Page 23

Cipher shakes his head. “Cave doesn’t put up with anyone else. He likes the sound of your voice.”

“How territorial?” I ask, before Noa’s ego gets so big we’re stuck up here forever. Noa puts his chin on my shoulder.

“He followed Vero for three days after he took one of his coats without asking. He didn’t chase him or touch him, simply appeared wherever Vero was and stood there,” Cipher explained. “Vero came to my shed on the third day and told me he was certain Cave was trying to absorb his soul. This was over a jacket—now imagine what he would do for something more important.”

“That’s a terrible example,” Noa interrupted. “Someone thought it would be funny to put their hands on Cipher during a chase, though it was just a shove, nothing serious. Cave broke two of their fingers before anyone could intervene, and Clay had to use a Taser to take the big guy down. We don’t actually know how Cave was aware it happened. Which, when you think about it, is either comforting to know he is watching or terrifying because he appears out of nowhere.”

I gaze over at Cave, who is simply watching for my reaction. He is still holding the flower, which looks like something he made, but I can’t tell from up here.

“Can I see that?” I ask him.

He crosses the shed, and where I hang in the net puts me roughly at eye level with him. He holds the flower out, and I take it, pulling it through the mesh. “Thank you.”

Cipher finally stands and unknots the rope from the wall, lowering the net slowly until Noa and I are an inch off the floor and can step out. Noa stretches his back, and it clicks like someone twice his age. I step out and look down at the flower. Could I really want this with them?

What else do you have in your miserable life? I lecture myself. Work, and bailing your shitty brother out of hard situations. Why don’t you do something for yourself for a change?

My inner voice is a tad bitchy tonight; maybe I should have eaten before coming here.

“I’m in,” I announce before I can change my mind. I don’t know how I feel about having sex with three men just yet, but Cipher said there doesn’t have to be any, so I guess we’ll see how we go.

Chapter Ten

Noa

Valli signed the contract, and I am super excited for our first chase. I have never met a girl who willingly dug a hole with me, no questions asked. We have been warning Cave to take it easy on her; we can’t risk scaring away the one girl who doesn’t look at us like we are freaks. I mean, seriously, who would look at Cave and think that a grown-ass man who wears a scarecrow outfit every day and sleeps in a cornfield is normal? But normal is overrated anyway. Who wants to be a sheep and copy what everyone else is doing?

I’m surprised Cave has sat here this long. Normally he will come into Ares’s bar, grab his food, and go. Yet today we all sit and wait, while I ask Ares every ten minutes if he has seen Valli arrive yet, and he is now simply shaking his head every time I look his way.

“She is probably running late,” I say to both of them.

“It’s been forty minutes,” Cipher says, and he is right. Five minutes is late; forty is something more.

I lean against the bar, angling myself toward the door as the music drifts through the air. It normally hypes up my mood, but not tonight. “Maybe something came up.”

Cipher just shrugs. “Or maybe she changed her mind. She signed the contract, but that doesn’t mean she has to follow through.”

Cave puts down his glass, and we both look at him. “Mine,” he says.

He doesn’t look at us when he says it; instead, he stares off into space.

“She hasn’t agreed to be yours yet,” I tell him.

He reaches inside his coat and pulls out a folded piece of paper, setting it down on the bar.

Reaching over, I pick it up and unfold it. Seeing that it’s Valli’s contract, I carefully refold it and put it back down. “Like Cipher said, she could still change her mind.”

Cave growls and picks his glass back up. I guess that is the end of that conversation.

The bar runs smoothly when Kayla is working. More people come in and eat, as there is something about her that draws people in. She really is in her element here.

We need to admit Valli isn’t coming tonight, and that’s okay. Maybe we came on too strong with the whole two-men-and-a-scarecrow situation.

The man sitting two seats down from Cave says something, though I don’t catch exactly what—something about the women who sign up for the island—but the word easy catches my ears. Kayla sets down the glass she is holding, and her eyes shift to Cave.

He moves without warning or sound, and it still baffles me how a guy that big can pull it off. As quickly as Cave left us, the man is off his stool and in the air. Cave has him held by his shirt with one hand, and a split-second later the man goes over the bar, hitting the shelves behind it and taking the bottles down with him.

You could hear a pin drop as Kayla places both her hands on the bar and vaults over it. In one pretty badass motion, she lands on the other side and turns to put herself directly in front of Cave with her arms outstretched. She is tiny compared to him, but it doesn’t seem to concern her at all.