I push past him, the bell chiming my exit, and flee into the cool night air. I don’t look back. I walk, fast at first, then almost at a run, not stopping until I’m back at my building. I race up the five flights of stairs and fumble with the lock to my apartment.
I slam the door behind me and lean against it, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.
The silence of my apartment rushes in. It’s not a comfort anymore. It’s just an absence, an absence now filled with him.
Cassian.
I said I wasn’t afraid of him.
I think I was lying.
Four
Cassian
Thelittlebellonthe door chimes, and she’s gone.
I stand there for a second, caught in the wake of her departure. The air where she stood feels colder, emptier. I watch through the glass as she disappears into the night, her pace quickening from a walk to something close to a run. She’s fleeing. A dark, possessive satisfaction coils hot in my gut.
I crossed a line.
The rule was simple: Watch. Don’t touch. My penance was to observe, not to interfere. But just now, when I stood in her way? I saw it. A flicker of something in those wide, dark eyes. Fear. It was faint, but it was there. It was the most terrible, addicting thing I’ve ever seen. It means she’s not empty. It means there’s still something in there to hurt.
And I’m the one who hurt it.
“Hey, man, you buyin’ that?”
The cashier’s bored voice snaps me out of my thoughts. I look down at the bag of ice in my hand, the plastic slick with condensation. The pain in my knuckles is a dull, distant throb. I don’t need the ice anymore. The encounter with her was a better drug than any painkiller.
“Nah,” I say, tossing the bag onto the counter. I flash the kid a grin that I know is more predatory than friendly. “Found something better.”
I walk out of the store, the bell chiming my own exit. The night air feels good. I feel good. I feel fucking alive. My exhaustion is gone, burned away by a fresh surge of adrenaline.
Aria.
I say her name in my head. It feels right. It’s a soft name for a girl who seems so hard, so unbreakable on the surface. The secret isn’t her name; it’s why I know it.
I start walking, not toward my apartment but in the direction she ran, toward Ash Street. I don’t follow her. I’m not that sloppy, but I need to see the building again, her building.
It’s a plain, brick-faced thing, indistinguishable from a dozen others on the block, but I know it better than my own. I stand across the street, shrouded in the shadow of an awning, and my eyes go right to it. Fifth floor, third window from the left. Her window. For years it was just a square of darkness I watched on my pilgrimages. Now it’s different. It’s her territory, and I’ve finally trespassed.
I should go home. I have work in the morning. A shit job at a construction site downtown. Hauling drywall, mixing concrete, breaking my fucking back for twelve hours a day. It’s mindless, brutal work. It’s perfect. It keeps the noise in my head down to a manageable roar. It leaves me too tired to think, too sore to fight, usually.
Sleep is the last thing on my mind. The thought of my empty, silent apartment is unbearable. The restlessness is back, a frantic energy that needs an outlet.
I spend the next hour walking the blocks around her building. It’s a familiar patrol, but tonight it feels different. I’m not just an observer anymore. The bar with the broken sign, The Crimson Cat, on the corner. The laundromat. The shitty 24-hour diner. I know this map by heart. This has always been her world, but now, I’m going to become a part of it.
The next day at work is hell. Every muscle screams. My bruised ribs make it agony to breathe, let alone lift a fifty-pound bag of cement mix. My boss, a fat piece of shit named Sal, gives me a look.
“You get in another fight, Rook?” he grunts.
“Fell down some stairs,” I lie, my voice flat.
“Right,” he says, clearly not believing a word of it. “Just don’t bleed on the drywall. It stains.”
I work through the pain. I welcome it, I let it consume me, but even the brutal, mind-numbing labor isn’t enough to push her out of my head.
In the screech of the power saw, I hear her quiet voice from the alley. In the gray expanse of a freshly poured concrete floor, I seeher pale face, the same one that’s been burned into my mind for years.
