books.”
