Chapter 3
Three
RHEA
E xhaustion laid heavily on my limbs as I settled into the comfort of the back seat, watching the lights of the city go by through the tinted windows.
In the driver’s seat, Chas was in her own world, head bobbing to Vanity’s latest single on the radio.
Usually, this was time I used to zone out, scroll social media on my phone, return missed texts and reply to emails while the energy from the club wore off.
Tonight, my mind was occupied with something else.
Micah.
I’d experienced some weird shit before; this was Vegas.
The city was built on weird shit.
But that moment with Micah—seeing him, seeing me… seeing myself through his eyes… That was extra weird.
Big weird.
Impossible to explain without sounding like a crazy person myself.
So I didn’t try.
I kept it cool, and kept it cute for the rest of the night, continuing on like nothing had happened.
Did he feel that too?
If so, he’d given nothing away.
When the car finally pulled up outside my building, Chas turned to me with a smirk. “I think the champ was feeling you.”
I raised an eyebrow as I unclipped my seatbelt. “That’s random.”
“Nah,” she said, reaching for something in the passenger seat. A moment later, she was holding up a velvety black gift bag. “I was told to give you this when I got you home.”
“Chas!” I fussed. “I know you didn’t accept a gift from that stranger danger ass nigga on my behalf!”
“Be cool,” she chuckled. “He facilitated it through Jackson. It’s been checked out. No trackers or anything.”
“What is it?” I asked, hesitantly accepting the bag. “Too heavy for jewelry.”
“It’s a phone.”
“I already have a phone.”
She shrugged. “Not one with his number I guess?”
“If me having his number was the goal, this is overkill,” I muttered, opening the bag. Indeed, the box inside was a phone.
The latest release of the exact same one I was currently using.
“I think it’s kinda smooth,” Chas offered. “Card swiped before he even has your number.”
I huffed. “Tricking is cool until the nigga thinks you belong to him ’cause he paid a bill. I make it a point to not be impressed by it whenever they try it with me.”
“Understandable, but that ain’t shoes, a bag… it’s a direct line. Maybe it’s not about the material thing, the phone. Maybe it’s the access.”
“This man imposing a way for him to access me isn’t sexy,” I argued.
Chas nodded. “True. But… gifting a way for you to access him …”
I rolled my eyes, but honestly… It was something to consider.
But still.
“I’m not convinced,” I laughed, opening the door to step out.
“Good, keep your foot on these niggas’ necks!” Chas called through the open window as I made my way to the building. The doorman let me in and by the time the elevator opened on my floor, I was already halfway out of my heels, jewelry tucked in my bag, phone in hand getting ready to respond to my missed texts.
I was two steps from my door when I stumbled because of my unstrapped shoes. My hand went up to catch myself on the wall, which sent my phone flying.
There was nothing I could do except watch as it hit the firesafe steel door with a sickening crunch, bounced off, and smacked face down on the uncarpeted floor.
“Well damn ,” I groaned, already knowing what I was going to find when I picked it up, but just hoping that somehow , someway, my screen wasn’t destroyed.
It definitely was though.
I blew out a sigh, eyes watering with frustrated tears as I unlocked my door and got inside, tossing everything in my hands onto the table by the door. I closed my eyes for a moment, kicked my shoes off, and took a second to just breathe.
When I opened my eyes again, my gaze landed right on that gift bag from Micah.
The phone rang.
Not the one I’d just destroyed, the one in the box, waiting.
I didn’t move.
Every logical bone in my body said to leave that phone right where it was, to keep myself immune from whatever weirdness this all was. After everything that had happened tonight, it was actually ludicrous to chalk this up to coincidence, a concept I barely believed in to start. Something else was happening here, something that, again, I couldn’t explain.
On the second ring, I went for the bag, tearing the box out and practically ripping it open to get inside before the phone stopped ringing. I wasn’t remotely surprised at Micah’s name on the screen, but my hands were still shaking when I pressed the button to answer.
“Did you know that was going to happen?” I chose as my greeting, instead of the polite option of hello.
On the other end of the line, Micah chuckled, low and sexy, his voice immediately soaking into my chest. “Did I know what was going to happen?”
“Don’t piss me off.”
“Cool it,” he said, with an authoritative note that made me roll my eyes. “You’re pissed ’cause I can’t read minds?”
Immediate goosebumps raced over my skin. “No,” I answered. “I’m pissed because you’re pretending not to know what I’m talking about.”
“You can tell over the phone?”
“What does that mean?”
“What do you think it means?”
“I’m hanging up,” I huffed, already pulling the phone from my ear when he laughed.
“I’m fucking with you, Rhea. Tell me what happened.”
“Tell me why you bought me a phone,” I countered, putting it on speaker to take to my room with me. “And I don’t want to hear that you just wanted me to have your number.”
He scoffed. “What do you want to hear then?”
“The truth.”
There was a pause, a long pause that made me look at the phone to make sure the call was still connected. And then, finally?—
“Tell me what happened.”
I frowned. “What?”
“When you answered the phone, you asked me if I knew something was going to happen. What were you referring to?”
“I… my phone,” I told him. “I dropped and shattered my phone five minutes after I got handed a gift bag from you with a phone in it.”
Micah blew out a sigh. “Damn. No, I didn’t know that was going to happen, but it’s quite serendipitous, isn’t it?”
“It’s fucking creepy, is what it is,” I snapped. “It’s giving, you’re a stalker.”
“I wouldn’t frame it that way.”
My eyes went wide. “You wouldn’t frame it that way ? Not ‘no, I’m not .’ You wouldn’t frame it that way. ”
“Would you rather I lied to you?”
I dropped to a seat at the edge of my bed. “I’d rather not have to use my permanent hole puncher on you.”
“Damn,” he laughed. “You know saying shit like that just makes me want you more, right?”
“It certainly fits the narrative.”
I closed my eyes, reveling in the sound as he chuckled again. “Relax, Rhea. I’m not lurking outside your window.”
“That’s a relief, I guess. But you still haven’t answered anything really.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Why did you give me a phone?”
“Because I knew you would answer it.”
“How?”
“I just did.”
“Bullshit.”
“You know it’s not.”
“How would I?”
“Because of what happened when I touched you tonight.”
My eyes popped open, and I sat up a little straighter. “So… you felt it too?”
That’s different.
“I don’t know what it is, but… yeah. You were trying to get in my head. But you couldn’t, until you touched me.”
“ You touched me,” I corrected.
“Fine. I touched you, what does that mean? Was that some type of… what, permission you needed? To get in my head? Do you do that to everybody, or just me?”
“I don’t usually need permission,” I answered. “And… people don’t usually know I’ve been in their heads. How did you know?”
“Guess I’m special like that. What did you see?”
“Why does it matter?”
“Why wouldn’t it?” he countered. “You could know all my deepest, darkest secrets now, but I don’t know much about you.”
“You knew I would answer the phone.”
He chuckled. “Yeah. I knew that.”
“And what else do you know?”
“You first,” he shot back. “Why do you keep deflecting?”
“Because,” I sighed. “I… don’t understand what I saw,” I admitted. “I can control if I see it or not, but not what I see. And it’s usually really important things for people. Not necessarily secrets, or even major events, but like… defining things.”
A call that someone got a job that would ease their money woes.
The moment they decided to break up with a toxic ex.
When they finally got a diagnosis.
Stuff that might not make their highlight reel, but still mattered, deeply.
For Micah, I would’ve expected… the first time he had to fight to defend himself and realized he liked it. A breakthrough in the ring during training. A first kiss, something.
Not…
“You gonna tell me what you saw or not?”
I sighed. “Fine. I… saw myself. Which isn’t how this works. It’s never been how it works. And the fact that it was different tonight, with you… it doesn’t make sense.”
“Makes perfect sense to me, knowing what I know.”
My eyebrow shot up. “Which is…?”
Micah went quiet.
Infuriatingly quiet.
“ Micah ! What is it that you supposedly know?!”
Another beat passed before he replied. “Not yet.”
My stomach flipped. “Excuse me?”
“You’re not ready.”
I damn near dropped the phone. “Nigga, what?!”
He chuckled, which only further pissed me off.
“You cannot just drop some cryptic bullshit on me and then hit me with a damn not yet .”
“I just did. What are you gonna do about it, threaten to shoot me again?”
“I… you know what? Fuck you,” I hissed into the phone.
Again, he laughed. “Get some sleep, Rhea,” he murmured. “I’ll be seeing you.”
A chime sounded, letting me know the call had ended. I pulled the phone from my ear, staring at the screen like it had personally disrespected me.
“What. The. Fuck! ” I yelled, dropping the offending device to get up and pace, trying to walk off some of the bubbling anger.
Beneath it though, under the heat rising in my chest, the pulse pounding at my throat, the questions swirling in my mind…
I was dying to know what the hell Micah McKnight wasn’t telling me.