Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 97537 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 488(@200wpm)___ 390(@250wpm)___ 325(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97537 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 488(@200wpm)___ 390(@250wpm)___ 325(@300wpm)
My heart goes double-time. Nico A. Armand.
You’re amazing.
Render: Bring me cookies later. And backup now.
I’ll bring both.
I crack the door, step into the hall, and breathe. Fear comes. So does the feeling I get right before a horror-movie final girl grabs a weapon and walks into the dark.
I’m still angry at Arrow. I’m still hurt. Both things can sit beside the fact that I’ve never felt safer in my own skin than I do right now, making choices for myself, not because someone’s watching me breathe on a grainy screen.
Nico Armand. The man with the ring. The voice that said bright girl.
The next time he says it, I’m going to make sure the brightness he sees is the spark lighting his carefully constructed world on fire.
When I barrel out of my apartment building I do not expect who I see.
20
Arrow
Render’s last update is still buzzing in my pocket when I see them—Karen and Bob—standing at the corner across from Juno’s building like two parent-shaped exclamation points. Karen’s scarf is a riot of sunflowers against the gray morning. Bob’s got the posture of a man who doesn’t trust city parking meters. They spot me the second I check both ways to jaywalk and wave like we’re the cavalry arriving.
“Arrow!” Karen calls, already crossing. “We were just thinking of you.”
Bob lifts a paper bakery bag like a trophy. “Got cronuts. Don’t tell my cardiologist.”
I paste on a smile and lock everything fragile behind my teeth. The truth is I’ve been orbiting the block for ten minutes, arguing with myself about whether texting Are you home? counts as pressure. Four days since the fight and every time I stare at my phone the word spyware burns a hole through it.
“Morning,” I say, juggling hellos and guilt. “You two visiting?”
“Thought we’d surprise our girl.” Karen squeezes my forearm, her eyes blue, bright and worried. “You headed up, too?”
I should tell them it’s not a good time. I should tell them Juno and I are…complicated. But Karen’s hand is warm and Bob is already looking for the building number like a man who refuses to be deterred by nuance.
“Uh, yeah,” I hear myself say. “I was on my way.”
The lobby door swings open and Juno rockets out like misfired artillery—hood up, bag slung across her body, keys already in hand. She nearly plows into us and stops so fast her boots squeak.
She blinks, recalibrates. First at me—eyes guarded. Then at her mom—eyes softening, almost breaking. “Mom?”
Karen is on her in a heartbeat, arms around shoulders. “Junebug.”
Juno melts for one beat, cheek pressed to her scarf. Then the steel slides back into place. “What are you doing here?”
“Cronuts,” Bob supplies, arriving with the bag as if he’s presenting evidence. “And a surprise hug. Hi, kiddo.” He kisses her hair, then squints at me. “Told you we’d catch him, Karen. Man’s always hovering.”
I aim for a sheepish shrug. Don’t say because your daughter is trying to find a murderer alone. “Right place, right time.”
Juno steps back, wiping her cheek with the heel of her palm like she’s mad at it for leaking. Her gaze hits me and sticks for a fraction of a second, guarded and bright. “Where are you going?” I ask, before I can soften the edges.
“Out,” she says. Then, to her mom: “I was just—um—headed to the riverwalk.”
Karen’s glance flickers between us, seeing too much and not enough. “Could we come up for five minutes? Your stepfather will eat all the cronuts if we don’t share.”
“I only eat half,” Bob says. “Repeatedly.”
Juno’s jaw tightens. She looks at me, then at the bag strap cutting across her chest, then at the sky like maybe God will throw her a rope ladder. Finally she sighs. “Five minutes,” she says. “Then I really have to go.”
We climb the stairs in a knot. On the second landing, Karen tells Bob to stop taking them two at a time or he’ll “hear about it from his knees.” I trail behind Juno, counting the things I don’t say.
Inside, her apartment smells like laundry soap and the floral ghost of Arby’s diffuser. The air has that still quality spaces get when they’re loved but not slept in. On the entry table, her Ring camera sits like a dead eye. I clock it, then tear my gaze away. She told me not to watch. I haven’t. That has to count for something, even if Render’s texts make my conscience feel like a loophole.
Karen steps in and immediately fusses with a throw blanket on the couch, as if smoothing fabric could smooth the week. “You look thin,” she says, which is code for you look tired and also please let me feed you. “Have you been sleeping?”
“Define sleeping,” Juno says as a polite deflection. She tosses her bag on the armchair and moves to the kitchen. “Coffee? Tea? I have…water.”