And then the phone call.
I could still feel the phone against my ear, the cheap plastic warm from my hand. The city outside had gone quiet, but Halo’s breathing filled the space like its own weather system. At first it was even, controlled, the way soldiers breathe in movies. Then I started talking the way I did, and the rhythm changed. Rougher. Shorter. Like every inhale scraped past something he didn’t want me to see.
He tried so hard to sound untouched. Detached. Like he was above it, above me. But the tiny cracks gave him away. The hitch in his breath when I asked if he was hard. The way his words started coming out lower, like he was gritting his teeth aroundthem. The almost-sound he made when my name slipped out of him.
He hated that he wanted it. I could hear that in every word.
I knew I wanted to tease him again the second I was back inside and the door was locked behind me. With a road between us and four stories of air, I got something back that I didn’t have when he was right in front of me: distance, and with it, a courage that felt like slipping on someone else’s leather jacket. I still knew what kind of man he was, what he’d done for me, what he could do to me, but up there on that roof he was the one in the dark, and I was the one under the light.
I felt protected enough to be bold. Not untouchable, but buffered. Safer. Like I could poke at the edges of him with a stick and he couldn’t quite reach me.
It wasn’t just about safety, though. That was the part that really unnerved me. It felt like playing with control. Like finding a live wire and realizing if I held onto the rubber part, I could make it spark without getting burned. It was a step further than sexting, a step beyond phone sex, because he was actually there. He was close enough to see me, close enough that I could almost feel his gaze on my skin, even if I couldn’t see him.
I wish I could have watched him.
I kept replaying it: the way his breathing went tight, the scrape in his voice, how it sounded when I pushed him past whatever line he’d drawn for himself. I don’t know what I expected from a man like him. Maybe something cocky: dirty talk and swagger. What I got instead was restraint, stretched thin to the point of snapping.
And it was that restraint, more than anything, that did me in.
I should’ve felt ashamed. I should’ve curled in on myself, cheeks burning, nauseous with embarrassment and secondhand horror that I’d actually said those things out loud. That I’d asked him those questions. That I’d turned him on on purpose.
I knew how I was supposed to react. I’d done it before, that full-body cringe, after sleeping with the wrong person or texting something too bold. Draw the covers over my head, wish I could rewind a day, promise myself I’d be boring and normal and safe next time.
But instead, lying there in the dark with the phone still on my nightstand, I felt… powerful.
Not invincible. Not safe. Just… like I had leverage, even if it was flimsy and temporary and mostly in my head. Like I’d gotten under his skin in a way bullets and orders and combat hadn’t. I had seen him furious. I had seen him efficient. Now I’d heard him come undone, just a little, and that felt like something I could hold onto.
After he hung up, the silence in my apartment felt too big, too loud. My body still hummed, nerves sparking, skin too tight. I slid under the sheets, still flushed and burning, heart racing like I’d run up ten flights of stairs instead of just speaking on the phone.
My hand drifted down, almost on autopilot, guided by the echo of his voice in my head. Not frantic, not grabbing. Slow. Testing. I let myself revisit every shift in his breathing, every ragged edge in his words, the way he’d said my name like it cost him something.
That deep, heavy rasp tightened every muscle in my belly just thinking about it. It wasn’t just lust, it was that he didn’twantto want me. That he was fighting it and losing anyway.
That made it worse. That made it better. That made it unbearably hot.
I pressed my teeth into my forearm to muffle any sound I might make, the cotton tasting like laundry detergent and desperation. When release finally broke over me, sharp and breath-stealing, it didn’t feel like something shameful stolen in the dark.
It felt like reclamation.
A twisted little crown I set on my own head, alone in my room. A way of proving to myself that I wasn’t just a scared girl huddled in a corner watching men die around her. I wasn’t just a witness. I wasn’t just a problem Halo had to solve.
I was writing parts of this story too, and I could make him turn the page.
Eventually, exhaustion dragged me sideways into something like sleep, but it was thin and restless, full of half-dreams. I woke up before my alarm, throat dry, body overheated under the blankets. Gray light seeped around the edges of the curtains.
I showered, standing under the too hot spray until my skin bloomed pink. The bathroom filled with steam, the mirror fogging over slowly, my reflection blurring out at the edges like I was halfway between two people and couldn’t quite commit to either.
My hand moved over my stomach, fingers tracing idle circles, as I replayed the night again. Not just the alley and the terror, but the phone call. The way a man who killed two people without hesitation still managed to sound unbearably controlled, even when I knew,I knew, he was coming apart on the other end of the line.
What did that say about me? About what turned me on?
I knew what kind of man he was. I’d seen it. Heard it. Smelled the gunpowder and metallic tang of blood. I should have been terrified of that, of him. And sometimes I was. In the daylight, with the memory of bodies on the floor still raw, I was scared in the normal, rational way you’re supposed to be scared of someone like Halo.
But when it was dark and quiet and his voice brushed my ear, that fear twisted into something else. Something that made my thighs press together and my breath slow instead of speed up. I didn’t feel small then. I didn’t feel helpless.
Maybe that’s where he’d get me. Not with a gun or a threat, but with the way safety and danger lived in the same place in my head when it came to him.
I toweled off and padded into the bedroom, wrapped in soft cotton and indecision. I stood in front of my open closet for a long time, staring at the rows of clothes like they were a multiple-choice test.
