23. Storm
Storm
It’s not the noise that gets to me. It’s the people.
Her, especially.
It’s one big circle of watching in here—the guys watching Phoenix, Phoenix watching us, me watching Phoenix watch us like she’s bracing for the storm I’m trying my damndest not to be.
Chain links skim her skin as she shifts restlessly against the wall—the same one she sat against the night she first arrived—and for a moment it’s as if the entire room forgets how to breathe.
I keep breathing, though. In. Out. The steel of my Tighe knife warm against my fingers, blade flipping knuckle to knuckle to keep my hands occupied.
The bet burns behind my ribs like cheap whiskey burns the throat—stupid and hot. I care way too much about this thing that started as a joke and turned into a scoreboard.
If I had a brain, I’d swallow my pride, take the L, and fucking talk to her.
If I had a brain, I’d ask her why she flinches sometimes when we move too fast, why she’s hiding shit in her ceiling, why her shoulders square up like a boxer’s when someone says her name.
I guess I don’t have a brain, though, because instead I sit back like a carved-out statue, some chick draped across my lap. She giggles, a syrupy sound that doesn’t stick to anything, and trails her fingers over the ink at my throat. My attention never leaves Phoenix.
She thinks we’re killers.
The thought shouldn’t sting. It does, though. It hits someplace bone-deep I haven’t let anyone else touch .
I don’t know when I started wanting to be the opposite of what she sees—something that holds instead of harms, something that stands between her and the worst thing she’s imagining. But I did.
“Fuck me.”
I look up at Maverick’s soft curse to see Phoenix licking— fucking licking —tequila off of another chick. I go rock hard instantly and squeeze my eyes closed against the pulse of need.
The girl on my lap squirms a little and bats her lashes, peeks up through them like I’m supposed to be moved. I’m not cruel, but I’m not soft, either. That’s not for her.
I twirl the blade, let it whisper down the front of her dress from neckline to hem, just the tease of it. She shivers at the attention and arches, and the knife catches the fabric higher than I mean it to. A sliver of red wells up on the swell of her tit. Just a bead, clean and bright.
There’s a gasp that isn’t hers.
I look up to find Phoenix already looking at me. Hurt sits in her eyes like I put it there on purpose. Like every bad story she’s heard about us suddenly found the proof it wanted.
My hand goes still. The girl on my lap makes a sound like she’s proud of the mark. Phoenix swallows, and it’s the smallest sound in a loud room, but it cuts through every other noise. She shakes her head a little and looks away.
Self-loathing spears through me, and my gaze snags and holds Con’s. He shrugs, and my grip tightens around the Tighe.
Decision. It’s a click in my head, like a knife seating home in its sheath. I can give a stranger a Band-Aid, but I can’t stitch the kind of rip I put in Phoenix’s trust if I keep playing the part Con’s writing for us.
“Up,” I tell the girl, and slide her off my lap without finesse. She squeals. I don’t look to see where she lands.
Phoenix tries to ghost when she sees me stand. She’s good at it—slipping sideways, letting bodies and sound cover her exits. I’m better. I catch her wrist, and she jerks against my hold, eyes flaring. I lower my voice .
“Walk.”
“Storm,” she says, warning and plea tangled together.
I don’t give her time to decide which it is. I glance at the guys. Con lifts his chin, a quiet ask. Atticus’s hand tightens around a glass, then relaxes. The nod I give them is short. Trust me. Nothing more.
She protests when I haul her up, stronger when I throw her over my shoulder, but it’s not a fight. It’s noise—fear-shaped, angry around the edges. Her fist thuds my back once. Twice. Then she goes still except for the angry huff of her breath against my spine.
The elevator hums our descent after I get on and punch the button.
“Where are we going, Storm?”
I don’t answer.
“Storm?”
Three more flights go past.
“You asshole! Put me down!” She kicks out, her heels clanging against the metal walls of the elevator box .
When I continue to ignore her, she calls me names polite Southern mamas would be appalled by. I let them land, unperturbed. The doors open and the parking garage exhales a blast of hot air into our faces. Concrete. Oil. The faraway echo of a jazz band from somewhere in the hotel.
“I’m going to tell you one more time…put-me-down,” she spits, writhing.
I set her on her feet long enough to open the passenger side door of the SUV. She tries to pivot and bolt. My hand closes around her wrist again—gentle, for me. “Don’t,” I say. “Please. Just get in.”
The word surprises both of us.
She stares, defiant and shaken, then climbs in. “You’d better not be taking me somewhere to murder me,” she mutters.
I buckle her in myself, fingers quick, then take her face in both my hands. “I am not going to murder you, Phoenix. You have my solemn oath. I may cut you a little, but only if you ask. Okay?”
She stares at me a long time, eyes wide pools of hazel shadows. “O-okay. ”
I nod, then walk around and climb behind the wheel.
We pull out. Night swallows the city one streetlight at a time.
Ten minutes in, her breath evens. She still has her jaw locked like a trap.
The chain-link dress glints under the seatbelt.
I want to be the kind of man who reaches and fixes the twist where the belt bites her collarbone, but I grip the wheel tighter.
We’re not there yet.
“You think we’re killers,” I say finally. Technically I am not supposed to know about what was discovered in her room, but her statement earlier— you’d better not be taking me somewhere to murder me —sort of opened the door for this conversation.
She jerks her head in my direction. “Is that supposed to be a question?”
“It’s supposed to be true or not true.”
She doesn’t answer. The streetlights slide over her profile like a metronome. Soft. Harsh. Soft again.
“Why would you say such a thing?” I press. “What have you been hearing? ”
Her laugh is a small, wrecked thing. “You think this is about gossip?”
I lift my shoulder in a shrug. “I don’t know what to think. I just know you don’t trust me. Or the others.”
“Does that matter?”
“It does to me.”
“Why?” A sharp cut of a word. “Why would it matter to you, Storm? You don’t even like me unless I’m performing for your entertainment.”
Now that lands. “I like you more than you think. I like that you don’t scare easy.” I glance at her. “I like that you don’t only see the worst in me and use it to get off.”
Her breath hitches, and then she goes quiet. The city thins to outskirts. Buildings flatten into warehouses, then memory. Road hum shivers up through the wheel into my hands.
I’ve said more tonight than I usually do in a week, and I ought to stop talking. But I don’t. “You want to know a secret?”
“No. ”
I tell her anyway, because I’m not doing this for a win. I’m doing it because there’s something I can give her that doesn’t owe anything to a bet. “I’ve known you longer than you think.”
She huffs a laugh. “That’s creepy, Storm.”
“It would be, if I meant it how you heard it.” I exhale. “I knew your mom.”
Her head snaps toward me. “You did not.”
“Not in the way you’re thinking.” My mouth goes tight.
“She worked nights sometimes. Sometimes when my parents had late-night events and stuff, they…” I roll my shoulders once, a shrug that doesn’t shake.
“They didn’t believe in babysitters. They were right there in the hotel, after all.
Your mom would check in on me. Keep me company if I got scared.
She didn’t deserve to be a story that ends and then gets forgotten. ”
She’s silent. Then, softly: “No. She didn’t.”
We turn off the highway. Gravel unfurls under the tires, pops and pings in the wheel wells. The sign’s old iron with paint flaking, a name swung between two posts. The gates yawn open in derelict invitation .
Her voice is thin when she asks, “Where are we?”
I don’t want to tell her yet. “Somewhere you’ll like.”
“Storm.”
“Trust me,” I say, and this time it doesn’t taste like a line.
Her hands hold the seatbelt like a rosary, both palms gripped around it in front of her chest. I cut the engine when we reach it—the low rise of ground under a stand of old trees, the hum of insects saying life goes on even when it stops.
A single security light buzzes above the narrow track of asphalt that weaves in and out of concrete monuments.
I step out, and the night carries the smell of damp earth, cut grass, the sweet rot of flowers.
I open her door. She doesn’t move, just looking up at me. “You brought me to a graveyard?”
I hold out a hand. After a beat, she takes it, and I pull her out and a few steps over to the plot.
The marble isn’t grand. It’s just…right.
Simple lines. Her mother’s name, clean and sure.
The dates. A small etched sprig in the corner be cause I remember her once telling me she had tried planting an herb garden and failed miserably.
I guessed it was rosemary—remembrance—because that seemed like a promise I could keep.
Phoenix stops two paces from the stone. She doesn’t breathe.
Or maybe I don’t. The bouquet there tonight is fresh—white lilies this time, because lilies are what people think of when they think of after.
The ground around the base is clear of leaves.
Someone’s been here with a soft brush and a bottle of water.
She steps forward like the earth might crack and swallow her if she moves too fast. Her fingers touch the carved letters of her mother’s name and curl. The sound she makes folds me in half from the inside.
“How,” she whispers, and I realize I’ve never heard her voice do that—fall open without armor. “How is it…this?”
“Because this is what should have happened.” I keep my hands at my sides. I want to touch her shoulder. I want a lot of things, but it’s not time for that yet. “You were a kid. You didn’t have a car. You didn’t have anyone who made this a priority. So I did.”
“You did…what, exactly?”
“All of it.” The words feel too big and too small all at the same time.
“Picked the stone. Paid for it. The plot was covered, but the rest wasn’t.
The caretaker was cutting corners because that’s what people do when they think no one’s watching.
I watched. I come out here on the day. Not for points. Not for…anything. She mattered.”
Her face breaks. It’s not pretty, not careful. It’s honest. She covers her mouth like she’s trying to hold the pieces in, but they won’t stay. Tears slip down her cheeks, quick and hot, but she doesn’t wipe them because she’s still braced against the stone, and she needs both hands to stay upright.
I step closer—not to touch, but close enough that if she falls, I’ll catch her before she hits the ground.
“She talked about you,” I say, and it’s only half true; it was more that I saw the shape of a girl I liked in her tired smiles, and that made me like her. “She was good. You were hers. That was enough. ”
Her shoulders pitch forward like a wave took her. I hold my ground and let it hit and pass. When she straightens, she looks at me like she doesn’t know me at all and maybe for the first time, that’s good.
“Why?” she asks, her voice raw. “I don’t understand why you would?—”
“Because I could.” My throat feels like it’s been lined with sand. “Because I knew how much she meant to you, even when you pretended you didn’t care about anything. Because I am not just this crazy person who plays with knives.”
The night breathes around us. Somewhere, a cicada saws its life into the air. Phoenix stares at the stone like it might answer for me. Then she wipes at her face with the heel of her hand, her anger trying to put itself back together out of habit.
I don’t let it.
“Now,” I say, quiet. “This should prove you can trust me, even if you don’t want to. So tell me why you’re really here.”
Her chin lifts. Tears keep coming anyway. She looks at me like I might be the worst thing that ever happened to her and the only thing that ever tried to make any of it right.
“I can’t,” she says.
I nod once. Not acceptance. Not yet. Understanding. “Okay.”
I step back to give her the space she never had.
I pick dead leaves off the grass that aren’t there because I already cleared them, because I don’t know what to do with my hands when they aren’t holding a blade.
She stands there long enough for the lilies’ scent to turn thick and the security lights to hum louder with the night.
When she finally moves, it’s toward me.
I don’t touch her.
I just open the door and wait while she climbs into the SUV. She buckles herself this time. She keeps her eyes on the window as we pull away, but her hand rests palm-up on the console like she forgot to hide it.
I don’t take it.
I drive us back to a penthouse where people are loud and I am supposed to be louder, and I try not to think about how easy it would be to keep driving until the worst parts of us fall off in the dark and the only thing left is the part of me that bought a headstone with no name on the receipt.