Wes let me walk at my preferred breakneck speed through the station to the L train platform, and that alone confirmed he pitied me right now.
We maneuvered to a less crowded area, a difficult feat for a Friday night. Manhattanites were on their way to Bushwick in droves for the edgier clubbing scene.
“Nova,” Wes said.
He touched my arm, and I turned toward him. He wore that thoughtful look of his, the one that softened his hard exterior and melted all my defenses.
The oncoming train stopped him from continuing. We smiled at each other as the screeching tore through the space. Wind whipped my hair back, and Wes tucked a stray strand behind my ear. I shuddered.
We were so focused on each other, we didn’t notice we were stepping into an eerily empty car until it was too late.
The doors closed.
16
NOVA
Seeing no one else on the car, I quickly and furiously began sniffing the air.
“Are you smelling me?” Wes asked.
“We got on the dookie car!” I explained, gesturing in grand fashion to the empty train car.
Wes’s eyes widened. He sniffed the air too. Every New Yorker had made the mistake of entering a car with human feces in it at least once. The stench had haunted me for weeks the first time it happened to me.
“I don’t smell anything,” he said.
I dropped my hands back down to my sides. “That’s strange. Me either…”
So why the fuck was the car empty?
The train screeched into Union Square. When the doors opened, we faced a group of men in suits and golden animal masks—bulls, rabbits, stags, bears. Most spanned the entire face, but a few left their mouths uncovered. They filed into our car with menacing grace.
Wes pulled me to the corner of the car and stood in front of me immediately. My eyes nearly bulged out of my head as I craned my neck to see around his body.
It was as if the dream world had collided with reality, and everything had turned upside down. There were a dozen well-dressed masked men crowding us. They didn’t speak. A few smiled. One of them lit a fucking cigar.
When the man closest to us stepped forward, Wes tensed. I could only imagine that deadly glare of his.
“Welcome to The Circle,” the man said in a rich, even voice. He reached out his hand, two envelopes in his palm.
Wes snatched the envelopes without a word.
It was the tensest ride to Third Avenue of my life—and I’d seen some shit on the L train.
I peeked out from behind Wes again. “How did?—”
“Magic.”The golden rabbit smoking a cigar led the rest of the men out the moment the doors opened.
Regular New Yorkers filed onto the car as if nothing had happened. A few of them stared at or commented on the men who’d left the train, but most ignored the entire spectacle.
“Cigar smoke is nasty,” a disgruntled woman in fishnets loudly declared.
Her androgynous friend in a pantsuit wrinkled their face in solidarity. “Eat the fucking rich.”
After clocking how many pairs of Doc Martins had entered the car, I relaxed. We were safe. Though, Wes was slow to move from his protective position and face me.
“How the hell could they have known where we were? Or that we were even together?” I whispered harshly.
