"Leave your door unlocked."
I don't smile. Don't gloat. Just nod once and head inside.
The kitchen is empty when I pass through. Everyone's scattered to their corners of the farmhouse, preparing for tomorrow, getting what rest they can before the real work begins.
I climb the stairs to my room, strip off my shirt, and stretch out on the bed. The mattress is old, springs creaking under my weight. The ceiling has a water stain in the corner that looks vaguely like a skull. Appropriate, given the company I'm keeping.
Leave your door unlocked.
It's not a yes. But it's not a no either. It's Jinx Harrison, control freak extraordinaire, admitting that he might show up. That he might want this as much as I do.
I fold my arms behind my head and wait.
The house settles into night sounds. Pipes groaning, wood creaking, the distant murmur of conversation from somewhere downstairs. Jagger and Jace, probably, going over the mission one more time. They're meticulous, those two. Every detail planned, every contingency accounted for.
I'm not like that. I've never had the luxury of planning. In the pits, you learned to react. To read your opponent in the first three seconds and adjust on the fly. Plans were for people who had time. I had fists and instinct and the bone-deep certainty that hesitation meant death.
Jinx is the same. I saw it in the way he fought today. All instinct, all reaction, no thought between the impulse and the action. We're two sides of the same coin. Violence given form.
The question is whether we can be anything else.
Midnight comes and goes. The house goes quiet.
At half past, I hear footsteps in the hall. Heavy. Deliberate. The tread of a big man trying not to wake anyone, and failing.
They stop outside my door.
A long pause. Long enough that I start to think he's changed his mind, that he's going to turn around and walk away. My heart pounds against my ribs. Steady. Waiting.
Then the handle turns.
And he steps into my room.
Chapter Three: Jinx
Idon'tknowwhatI'm doing.
That's a lie. I know exactly what I'm doing. I'm walking into Asher Madden's bedroom at half past midnight because I'm tired of fighting the only battle I've ever lost.
He's lying on the bed when I enter, shirtless, arms folded behind his head. The moonlight through the window cuts across his chest, highlighting every scar, every tattoo, every inch of muscle that he's earned through years of violence. His eyes find mine in the darkness. He doesn't smile. Doesn't gloat. Just watches me close the door behind me and turn the lock.
"You came."
"Don't make it weird."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
I stand by the door, suddenly uncertain. I've killed men in rooms like this. I've done things that would make most people sick. But standing here, looking at him, I feel more exposed than I ever have with a weapon in my hand.
"You gonna stay over there all night?" he asks.
"Maybe."
"Jinx." He sits up, swings his legs over the side of the bed. "You walked in here. That was the hard part. The rest is easy."
"Nothing about this is easy."
"No." He stands, crosses to me in three strides. "But it's simple. You want me. I want you. Everything else is just bullshit."
