Those curves. Full hips. Soft stomach pressing against the thin fabric. The same body I remember from that night; real curves, not the sharp angles I usually see in this business. My feet won’t move. Like they’re bolted to the concrete.
Fuck.
A larger ginger cat appears from nowhere, weaving between her legs like it owns the place. She crouches down, scratches behind its ears, says something I can’t hear. The cat responds with what looks like a purr.
And I see her face.
She’s smiling. Actually smiling. At a fucking cat.
Who the hell smiles these days? Real smiles, not the razorblade grins I see in boardrooms and back alleys. Not the painted-on bullshit that comes before someone asks for money or mercy. Just… soft. Genuine.
When was the last time I saw that? A face that wasn’t calculating an angle or hiding a knife?
Suka.
I go still.
It’s her. Mary.
The girl from the apartment. The wine-soaked accident. The kiss I haven’t been able to forget.
The one I imagined fucking until she was screaming, her pussy clenching around me as she came, over and over, her full tits bouncing with every thrust, her pink nipples pinched between my fingers until she gasped for air. I’d pictured her shattering under me, that sweet, honest moan breaking free as I licked her clit, made her come on my tongue, my fingers, my cock; each time harder, wetter, until she was a trembling mess, begging for more.
She rises, brushing dirt from her palms, and for a split second, her eyes drift across the complex. They don’t stop on my balcony—I’m too far back in the shadows—but something about the way she moves tells me she’s looking for something. Or someone.
Her balcony is the only one with life. Green spilling over the rails, herbs reaching toward sunlight, flowers fighting against the desert heat. In a building full of dead windows and closed doors, she’s created something that breathes.
She waters a small tomato plant with the kind of attention most people reserve for newborns. Gentle. Patient. Like she’s coaxing life out of nothing.
Jesus.
Of all the apartments in Vegas. Of all the buildings. Of all the fucking coincidences in the universe.
She’s right there.
The woman I can’t stop thinking about. The woman whose taste is still burned into my memory. The woman who grabbed me like she had every right to touch what she wanted.
Living directly across from me.
And she has no idea.
10
Mary
Iswipe my badge at the side door and walk into Brightside National like I’m being led to a guillotine. The A/C blasts me in the face, all minty and cold and somehow smug, like it knows I barely slept.
Last night’s shadow still sticks to the back of my brain, even though I keep trying to shake it off like a spiderweb I maybe imagined.
Inside, everything’s just as beige and fluorescent as ever.
Stephanie spots me before I make it to my desk. She’s wearing some kind of fitted coral pantsuit with heels that click like she choreographed them. Her lip gloss is aggressively pink. Her smile isn’t.
“Oh wow,” she says, voice like someone reviewing a failed appetizer. “Bold move, Mary. Going for clearance rack chic before the quarterly visit?”
I don’t look up from my tote bag. “Thanks. It’s calledfunctioning under capitalism.”
Janice lets out a nasal snort behind the counter and taps her acrylics against the tablet she’s pretending to check appointments on. “Don’t be salty just ‘cause not everyone got the memo about power colors.”
