Chapter 6 LoveSomething Dangerous for the Stranger
LOVE OR SOMETHING DANGEROUS FOR THE STRANGER
ROWAN
What are your expectations for using FYS?
ChaosInPurple: To find someone who doesn’t just accept me but finds joy in the very things that make me me.
Someone I can call mine. Not someone I’ve imagined into existence, not a memory of a loved one, but a real, breathing person who chooses me back in real life.
Someone who doesn’t flinch at my emotions or mistake my softness for weakness. Someone who doesn’t tell me I’m too loud, too intense, too hopeful, or too full of feelings.
I am who I am for a reason, and I don’t want someone to tell me to tone it down. To be quieter. To be smaller. I want someone who looks at all of me—my mess, my chaos, my relentless belief in love—and doesn’t just tolerate it but loves it.
Someone who understands that my heart feels things deeply because that’s how I’m built, and that there’s no off switch for that. Nor do I want one.
I want to be chosen as I am.
Not despite my feelings but for them.
Loved not in spite of my fullness but for it.
ChaosInPurple: If you could have one superpower for just a day, what would it be?
Like always, her next text follows almost immediately, as if she was too excited to type multiple sentences in the same message.
ChaosInPurple: And you only get two seconds to answer. So whenever you see this, don’t overthink, just reply.
ChaosInPurple: Mine would be the ability to eat absolutely anything without gaining weight.
She’s given me two seconds, but the truth is, I don’t even need one.
My answer rises instantly, clear and terrifying in its simplicity, and it has nothing to do with flying or invisibility or bending the laws of physics.
I wish that instead of hiding behind this chat window, I could pick up my phone and call her.
I wish I could hear her voice spill through the speaker, alive and real, without everything in me locking up at the thought of her hearing mine.
I wish fear didn’t sit so firmly between desire and action, dictating what I’m allowed to want and how close I’m permitted to get.
It’s been three weeks since we started talking. Three weeks, and my life already feels fuller than it has in years.
I don’t know everything about my ChaosInPurple—not her face, not her voice, not even her name—but I know this: she is painfully genuine.
There’s no performance in her words. She shows up as she is, every time, and I want to meet her there, to be just as real in return.
So I type the truth.
SilenceInMidnight: I would love to have the superpower to talk to you.
Her response comes fast, breathless even through text.
ChaosInPurple: Holy crap. If you keep saying things like that, I might fall in love with you sooner than FYS promised, and then we’ll definitely have to give them an award.
Did she really just say fall in love? But why does it surprise me at all?
Purple doesn’t soften her truths. Three weeks of her honesty, and my life already feels like a fuller, richer version of itself.
Every morning I wake up wondering what she’s going to say that will make me fall a little harder for a woman I’ve never seen and never heard.
Every night, stretched out on my bed staring at the ceiling, I replay our conversations and ask myself how this happened.
How hope slipped past every single one of my defenses without me noticing.
And still, some part of me is waiting for the other shoe to drop.
ChaosInPurple: Did I scare you?
SilenceInMidnight: Not at all. I’m glad one of us can speak without fear. Now tell me what you were going to ask me last night.
She’d told me the night before that she had something serious to ask, and I’d waited… and waited… until hours had slipped by. My nerves stretched thin as I kept checking my phone, met every time with a blank screen.
My five messages, each one a little more careful than the last, went unanswered. When I finally slept, the tension followed me there.
Then morning came with a flood of apologies. She’d fallen asleep while working on a story. The sharp relief I felt was almost dizzying.
Even though we’ve embraced the anonymity FYS promises, there have been enough cracks that I’ve caught glimpses of her life. I know she works with words—publishing, journalism, a world close enough to mine to feel familiar.
Is it wrong that I’ve even gone looking? Chasing the color purple through author names and bylines, though I haven’t found her yet.
“How long are you planning to keep it from me?” Archer’s voice drifts toward me from where he’s stretched out on the recliner on my porch, arms folded behind his head, his gaze fixed on the sweep of hills and trees beyond my cabin.
I glance at him and sign, “Keep what exactly?”
He doesn’t answer right away. Instead, one sharp brow lifts. “That is exactly what I’m trying to figure out.”
“Why are we suddenly speaking in riddles?” My movements are less patient. “I’m not one of the strangers you’re trying to impress at a bar with your mysterious charm.”
The corner of his mouth twitches. Archer’s reputation precedes him. Cherrywood’s favorite playboy, effortlessly charming, always two steps ahead of whoever thinks they have him figured out.
“At this point”—he turns his head to the side—“I honestly think I’ve got a better shot at understanding what’s going on in some random chick’s head than in yours, Ro.”
His words slip past my defenses. Archer and I always communicated in half glances and in the silent spaces between sentences. We've never needed more than that.
Mom calls it our rare and precious gift, and I’ve never taken it lightly. His ability to sense my moods, my fears, the things I don’t say out loud, is something I rely on more than I admit.
I fold the corner of a page of my book before setting it aside. “Where is this coming from?”
Archer’s gaze drifts to my phone resting on the table between us.
The glance is quick and then he shrugs, stretching deeper into the recliner.
I can’t tell if his silence is him offering me an out, giving me space to speak when I’m ready, or if that single look is the full extent of his suspicion. If I had to guess, it’s the former.
“I never thought there’d be a day,” he says quietly, eyes back on the horizon beyond us, “where I’d have to remind you that you can tell me anything without worrying about being judged, Ro.”
I hear the hurt behind his words, even when it’s tucked beneath the calm delivery.
I nudge his foot with mine, silently urging him to look at me. “It’s not that. Or… maybe it is.”
If I hadn’t heard Archer mocking online dating at Charles’s place, I never would have considered keeping Purple from him. My brother and I don’t keep secrets. We can’t. The fact that he’s here right now, asking questions, proves he already knows things are changing in my life.
Damn Violet Harper for bringing up FYS and ruining this for me.
“Do you remember Vincent Belmont?” I sign, testing the ground.
“Is he the one we need to annihilate?”
A quiet snort escapes me before I can stop it. “It seems my career shift into a murderer is becoming wildly popular.”
His brow lifts in confusion.
“I signed up for Vincent’s matchmaking website,” I sign. “The one that promises a 99.9% compatibility match.”
When my twin doesn’t react—no scoff, no sarcasm, just silence—I add, “And they matched me with someone.”
Archer squints. “The site’s called Hunt Your Lover or something like that, right?”
I roll my eyes. “Find Your Soulmate.”
He finally pushes himself upright, the action bringing his face closer to mine.
“Let me get this straight. You’ve potentially found someone with a 99.9% chance of being your soulmate—your life partner—and you didn’t think that was worth mentioning to me? What the fuck, Ro?”
His outburst catches me off guard.
“What do you mean? You don’t even believe in this kind of thing.”
“When have I ever said that?”
“Did you forget the conversation at Charles’s place?” I press, unable to let it go.
He blinks at me, genuinely blank, and the sight of it sends a surge of frustration through me. He’s forgotten. His opinion from that night has lived in my head and made me anxious for weeks, and he’s forgotten it like it was nothing.
“You had an argument with Violet Harper.” My jaw tightens at the memory.
His head snaps back slightly. “What the fuck? Is that why you hid this from me?”
I don’t answer right away, but my shrug is small but damning.
“Ro,” he says, pushing himself up out of the recliner.
“You know sarcasm is my default reaction to anything that doesn’t make immediate sense to me.
On top of that, Violet Harper walks around looking like she’s in a permanent state of happiness.
As if nothing bad could ever touch her corner of the world.
Sometimes that annoys the hell out of me. ”
Archer scrubs a hand down his face. “So yeah, I poked at her just to get a rise. But I’m telling you, Ro, a woman who walks around that full of sunshine is going to get herself into trouble one day.”
“I didn’t realize you were observing her so closely.” Unease rises in my stomach. “Do you have a secret crush on her or something?”
I’m not a fan of Violet Harper, that much has never been a secret.
I even agree with Archer’s assessment of her relentless optimism, though I’d never invest that many words or this much time on her.
Yet in the rare moments when she slows down just enough, she reminds me of Purple, and that thought irritates me, a lot.
“Are you out of your mind?” Archer’s head jerks back slightly. “We might be the two most incompatible people in all of Cherrywood. That woman is far too positive for my taste.” His eyes sharpen as they find mine. “So, who is she?”
“Who?” I sign back, buying myself time.
Archer’s gaze locks on to mine. He doesn’t repeat the question. He just waits, letting the silence stretch until it presses in from all sides.
The truth is, I don’t know how to answer him.
In an unexplainable way, it feels like I know Purple deeply—her thoughts, her humor, the way she bends words around emotion.
And yet I know nothing about the version of her that exists in the practical world. The name. The face. The life that doesn’t live inside a chat window.
“Everything is anonymous on FYS,” I finally sign, choosing my words carefully. “So I can’t tell you who she is or where she is.”
For someone who recently declared online matchmaking a fast track to getting kidnapped, my brother looks remarkably at ease.
“If you really want to know, there’s no server Rory can’t crack. She could get you everything on your girl,” he says lightly, like he’s offering a casual solution and not a moral crossroads.
My girl.
Two words, and my whole body stalls before my brain even catches up. Rory—Aurora Teager—our youngest cousin, can crack anything with a keyboard, and for one honest second, the temptation is real.
I actually consider Archer’s idea.
I could know her. The real her.
But the excitement collapses in on itself almost immediately, replaced by a sour taste in my mouth.
What the fuck am I thinking?
Knowing Purple like that wouldn’t be discovery.
It would be theft. A violation of the sacred space we’ve built together.
The anonymity FYS provides isn’t a loophole—it’s a gift.
It’s the reason I can exist honestly with her.
The reason I’ve been able to show parts of myself I didn’t know how to offer before.
If I cross that line, if I see her before she chooses to be seen, I will ruin what we have. The awareness will make me retreat, make me careful the way I am with everyone outside my family.
“I don’t want to do that,” I sign. “I like that she’s a stranger in some ways.”
Archer doesn’t look surprised. Not even a little.
“You like her,” he says, flat and certain.
I look away, tipping my head back against the recliner and letting it thud softly as his words echo through me.
Do I like her?
Where does like end and something far more dangerous begin?
What I feel for ChaosInPurple doesn’t fit into any category I recognize. It’s heavier than curiosity, sharper than attraction, deeper than anything I’ve ever allowed myself to name.
So how do I label something that makes me feel so many things all at once?
I meet Archer’s gaze again. He doesn’t need my response; I’m sure my silence speaks enough to him. But I give him one anyway. “I definitely feel something for her.”
When I think we’re done with the conversation, Archer’s words shake my world once again. “What if she’s not an absolute stranger?”
A sharp cold slides through me. “It’s an international website.”
He nods. “The chances are, of course, slim.”
My breath stalls under his scrutiny, and his unspoken words are heard loud and clear.
The chances of Purple not being a stranger are slim, but not zero.