The way she leaned toward the screen, cautious and hopeful in the same breath. The hesitation in her hands, like she thought the program might see through her before she decided what to say.
I keep telling myself I’m studying her, that it’s curiosity.
But when that guy sat across from her?
Something in me shifted, possessive and primal. It’s a reaction I haven’t earned.
The words came too easily. But I don’t leave them to be found.
I wipe the logs before Silas can catch it in his morning sweep, and I remove all traces of it from the archives so Jace doesn’t seeit in his weekly checks. Just to be safe, I reset the tone indicators in Eris’s chat, too.
Tell him to walk away. Or I will.
Still, the moment replays… her face lit by that soft, red glow, her eyes flicking over the words I shouldn’t have sent.
It shouldn’t mean anything.
But it does.
I close my laptop, lean back, and stare into the dark until my reflection blurs against the glass. Crimson Bay stares back at me, the city always on edge and ready for blood… But the gardenias lining the streets make it a beautiful place.
I wonder what Eris is thinking… What she thought when she read that message. Her expression told me something, but it’s not enough to loosen the obsession settling in my chest.
I don’t even know if Eris is her name or a nickname.
But I know what she looks like now.
And that’s enough to be dangerous.
Ikeep replaying that message in my mind.
Tell him to walk away. Or I will.
It’s the timing. The precision… The way it landed like someone standing too close and whispering in my ear. It shouldn’t have felt real, but it did.
And then it disappeared. Deleted before I could screenshot it. Before I could prove it existed at all.
That should have made it easy to forget, but it didn’t.
That message lingers, catching in my thoughts whenever the room goes quiet.
The city hums through the window, a steady noise that never stops. I’m propped on a ridiculous amount of pillows, halftangled in the sheets on my bed, phone balanced on my chest… And yet, the screen stays black, waiting.
I tell myself I’m not waiting for a message from an AI app.
Then the buzz hits.
But it’s not the app.
It’s a text. A real one.
I don’t have the number saved, but I know who it is.
The dickhead who won’t leave me be…
Probably Daniel:
Still sleeping in my shirt? Still thinking about me? You always do.
