Chapter 14
Chapter fourteen
Halo
“Burn Protocol”
The rooftop was cold, but I was used to discomfort.
Wind needled through the seams of my jacket, slid under my clothes, set up camp in my bones.
I’d been all over the world and suffered worse than this: desert nights where the sand radiated the day’s heat back at you until you thought your organs were cooking, mountain posts where your eyelashes froze together when you blinked.
I’d gone days without sleep, until I was plagued with hallucinations and headaches that felt like railroad spikes being plunged into my brain.
I huddled against the short wall, keeping my mask pulled over my ears and mouth to keep my face as warm as possible. My breath fogged the cotton and came back at me damp.
Even up here, surrounded by the nothing of the night sky, I felt like I was being watched too. Maybe by God, maybe by her. If it was God, He was late. If it was her, then she had better aim than half the men I had served with, because I felt that gaze like a scope dot between my ribs.
No cars passed down the street this late.
It seemed like most people were afraid to be here after dark.
In the last several hours, I’d noticed one or two…
that was all. The city had gone to sleep here, every window dark but hers.
It made the rectangle of light that much more prominent: an intimate glimpse into her life, like a door left open by mistake.
Eden was watching a movie with the orange cat, I guess.
They hadn’t moved from that spot since she got home.
She still wore the button-up shirt and blue jeans I had seen her in at the cafe.
A neat, simple uniform that did a shit job of hiding how her body filled it out.
That shirt had gaped when she leaned over the table this morning. Just a little. Just enough for lace and the pale hint of skin. I’d looked away, like a good man, like a professional. Then I’d caught myself replaying it here six hours later, which said more about the man I actually was.
She hadn’t smiled at me today like I had gotten used to. She didn’t greet me; she didn’t try to make friendly small talk. She hadn’t trusted me today. Not that I could blame her… I killed two men in her name and dropped a burner phone on the table like it was a love letter.
She was scared of me, but she should be. I wanted her to be. That was the easiest way. Fear made people predictable, easier to protect, easier to move around the board. It should not have made her more beautiful, but it did, like every sharp edge of her had finally turned to face me.
I leaned back against the wall and let my eyes close, not to sleep but to drift. It was the kind of micro-rest I taught myself overseas, where a twitch too long meant you died in your sleep.
I opened my eyes the moment the light shifted in her window.
Even behind my lids, I caught the nuanced change.
I had been conditioned for that too. When I was being trained as a sniper, I would have to find a match taped to a brick building through my scope.
They would plant something at an impossible distance… and we would find it every time.
Her silhouette moved across the room. She was acting casual and unbothered.
That was a lie, though – I could see the hesitation in her fingers.
She started unbuttoning her shirt, and I bit the inside of my cheek.
Each button slipped free with the slow, practiced care of someone defusing a bomb.
It killed me that the thing she was dismantling was my focus.
I felt it in the base of my spine: that first curl of heat, low and unwanted, like a match struck too close to dry leaves.
My eyes followed the slow, deliberate path of her movements.
She worked one button at a time until it was completely opened in the front.
She turned her back to me then, taking her arms out of the shirt and letting it fall to the floor.
The fabric slid off her shoulders like she was shedding the polite version of herself, the one who said please and thank you.
It was playing out just like it had last night.
Then she unbuttoned and unzipped her jeans, slowly, before stepping out of them on the floor.
She was taking her time. This time she left her bra on, but instead traced her hands down her own body, fingers catching the waistband of her underwear.
She tugged them as she walked towards the window, and she didn’t hurry.
Her hips rolled, lazy, like she knew I was tracking every inch and wanted me to feel how far away she really was, how untouchable.
And then the light vanished. Curtains drawn with a sharp, efficient sweep of her hands.
“Fuck you,” I snapped before I realized I’d said it. The word ripped out of me, raw, dragged over gravel. I was used to having control over my mouth, my hands, my trigger. She took all three like it was nothing.
My breaths came short, and I pressed my thumb into the side of my jaw until it hurt. It didn’t help.
She was playing with me. How was this the same girl that only hours ago had been terrified for her life? How stupid did you have to be to tease the guy you thought might still want to kill you?
The burner phone was already in my hand before I could second-guess myself. She picked up after two rings.
“Hello?” Her voice was soft with feigned innocence, dripping down the line like honey.
“What are you doing?” I asked. My voice sounded wrong in my own ears, frayed at the edges.
Her voice was soft, almost amused. “You watching again?”
“Yes,” I said, and the word felt bigger than the context, heavier. “Always.”
“Is everything okay? You sound…” she trailed off, invitation hanging there.
“You’re really gonna do this?” My voice was gravel and heat. “You know I was watching you. What kind of game are you playing at, here?”
“You didn’t have to watch. I was just getting comfortable.”
She sounded so confident when she wasn’t an arm’s length away, like the distance emboldened her. The phone gave her cover. Made her braver.
I gripped my thigh with one hand, muscle bunching under my fingers, trying to ground myself in something that wasn’t her.
“Hey,” she said, her own voice taking on the same edge as mine.
“Yeah?”
“Look.”
I peered back over the wall at the window, rising just enough to see over the concrete, my muscles coiled tight.
She had opened the curtain again. The sight hit me like a recoil.
The room was dark now, so her body was silhouetted by the glow of something.
A night light, television, or a fishtank, maybe.
Something faint and blue. She looked like she was underwater.
She had taken her bra off sometime between me calling and now.
For a second, my brain blanked; training, instinct, everything white-noised by the clean, unapologetic line of her.
She was soft where my world was hard, and it made my mouth go dry.
Her head tilted to the side, pinning the phone between her shoulder and her ear as she slid the underwear down her hips, slowly enough that I knew it was for me.
I adjusted my position, tension crawling up my spine.
My jeans felt too tight, every inch of me strained and coiled.
“You’re playing a dangerous game,” I said quietly.
“You said I should trust you. I can, can’t I?”
She was baiting me. I knew it. I hated how much it was working. How weak it made me feel to have my composure yanked out from under me by a girl with shaking hands and more courage than sense.
I tried to tell myself I needed to just look away, but I couldn’t.
Her voice dropped to a whisper that poured straight into my ear. “Are you hard right now, Halo?”
The question hit me like a strike to the ribs. I had been interrogated, tortured, shot at. No one had ever managed to peel me open like this. I’m rarely at a loss for words, but I had to convince myself that she had actually asked me that.
“Answer me.”
I leaned back against the wall, heart knocking against my sternum. My hand dropped to my thigh again, then lower, palm grazing the tense, honest proof pressing against my jeans.
She didn’t need an answer. Not a verbal one.
A soft breath from her – the smallest exhale – slid through the line. It landed like approval.
“Then take it out.”
Jesus. I obeyed. I shifted back from the wall, spine pressed to the rough concrete.
My belt rasped quietly in the dark as I unbuckled, unzipped, and wrapped my fist around myself until pressure built to the point of turning to pain.
My jaw clenched. My fingers felt clumsy, all that hard-won discipline evaporating under the weight of a girl in a third-floor window telling me to misbehave.
I could hear her breathing too, faint through the line.
Not shaky, not anymore. Measured. Intent.
“Halo?”
“What?”
My hand tightened reflexively. Heat flared sharp and heavy, pooling low. I dragged a slow breath through my nose, trying to keep some kind of distance between her voice and my body. It didn’t work.
“You sound different,” she said. “Is that because you’re touching yourself?”
I let my breath ghost across the speaker as I stroked myself slowly, teeth gritted.
I wasn’t looking at her anymore, but I could still imagine her standing there, clothed only in shadow.
Maybe she was touching herself too. The picture lodged in my skull, vicious and sweet: her head tipped back, lips parted, whispering my name like a sin she wanted to keep committing.
A faint sound reached me through the line.
Barely there. A soft, unguarded intake of breath she hadn’t meant for me to hear.
“Are you…?” I started, then stopped myself.
“Am I what?” she asked innocently.