Men around my neighborhood smile at me. But they all leave me cold.
Rhys stirs my blood to a smoking sizzle under my veins. Andhe’san assassin. The person I am least safe with.
When a dangerous man rapes you, you shouldn’t drool over a bad boy. But here I am. And Rhys is bad. But not to me. He’d never hurt me.
I pick up Basil and kiss him. “Who knew?”
‘I didn’t get a chance to talk to my brother,’Basil grumbles, his leaves flopping with exaggerated offense. ‘MyIDENTICAL TWIN.What if Rhys kills him?’
“First of all, all basil plants are identical.” I put him back down on my cocktail table.
‘Blasphemy.’
“We’re calling him Little Basil, by the way. And you’re Daddy Basil,” I argue, heading to the kitchen to get my watering can and to avoid eye contact.
‘I like THAT. Daddy Basil has a nice ring to it.’
“And Rhys is not going to kill a plant. He looked…careful. You saw how he cleans his guns. People who keep order like that don’t murder plants.”
‘He might NEGLECT Little Basil,’ Basil fires back.
I return to the living room and pour a measured line of water into Basil’s soil.
“Which is why I bought the camera scope,” I remind him. “You should be thanking me for my strategic thinking.” And almost falling off the ledge for Little Basil.
‘I’m thanking you for nothing,’Basil grumbles.
“Careful, or you’ll end up as pesto,” I warn with a wicked pinch.
Behind Basil, Ivy chimes in from the top of my bookshelves.
‘I think it was romantic,’she says, her voice clipped and proper.‘The way he saved her from falling off the ledge. Very action hero of him. I’d have lent a vine to wrap around your ankle myself if he didn’t pull you in.’
‘You’d have fallen out the window, too,’Basil mutters, perpetually unimpressed.
Swinging in her hanging pot bolted to the ceiling, Fernsticks up for Ivy in her smoker’s rasp,‘I’d have used my fronds to grab hold of her.’
My stomach flutters at the idea that if my leafy friends tried to help, we’d all have crashed into the courtyard. It should’ve terrified me, hanging fifteen stories. It mostly did. But everything vanished when Rhys looked into my eyes with a brewing pulse of heat. It was low and fierce and wildly inconvenient to absorb while I was trying not to die.
‘He’s probably nailing that window shut right now,’Basil mocks.
I sigh at my little squad. I know the voices aren’t real. Not the way other people would understand, anyway. My plants help me sort through the noise in my head. Ivy and Fern say what I’m too afraid to admit. Basil brings me back when I drift too far.
It’s the perfect balance I need.
I flop backward on my sofa with a sharp exhale, staring at the ceiling fan spinning lazy circles. “You’re impossible, Basil,” I murmur.
‘He’s too dangerous,’he counters.
I catch the smug tilt of his leaves. He always has to have the last word.
‘He’s so handsome,’Ivy sighs, brushing leaves against a romance book cover.
“He’s my boyfriend, I don’t care what he looks like.” I roll onto my side and pull the collar of his T-shirt up to my nose to smell the soft black cotton again.
I can never wash it. I’ll disturb the molecules of him woven into the fabric.
‘What does his apartment look like?’Fern asks, swinging away.
