Page 105 of Slashed Bonds

“Right, right.” I wave it off. “I had a granola bar this morning.”

“Granola bar or cock.”

She gives me a look.

And the pout arrives.

The one I don’t do. The third time in a week, and she clocks it in a heartbeat, the way she clocks everything, and groans like I’ve personally wounded her.

“I know you fucking lying.” She points at me again. “Blowjobs are a higher priority than nutritious food that’s supposed to give you energy to thrive, bitch. You can’t suck cock well with no energy. That’s science.”

“That’s what energy drinks are for.” I shrug.

“Unless you want a fucking heart attack?”

“Been there. Done that.”

“You and I both know you didn’t get a heart attack falling out off that balcony. Wait, you didn’t fall. Thrown off, let me be precise.”

A beat.

“But I guess I’ve never experienced what it’s like, so I’ll shut the fuck up.”

We laugh.

At a second-floor balcony and a loading dock and everything that came after it, because we’ve earned the right to.

There’s nobody else alive I could laugh about it with, and because if you can’t laugh at the thing that nearly killed you, it gets to keep you.

Then we go quiet.

Not awkward. The other kind.

The kind where two people who’ve sat in a lot of rooms together tune into their own heads for a minute and let the silence do the work.

I look at the notebook.

At a page and a half of plans in my handwriting.

“I kinda like them,” I mutter.

It’s out before I’ve decided to say it.

Four words, to a notebook, in a room with a reinforced coffee table.

I like the way the captain hands me a tablet at eleven at night and walks away without explaining.

I like that Killian hasn’t mentioned the elbow jab that surely hurt his pride more than the actual physical pain of it.

I like that there’s a man on the second floor who put a glass of water on a nightstand and a puck from the worst night of his life on a desk, and that he keeps both where he can see them.

I like that none of them has asked.

Not once. Days in their space, their territory, and not one question about the arms, my neck, or the shitty five years that somehow made me grow into this unapologetic bitch that now has the opportunity to be back on these dangerous streets.

Or in our case, Ice.

That’s the part that’s different.