The hallway feels colder than it did minutes earlier, sterile and too bright. The kind of light that makes me aware of every flaw I just exposed, every lie I told myself while the moon was the only thing shining across us.
My phone buzzes as I reach the stairwell, and I take the deepest breath I can muster.
Whisper:
Are you with her?
I stare at the screen, contemplating another lie.
Cipher:
Not anymore.
His reply comes fast.
Whisper:
We’re all screwed, aren’t we?
I don’t argue or agree. There’s no point in trying to deny it, which is exactly what I should be doing.
But I can’t.
Because we are.
We have been since the night she typed her name into the app and asked the void if she should flirt or confess.
Hollow:
We were the second she appeared in our system.
I stop midway down the stairs, glancing back toward the stairwell door. The need to stay is clawing at my throat. But I know I should leave. It’s the right thing to do.
This was the onlyrightdecision I’ve made in weeks.
I can still see her in my head… Bare shoulders, tousled hair, eyes that can flay me open. The ghost of her stays under my skin, behind my ribs, like something I’ve buried too deep to get rid of.
I don’t breathe properly until I hit the street.
And even then, I don’t stop thinking about her.
The security feed has no sound, but I can still hear her laugh.
It plays across her lips, brief and unguarded, in the middle of a conversation with Romily Sokolov outside her building. She’s holding coffee, her ink-black hair loose in the wind, sunlight cutting across her bare shoulder.
For a second, she looks free.
And that cuts me deep, makes it worse.
Because she isn’t free.
Not really.
Not anymore.
She belongs to us now, even if she doesn’t know it yet. We won’t take her freedom the way her ex is, but we’re also still not on the same page about how to take care of him. Jace wants tobeat him within an inch of life. Silas wants to take that last inch and just kill him.
I don’t understand how the law works in Crimson Bay, and I’d rather not go to jail for life after I’ve just found the woman of my dreams.
