Locke:
Neither is most love. Doesn’t make it feel less good.
My entire body tenses when a guy appears beside her, beer in hand as he invites himself into her space. He’s the type of asshat who wears cheap cologne and a cheaper smile, too confident for someone so forgettable.
He slides into her booth like she’s been waiting for him.
But she hasn’t. I can tell by the way her shoulders stiffen.
My thumb hovers over the admin thread… The one we’re not supposed to use for anything personal. The one meant for testing backend response rates.
I can’t hear Eris from where I stand, though I don’t need to. Her dismissal is clear in her get-fucked expression. She doesn’t wear the illusion of approachable or open, but that doesn’t stop the guy from trying more than he should.
By the time I register the irritation curling through me, my fingers are already flying across my phone screen.
I hit send before I can think better of it.
Locke:
Tell him to walk away. Or I will.
Eris reads it, a grin spreading across her lips as she glances around the bar. She surveys the crowd like she’s looking for… Me. The person watching her.
After a few mumbled words, she stands from the booth and moves between the bodies. I worry I may have scared her until she meets my gaze from the dance floor.
Her gray eyes are wild, locked on me like she’s spotted her prey. But there’s no way she knows I’ve sent the message, that I’m manipulating the HimLock chat.
No.
She just felt my attention.
Still feels it.
I don’t dare move and break the spell between us. Even if I have to stand here for hours, I can’t look away from her gaze. Not while she’s leaving me so… breathless.
Someone finally walks between us, and then she’s gone. I catch one last glimpse of her as she walks out the door into the night. My feet carry me out of the bar behind Eris and her friend, but they’re nowhere to be found.
I stop just outside the quiet carpark and delete the message I sent before it gets me into trouble. When I get home, I’ll scrub the logs too… Make it look as if it never happened.
The loft is quiet when I get back.
A glow filters into the hallway from the crack in Silas’s door. I peer inside, but he doesn’t look up from his desk, headphones in, his mind somewhere else. He keeps to himself most nights, so I’m not surprised.
I head toward the kitchen, snatching a bottle of water from the cabinet before I make my way into the living room.
Jace is asleep on the couch, one arm thrown over his face, laptop still open beside him like he coded until sleep won. He’s still fully dressed in jeans and a hoodie, one shoe on while the other sits on the floor.
I don’t turn on the lights.
The city bleeds through the windows instead, pale and restless. The only actual light comes from the home screen on my laptop, a deep red glow, the cursor blinking like a heartbeat I can’t sync to.
I didn’t mean to type that message. Not really.
I still can’t believe I did it.
My role is observation… document user patterns, flag anomalies, monitor emotional escalation. Keep the line between connection and control clear.
But that moment at the bar…
