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)
I pause.
“You don’t have to white-knuckle this alone,” he says. “You and the girl—Juno—you’re good in a fight. Don’t forget to tag your corners.”
“I won’t,” I say, and I mean it.
I send Devereaux the legal names and receive a reply so fast I imagine him texting with one hand while steering a Bugatti with the other:
Devereaux: Adele will expect you at 10. Rules attached.
A PDF follows. I memorize it on the elevator down.
In the car, the plan clicks into place, a familiar hum. Send the intake forms to the team. Print physical map overlays. We’ll use bone-conduction earpieces on whisper volume. No external mics. The pen mic stays home (kind of sad about this, I won’t lie).
By the time I hit Juno’s block, the river’s thrown a sheet of late-afternoon light up over the brick, and my phone has three new messages from Render:
Render: Waiver stub looks normal. Dev’s legal is tight. Don’t sign with your blood.
Render: Etta liked your DM and didn’t reply. She’s the kind who holds info to make friends with it later.
Render: I’m on call if you need a rescue voice pretending to be anyone. Owner, fire marshal, ghost of bad decisions.
I text back a skull, because we’re adults.
Then I look up at Juno’s door cam out of habit and remember it’s dark. The Ring’s disabled. The boundary set. I swallow, pocket my phone, and knock our pattern.
No answer.
I knock again. “Junebug?” I call, and the nickname leaves my mouth before the etiquette committee in my brain can draft a memo.
The latch clicks. The door opens on a crack, then a foot, then Juno, and my chest goes cold.
Her eyes are raw, lashes spiky with salt. She’s in one of my old hoodies. It’s black, and way too big for her. Nothing about her looks like the quick-tongued woman who fenced with a predator last night. She looks like grief dressed in cotton.
“Hey,” I say, uselessly gentle.
“Hi.” Her voice is paper-thin. She swallows, and tries for a smile, but fails it halfway. “Sorry. I—” Her mouth trembles. “I opened a box and the box had a bomb in it, I guess.”
I step in, kick the door closed behind me with my foot, and set my hands on her waist like that’s a lever that can lift her. “Come here.”
She does. It’s not careful. It’s not staged. She just folds, a building finding its baseline after a quake. I catch her, wrap, and hold. Her face goes into my shoulder with a sound that would make anyone with a pulse want to set the world on fire. I breathe her hair. I breathe in her shampoo, her skin, all of her.
“Got you,” I say into the crown of her head. “I’ve got you.”
She shakes. Not dainty tears, not cinematic grief, but full-body aftershocks. I let it happen, sway with it, keep my hand splayed warm between her shoulder blades and the other at the back of her head like I’m covering a wound from the weather.
“I miss her,” she says, muffled. “I miss her so fucking much.”
“I know,” I say, and I do. Not because I’ve lost like she lost, but because the absence she carries has a shape even an idiot can memorize.
She hiccups a broken laugh. “I’m supposed to be tough and charming and a little terrifying, and instead I’m crying in your sweater.”
“You are tough and charming and a little terrifying,” I say. “And crying doesn’t cancel any of that.”
Her fingers curl in the back of my shirt. She nods, a small, stubborn movement against my chest like she’s agreeing to terms with oxygen.
“Bedroom?” I ask quietly.
She sniffles, steps back enough to look up at me, eyes red and fierce. “You carry me and I won’t fight you.”
I bend. She’s light in my arms, lighter than what she’s been holding all week. I walk the familiar path to the bedroom where the bed is half-made and the mandala book is face-down on the nightstand like a shallow apology.
I lay her down and then lie down beside her, mirroring, not crowding. She turns toward me on her own, finds my chest again like that’s where her head goes. I angle us into the hollow that makes us fit.
We breathe.
After a while the sobs taper to hiccups; the hiccups to the long, shaky inhales of someone who’s decided not to drown yet. My thumb draws slow circles on her upper arm, and I watch the ceiling fan do that lazy spin thing.
“I brought news,” I say, when her breath evens out. “But it can wait.”
She tips her face up, cheek damp, mouth wrecked into a half-smile. “Do the thing where you give me mission objectives so my panic has a spreadsheet.”
“Dean looked at your photo,” I say. “It’s Club Greed.”
Her brows knit. “Like the…?”
“Exactly that. Sex club. Devereaux Huxley owns it. Dean knows him. He got us a guest slot for tonight in the Pride gallery. We go in as observers.”