Chapter 15 #2
Phoenix’s eyes are still on me, hard and bright, the smile never reaching them. “I’ll be seeing you,” he promises, low enough that only I can hear.
He slips into his Porsche, engine growling to life. He throws it into reverse, and I catch his eyes. He’s a predator, through and through. But I’m no prey.
He puts it into drive, and the car glides out of the garage, taillights bleeding red into the shadows. The man who will never know what he interrupted, follows in his vehicle right behind Phoenix.
I stay where I am, standing in the middle of the parking spaces, throat throbbing under phantom fingers. My pulse hasn’t slowed. My hands still shake with the weight of what almost happened.
He knows me. It wasn’t just his lawyers telling me to stop. He’s personally seen my comments. He’s paid enough attention that he’s clicked on my profile, watched my videos. He recognized me immediately. He knew my face. He remembered I do tarot.
Phoenix Marrow knows me. And I just attempted to kill him.
Maybe he doesn’t realize the danger he’s truly in. He has no way of knowing how many men I’ve killed with a plastic bag.
But those threats were serious. The look in his eyes was serious.
Predators recognize predators.
This is war.
My hands shake, but it’s not entirely fury. There’s a cold, bright satisfaction prickling under my skin.
Because Phoenix didn’t win this altercation. He might have felt like it, left thinking himself the big dog.
But while his fingers were a vice at my throat, my free hand went steady.
I’d palmed the tracker that morning—a little thing the size of a tic-tac, stupidly expensive and stupidly effective.
I’d thought I’d attach it to his car if he didn’t come out when he did.
But when he leaned in, when he tightened his grip, my fingers slid, felt leather and mesh and zipper teeth.
It didn’t take much of a tug to open whatever pocket that was. The tracker dropped in silently.
Phoenix didn’t notice. He pulled his hand away. He smiled. He walked to his car and drove off.
He walked away thinking he’d humiliated me. He walked away without knowing the tiny spy in his duffel had already begun talking.
As I walk toward the exit of the parking garage, I fish my phone out and thumb the tracker’s app open. The little dot blips into life, headed north like the heralding angel of death.
By the time I step out of the garage and into the daylight, adrenaline rolling off me in hot waves, I’m methodical again.
Phoenix might find my tracker. It’s little, but if he’s paying attention, it’ll be obvious it doesn’t belong.
But it should be twenty-four hours or so before he looks in that bag again, before he goes back to the gym.
But that’s twenty-four hours I’ll get to see where else Phoenix Marrow goes. Twenty-four hours to figure out where he lives. Twenty-four hours to make my plan, to plot his end.
The tracker ticks. And finally, the game is on.
Thirty minutes later, I have plans to attend to.
The moment I walk into the theater, I feel Lucky’s eyes on me.
He’s midair on the silks, body flipping like gravity owes him an apology, but the second he spots me, his whole face cracks into that unhinged grin.
He drops down in a smooth, controlled slide and hits the mat like he’s been waiting for me all day.
I walk to the stage, matching his lunacy grin for grin.
But he’s not alone. This is a rehearsal, so his entire crew is around, busy working, adjusting, tweaking, instructing. But they all stop the moment they see me approach. It’s obvious in a big hurry: visitors during rehearsal doesn’t happen.
“Everyone,” Lucky says, wiping sweat off his forehead with the hem of his shirt, green eyes glinting with trouble, “I want to introduce you to someone. This is Willow. My girlfriend.” He reaches for my hand, grinning with mischief and lust as he meets my eyes.
The word ricochets through the room like a bullet.
A guy with a clipboard hugged to his chest, blinks once, twice, like Lucky just told him he’s giving up oxygen. “Girlfriend?” His voice is flat, skeptical. “You’re not pranking us?”
Lucky flips him off. “Not this time.”
Another woman whistles low. She gives me a head-to-toe look and smirks. “Finally explains why Kade’s been distracted. You’re gorgeous, by the way. Please don’t break him—he’s fragile.”
Lucky, or, to them, Kade, barks a laugh. “Fragile, my ass.”
“Thank you,” I say to the woman, blushing.
Another guy wanders through, carrying a bottle of flammable stage liquid. He’s raising an eyebrow at me, impressed bafflement on his face. “You should give yourself a pat on the back. I mean, Shade doesn’t look at women. Ever. We thought he was married to the stage. Or to himself.”
“No one loves Saint Shade like Saint Shade loves Saint Shade,” the woman says with a smirk.
“She’s got you there,” I tease Lucky. “I mean, have you ever seen one of your TikToks?”
“Have you ever seen one of your comments?” he fires right back, his gaze turning molten.
“Oh, you’re @valetarot!” a woman with blonde hair and a camera says. She looks genuinely excited, like she’s witnessing the internet unfurl in real life, but I just blush and want to shrivel up from embarrassment. Apparently, my thirsty comments for the man beside me are well known.
“Damn straight,” Lucky replies for me, looking down at me with hunger in his eyes.
The first guy with the clipboard chuckles as he observes us. “Well. That explains the over-performance. I thought he was just trying to impress me.”
Lucky smirks. “Still am, Marco.”
The laughter that follows is sharp, good-natured. They’re razzing him, but there’s something loving about it. They really are happy for their showman.
Lucky looks back at me with that grin, and for a second, the whole world narrows down to the sweat dripping from his temple, the manic energy in his eyes, and the word still ringing in my ears.
Girlfriend. I have never, in my whole life, been a girlfriend. It feels pretty damn good.
He gestures toward the front row of seats. “Sit. Watch. I’ve got something new for you to see.”
And my heart is still thundering as I do, adrenaline from earlier burning under my skin, bleeding into something hotter as I prepare to watch him work.
I sink into the padded seat, but within thirty seconds, my legs are bouncing like they’ve got caffeine jitters.
But it isn’t coffee humming through me. Just an hour ago, a man had his hands around my throat.
Death threats were promised. This is leftover adrenaline burning through me.
My heart hasn’t stopped racing since the garage.
And now there’s Lucky. The object of my favorite obsession. The man who makes my blood surge. The one who sets me on fire.
He climbs back onto the silks like it’s nothing, like gravity is a rumor someone made up.
He flips, twists, catches himself by one ankle, and hangs upside down, body a perfect line of control and power.
The lights cut sharp across his shoulders, sweat slicking every muscle, and for a moment, I forget to breathe.
The crew calls corrections, shouts encouragement.
One woman, Juno, I hear someone say, heckles him to “go higher, you coward,” and he grins mid-spin, like chaos is his favorite flavor.
The guy with the flammables, Toby, I learn, fiddles with some contraption by the stage and mutters calculations. The boss, Marco, shouts about timing.
Lucky feeds on it. Every note, every shout, it fuels him. He doesn’t just perform; he commands. And I realize—this is who he is when he isn’t hiding or isn’t with me.
Saint Shade isn’t just Lucky’s mask. It’s him being the person he could be when he got to choose his own life.
And I can’t look away.
I didn’t understand him when I came and watched the full Saint Shade show. But now I do. Now I know who he is, now I know why he is who he is.
And it’s fucking inspiring.
The wild burn inside me sharpens, shifts.
Phoenix could’ve killed me this morning. That thought alone should terrify me, but instead, it lights a fire so strong it feels like it might break my ribs.
Life is short. Too short to hold back.
And the truth hits me. Hard, clean, inescapable.
I love him.
Not just the body, though damn, that’s unfair enough. Not just the obsession, or the way he looks at me like I’m a miracle and a car crash in one. But the whole damn man. The danger, the complicated, unrealistic past, the unhinged devotion, the softness he tries to bury with humor.
It feels reckless to admit it, even in my own head, but I can’t stop the certainty from settling in my chest like steel.
I love Lucky.
And I’m all in.
He lands with a thud, sticks the move like he’s the hottest Avenger on the squad. His eyes flick to me, and that grin—the one that unravels me every time—blooms wide, like I’m the only thing that matters in this room full of people shouting at him.
I don’t think he has any idea what just happened inside me.
The fire doesn’t dim as the rehearsal rolls on. If anything, it builds. Watching him climb, flip, risk, command—watching him be himself—it’s like watching someone set my whole life on fire and daring me to walk through the flames.
And I already know I’ll walk. Hell, I’ll run.
The dramatic music cuts, and it’s as clear as if someone had shouted it: the rehearsal is over.
The crew starts winding down, voices overlapping as they pack up gear and bicker about timing.
Lucky unravels from the silks, drops to the mat, and stalks straight toward me with that cocky stride that should be illegal.
“You didn’t blink the whole time,” he says, grin crooked, sweat dripping down his jaw.
I push up from the chair and walk to the edge of the stage. Lucky extends a hand down to me and hauls me right up onto it with him. “That’s because I was exercising tremendous restraint the entire time,” I admit with a smirk. “Saint Shade live, without the mask, all that skin…”