He keeps eating. No acknowledgment. No gratitude. Same as always.
That’s a damn cat for you.
I sit on the couch and he climbs onto my chest like he owns the place. Which, to be fair, he does. Settles there. Stares at me.
“I know,” I tell him. “Not my best work.”
He blinks at me.
“New buzz cut didn’t help either.” I scratch behind his ear. “Half the team says I look meaner. I say I look like I lost a bet.”
He keeps staring.
I tell him how the date went. How it ended.
He’s unimpressed. Fair enough.
Then I tell him about the hot little thing in the cat food aisle. Tight little curvy body, quick hands, mouth made for starting arguments. Looked at me like losing had never once entered her mind.
“You would’ve liked her.”
Brick goes still. Then blinks slow and starts purring like he knows exactly what I’m saying.
“Yeah,” I say to the ceiling.
She had no idea who I was.
That’s the part that sticks.
No angle. No extra warmth. No recalculating. Just a hot little menace with fast hands and a smart mouth who took my cat’s food and kept moving.
Most people want something from me and dress it up.
She didn’t.
She wanted that can.
And looked me dead in the eye while she took it.
Chapter two
Nova
Mysystemworks.
New room. New exits. New faces.
I clock them before I clock anything else, because wanting to belong has never helped me survive one. Under ten minutes. I’m oriented, and ready.
Always.
Military-kid with muscle memory. The kind you build when you spend half your life being the new person and learn very quickly that nobody’s coming to make it easier.
Keep your head straight, Nova. The Cyclones arena is just another room.
I tell myself that on the drive over. In the parking lot. While I’m setting up in the press area with my recorder, my work notebook, my backup pen, my backup backup pen, and the camera, because I shoot my own stills when I can.
Riley calls it initiative. I just prefer not depending on somebody else to catch the part that matters.
