Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 77051 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77051 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
We hunt two more trolls before the sun trails off the warehouse windows. Smaller fish. Loud mouths. One loses access to his guild after we pipe his DMs to the admin. One gets a call from his mother because Render is evil and family plans are public on Facebook if you know where to look.
River learns fast. Adjusts faster. She has a programmer’s brain—pattern-seeking, unsentimental, funny when the pressure needle redlines.
She catches me looking at her hands again and quirks a brow. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Liar.”
“Your thumbs are right,” I say, deadpan.
She rolls her eyes and laughs, low and warm. I store the sound somewhere under my sternum.
We eat cold dumplings on the floor while packet captures run like credit scenes. I maneuver in the mask while she laughs at me, eating a cupcake as she does. She tells me, unprompted, about early days at NovaPlay. About Mason.
“We dated when I started,” she says. “He was bright. Charming. Knew where to find the good candy. And he…I thought he really liked me.”
I don’t move. Breathing feels impolite.
“It changed when I got promoted. He did this thing where he’d ask questions just to catch me wrong. Or ‘fix’ my code when the only thing broken was his ego. I saw him for what he truly was. Honestly, I can’t remember what I ever saw in him.” She picks at a chopstick wrapper, shredding it to confetti. “When I ended it, he said one day he’d show everyone who I ‘really’ was.”
“What did you say?” My voice is smoke.
“That I hoped one day he’d meet her.” She huffs a laugh. “I didn’t expect him to try to invent her first.”
Silence sits between us, not heavy, just present. I want to tell her Mason’s days are numbered. Because even though he’s fired, he could still be very much behind this. That the lion she thought was in the tall grass is really a mutt on a leash. That we’re already shortening it.
Instead, I say, “Today you made three men less dangerous. That counts.”
She looks at me like she wants to read my face through the mask. Not just the angles—the man under them.
“Why do you care?” she asks softly.
Because I’ve been in love with you longer than is advisable for anyone’s health. Because you made a bug named Biscuit a hill you would die on and I fell a little in love with your stubborn mercy. Because when you fight, you fight fair, and when you fall, you fall forward.
“Because you deserve quiet,” I say. “And because they don’t know who they picked.”
She sucks in a breath—tiny, sharp. Her knee is still against mine. I can feel heat through denim. I’m twenty-seven and somehow sixteen at the same time, obliterated by proximity.
“Let me see you,” she murmurs.
It isn’t a dare. It isn’t a game. It’s… a petition.
My heart goes off like a dropped tray.
“River—”
“Not your voice. Not your rules. You.” Her gaze flickers to my mouth like she knows where I’m weakest. “I want to know the man who teaches me to fight and buys my stupid peppermint tea and knows how I type when I’m excited.”
I close my eyes. The room tilts. The mask is a weight and a mercy. One tug and everything I’ve built comes down.
“If I show you too soon,” I say, each word a careful placement, “I make you a bigger target. Anyone who can name me can hurt you.”
She sits with that. She doesn’t pout. She doesn’t push. She just nods once like she’s adding a variable to a long equation and deciding to carry it.
“Okay,” she says. “Then promise me something else.”
“Name it.”
“When this is over—when they’re over—no more masks.”
The room goes quiet except for the fans and the part of my chest that just decided to be a drum.
“Deal,” I say, because even if it kills me, I want the right to keep that promise.
She exhales, a warm sound that feels like the future.
And then she ruins me: she leans over, slow as sunrise, and presses her mouth to the edge of black fabric where it drapes across my jaw. Not a kiss. Not quite.
A hello.
“Good night, Mask,” she whispers. “Don’t make me dream alone.”
She stands, tucks her hair behind her ear, and disappears into the small room we call a bedroom.
I sit there, hands limp, mask intact, soul in open revolt.
Arrow’s text breaks my concentration.
ARROW: Cathedral banned Kyle’s account. Nice work, team.
I type back with steady fingers I do not feel.
ME: She did most of it.
I look at the closed door, at the strip of light under it, at the laptop she touched.
No more masks, she said.
Soon, I promise a God I don’t believe in and a woman I absolutely do.
Soon.
FIFTEEN
RIVER
Work feels… better today. Even my morning cupcake tasted yummier. Everything feels… different.
Not in a bad way. In a victorious, strut-down-the-halls kind of way.