Chapter 24 – Rex
REX
The rooftop of Foxhole Studios isn't much of a rooftop.
It's a flat patch of tar paper and industrial venting accessed through a fire door that technically requires a key I technically don't have because I technically broke the lock six fucking months ago when I needed somewhere to scream that wasn't a parking lot.
Tonight, the fog has swallowed Seattle whole. The city exists only as smeared light below, amber and white bleeding through gray, and up here there's nothing but damp air and the faint hum of the HVAC unit and the mask case sitting in my lap like an IED.
I've been staring at it for twenty minutes.
The case is matte black. Unremarkable. Inside it is the performance mask replica fitted with a magnetic release mechanism and, in a separate padded compartment, the half-skull prosthetic that's supposed to make the whole world believe the leaked photos of my hideous face were a publicity stunt.
I opened the case once already. Ran my thumb along the jaw edge of the performance mask, feeling the recessed magnets beneath cool metal.
Temple. Cheekbone. Jaw.
Three points of contact.
Three points where Bells's fingers will land.
Three points where she'll pull, and the mask will come away, and—
I closed the case.
That was eighteen minutes ago.
The fire door groans behind me.
"Found you."
Bells emerges onto the rooftop in her rabbit-ear hoodie, the ears drooping sideways in the fog. Her combat boots scrape on the tar paper. She's got a vibrant pink can of energy drink in one hand.
"I came up here to be alone, you know," I mutter.
She ignores me and drops onto the ledge beside me, kicking her feet like we're not several stories above fucking concrete. She sets the energy drink between us.
My eye flicks to it automatically.
There's a muscular unicorn on the can with lasers firing from its eyes. It's vomiting the same lasers. And shitting them. Out of its ass. The fluid gathered on the rim is bright neon green.
Does she drink fucking battery acid?
"Phoenix checked the bathroom," she says, grinning triumphantly. "Raf checked the alley. I checked the roof because I knew you'd be brooding up here." She takes a sip of her drink. "Process of elimination."
"Congratulations. You found the monster on the roof. How atmospheric."
Her grin falters and her eyes soften.
An irritated growl rumbles in my chest.
Then the grin blooms again, wider than before. Full teeth, canine poking over her full lower lip. "See? That's more like it."
I narrow my eyes at her. "Why the fuck are you happy that I'm being a dick?"
"Because for the past week, you've been being calm and nice, and honestly? It was freaking me out."
"You were freaking out because I was being nice?"
"I was worried your brain had broken." She takes another sip. "This"—she gestures at all of me—"This I can work with. I don't worry about you when you're like this. Guess I cured you, huh?"
I curl my lip at her. "What do you fucking mean, cured me?"
She grins wider and looks down.
At my cock.
Through my pants.
Insufferable.
Absolutely fucking insufferable.
And my cock twitches anyway, because apparently my body has decided that insufferable is its type now. The scar tissue along my shaft pulls with the slight shift of blood flow, that familiar dull twinge, the reminder that even arousal comes with a tax.
I grit my teeth and ignore it.
"Carmine's going to be here in less than an hour," Bells says, setting down her drink. Her voice shifts. Still casual, but not as much as before. "We could practice up here first. Just us. No audience."
My jaw locks. "No."
"Rex—"
"I said no."
She ignores me. "I practiced on Orion. I'm good at it."
That catches me off guard.
"You practiced on Orion?"
There's no fucking way I heard her correctly. Orion would never allow that. Maybe if she was blindfolded. Even then, probably not.
"Yep. We got it down." She pops the case open. "Ten clean pulls in a row before he called it."
I study her face for the micro-expression. The involuntary tightening around the eyes that people get when they're trying not to react to something horrifying and failing because it's branded in their minds.
"Didn't that bother you?" I ask.
She tilts her head. "Didn't what bother me?"
"His face."
Bells's expression shifts. She isn't grinning anymore, and her honey-gold eyes hold mine deliberately.
For once, it isn't a staring contest.
"No," she says quietly. "Of course not." A beat. "Why, should it?"
"He's scary as fuck."
She shrugs. "He's sweet. It isn't a big deal." Then she adds, the grin spreading across her face again, "If I weren't with Phoenix and Raf, I'd actually consider taking Jamie and Orion up on their sexy game night offer."
The shorthairs on the back of my neck prickle with a sudden wave of fury I did not fucking ask for.
Oh fucking shit.
I'm jealous.
Not just possessive. Jealous.
"You would not," I grit out.
"Would."
I keep staring at her. Searching. Waiting for the mask behind the mask. The polite lie, the charitable deflection, the of course it didn't bother me, I'm too good of a person to be bothered by something like that, which is always bullshit, every time.
I don't find it.
She just looks back at me. Patient. Unblinking. Like the question is genuinely confusing to her rather than something she has a rehearsed answer for.
I look away first.
"Let's get this over with," I mutter, rising from the ledge.
"Yeah?"
She straightens up, her energy shifting from gentle to sharp in the space of a heartbeat as she springs to her feet. The reckless speed of the movement makes me feel like I'm going to fucking pass out and my hands go numb and she grabs the case from me.
"Yoink!"
"Be careful," I snarl, automatically lunging to grab her before she falls to her fucking death, but she just hops down from the ledge and lands on the rooftop.
The fact I care pisses me off all over again.
"Aww. See, you do care," she teases, turning to face me with the case clutched to her chest like she thinks I might grab it and fling it off the rooftop. Truthfully, I'm tempted. "So. You're gonna let me practice the stunt?"
I hesitate.
"I'll reward you," she adds.
And then her hands are on my chest, smoothing down my shirt, and she's grinning that maniacal grin up at me with her sharp little canines I've always wondered if she had filed or something.
Wouldn't put it past the little psycho.
"What."
"You heard me," she says, and she glances pointedly down at the semi in my pants that's there even though I'm pissed and annoyed and jealous and all kinds of bullshit that should definitely not be making me fucking hard right now.
But her hands are on me, firmly enough I can feel my pulse hammering against her palms, and I go hard so fast it's actually painful.
The scar on my knot flares, that spiraling ridge of damaged tissue pulling against the sudden rush of blood, the twinge radiating up through my shaft like a warning shot. My jaw clenches and I angle my body slightly away from her so the fog and shadow hides what my pants can't.
Fuck.
The fact that three words from this woman can override a decade of careful, deliberate physical isolation is infuriating. The fact that my body responds to her like it's been starving for years and she just rang the dinner bell is humiliating.
The fact that I'm annoyed about being hard, annoyed about being annoyed about being hard, and she's just standing there with that wicked fucking grin like she knows exactly what she did—
"I hate you," I growl.
Not as much as I hate myself right now.
"Thank the gods. The last thing we need is to like each other. Ew." She shoves the case back into my hands. "Go put it on."
The fire door leads to a narrow stairwell with a utility closet at the first landing. I duck inside, pulling the door shut behind me. Bare bulb overhead. Mop bucket in the corner.
The glamour of rock and roll.
I set the case on a box and open it.
The white skull prosthetic sits in its padded compartment, the grin staring up at me that isn't far off from the real thing. There are several small bottles of adhesive packed into the foam, roughly the size and shape of nail polish bottles.
I reach for my mask.
My fingers find the familiar edge of the leather strap against the back of my skull. I've worn masks for over a decade. Taken them off alone a thousand times. I never enjoy it, but it never feels this fucking vulnerable and wrong.
The mask comes off.
The air hits my scars. The melted cheek, the exposed teeth, the eye that won't close. I feel it all in the way I always do when the mask is gone. Constant, grinding awareness that twists and coils in my chest and stomach that I look like a fucking zombie.
I don't look at anything reflective. There's nothing to look at anyway. Just cinderblock and cleaning supplies.
I paint adhesive onto the metal housing with the three magnets and the prosthetic—more than I probably need—and press it to my face, working from forehead down.
It feels like a second mask.
Because it is.
I take out the performance mask next. The replica of my own, the one the audience will see before Bells tears it away.
I press it into place over the prosthetic.
Three magnets engage.
Click. Click. Click.
The mask seats firmly, indistinguishable from my usual one. I check the fit with my fingertips. Jaw. Cheekbone. Temple.
Solid and secure.
I take my phone out of my pocket and hesitate for a moment before turning on the camera and flipping it around so I can see if this looks right.
It does. From the outside, I look like me. Nothing is notably different.
I pull the outer mask off—click click click—and stare at the white skull prosthetic covering the ruined half of my face.
The only scar I can see is one near my hairline, nearly invisible. Could easily be explained away by saying it's adhesive.
I push open the utility closet door and climb back to the roof.
Bells is sitting on the ledge again, legs swinging over the edge, and I really fucking wish she wouldn't. The fog curls around her white combat boots like she's dangling her feet into gray water. She looks up when the fire door groans.
Her eyes track from the mask to my shoulders to my hands and back to the mask. Reading me the way she always does. Like she's figuring out exactly how close to detonation I am at any given moment.
"Looking sharp," she says.
"Fuck off."
She hops off the ledge again and crosses the rooftop toward me with that confident stride that shouldn't work on someone her size but absolutely fucking does.
Six feet away.
Four.
Two.
She stops in front of me. Tilts her head back to look up, way up, because even in combat boots she barely reaches my collarbone.
"Ready?" she asks.
No.
"Just do it."
She reaches up.