Chapter 32
Chapter thirty-two
Halo
“Party Crasher”
The air was thick with the sound of children screaming: happy, high-pitched chaos drifting across the suburban lawn where balloons bobbed and folding tables sagged under the weight of cake and soda.
I didn’t look at the kids sprinting across the grass or the parents laughing together.
I only had eyes for the man: Jason Rowe.
Mid-forties, greying at the temples. He had the kind of laugh that used to echo down bloodstained corridors, the man who called shots and got people killed but never pulled a trigger on his own.
He was a predator in a collared shirt, holding a paper plate with store-bought cupcakes.
He crouched to tie a kid’s shoe, even smiled like he meant it.
I watched from across the street, perched in the window of yet another abandoned building.
My black hoodie was zipped up, mask on, hands steady.
I waited. I could have shot him on the grass in front of everyone, but that wasn’t how I worked. No theatrics, no warnings, just one exhale and a gentle squeeze.
Eventually, Jason slipped away to toss a bag of trash into the dumpster at the end of the parking lot.
I couldn’t hear him from the distance, but I could see his lips moving as he muttered to himself about frosting and sticky fingers.
The moment he stepped off the curb, I raised the rifle.
Scoped, silenced. Just one round chambered.
A clean shot. The man dropped in an awkward sprawl onto the pavement, red blooming against khaki like spilled paint.
The shot was muffled by the hum of traffic and laughter from the birthday party behind the trees.
He lay dead, without ceremony, beside his SUV.
A family balloon drifted away in the wind, and I was gone before anyone screamed.
I was already moving, rifle packed, walking calmly back to where I’d parked.
No rush, no adrenaline. Just a job done, one less danger to Eden in the world.
The motel room was too quiet when I got back.
Eden sat on the edge of the bed, thumbing a loose thread on the motel blanket.
She didn’t say anything when I pulled out the folder, didn’t ask who.
She just watched as I crossed Jason Rowe’s face out and set his file aside.
When I looked up, she was still watching, her gaze unreadable but electric.
Not afraid or judgmental, just tuned in.
I stood to kick my boots off and put them by the door.
She blinked at the movement, looking away as though she had to remind herself not to stare.
She cleared her throat, reaching over to flip the switch of the little radio on the bedside table.
“Too quiet in here isn’t it?” she asked.
The music started. It was some old, bubbly track full of static and swing. Something ridiculous. She turned to look at me with a little smirk.
“Oh no,” I said automatically.
“Oh yes,” she replied.
“I’m not doing this.”
“You’re already standing,” she pointed out, not wrong.
“That was a lapse in judgment.”
She twirled away from me, spinning with a bounce in her step like we were in a grand ballroom instead of a box that smelled like mildew. She extended her arms like she was pulling me into some fever dream.
“Come on. Live a little. Bet you didn’t know I had these moves,” she said, shimmying in a way that was both terrible and endearing. I wanted to stay stone-faced but my mouth twitched, threatening to turn up into a smile.
“You are deeply unwell,” I muttered.
“I’m a delight.”
She danced like she did when she thought no one was watching. I didn’t move, not really. Just stood there while she circled around me like a moon made of chaos and warmth and a hundred things I didn’t deserve. She slid on the carpet and nearly fell, catching herself on the bed with a laugh.
I almost laughed too. Almost.
“Come onnn,” she said, grabbing my hand. Her fingers were warm. Insistent. “Just one stupid little dance.”
I let her pull me, but I didn’t dance. I stood stiffly while she moved around me, her laughter and momentum carrying the whole moment. But when she spun, I caught her waist. When she leaned, I held her hands. I was awkward as fuck, and I knew it.
“See?” she beamed. “You’re doing it.”
“God help me,” I muttered, and I did smile.
She noticed, her own smile only growing more.
The song faded out, and after a beat of static, another song began: deeper this time, a melody that was slower, thicker. Something with a bass that rolled low and steady.
She turned away from me and moved again, but this time it wasn’t goofy or lighthearted.
This time, it wasn’t innocent. Her hips swayed with the music, slower now, more deliberate.
She stretched her arms overhead and let the shirt ride up her back, exposing the dip of her waist, the curve of flesh where I had been resting my hand at night.
She moved like she was listening with her whole body, like the beat had burrowed beneath her skin, and she had to let it out.
She wasn’t dancing for fun anymore. I was sure she was dancing for me.
I felt it: every slow rotation of her hips, every slide of her fingers through her hair.
The movements were not flashy, not practiced, just raw and instinctual.
When her hands trailed up her body, slipping into her hair, tilting her head back, it felt like electricity in my spine.
I sat back on the edge of the table, trying to ground myself, trying not to let it show.
She turned then, looked at me over her shoulder with eyes that danced with mischief and a smile that took my breath. She knew exactly what she was doing.
The air in the room went tight and hot as she moved closer.
She reached out, putting her hands on my hips as she leaned into me.
She looked up at me with those blue eyes, and I reached up to brush my thumb across her cheekbone, a slow drag that confirmed she was real.
My hand fell to the back of her neck, pulling her in.
She didn’t resist as our mouths met in a desperate, bruised, and heavy kiss.
The taste of her washed away the bitter aftermath of violence that was on my tongue.
The song on the radio cut off, and the radio host’s voice came across in crisp clarity. “Breaking news out of Sunning. Police are asking for tips after the fatal shooting of a local man at Bayview Park, just after 5 p.m.”
Eden froze, pulling away from the kiss but not from my touch. She turned to face the radio like she was looking the host in the eye.
“…Jason Rowe was a beloved community member, baseball coach, father of two. He was gunned down at his child’s birthday party this afternoon in what authorities are calling a targeted killing.”
I knew – from the way her eyes searched mine – that she knew. I didn’t say anything, even when she pulled out of my grasp and put her hands together like she didn’t know what to do with them. She cleared her throat and looked at the floor, crossing her arms.
“I didn’t expect it to hit the news that fast,” I said. “I guess he had a presence.”
“He was one of them? One of the men after me?”
No, not really. He just knew who she was, knew that there had been a contract out for her life. I wasn’t going to risk letting anyone who knew walk away from this. I wasn’t taking any chances.
After my lack of response, she sat on the edge of the bed. She looked like she had pulled the trigger and not me.
“I don’t know how I feel about it,” she whispered.
“That’s okay. You don’t have to like it. You’re not like me. You just need to know that I have to do this to protect you.”
She nodded at me, but it wasn’t a motion of agreement. “I just…” She shook her head. “He had kids.”
Her voice cracked on the last word, and it gutted me. She didn’t cry, but I could feel the guilt bleeding out of her. I sat down beside her, elbows on my knees, staring at the floor like it could give me the answers I needed to soothe her soul.
“I don’t want people to die for me,” she said, biting the inside of her cheek like it was the only thing keeping her from sobbing. She had said something similar before. “I don’t want to be the reason someone’s kids grow up without a dad.”
“He wasn’t innocent.”
“Who is?”
I didn’t have anything to say, because she was right.
“I don’t want you to be okay with it. You shouldn’t be. That’s the part of you I’m trying to keep alive.”
She turned to look at me, eyes searching mine. “But how many people have to die for me to stay that way? I’m just not sure I’m worth all of this blood.”
That was a punch to my chest. For just a minute, I hated her for saying it, for not seeing what I saw when I looked at her.
I reached for her hand, and she let me take it. She looked down at where they were clasped together. Mine still faintly dirty from gun oil and the dirt from the building’s floor, cuts healing across my knuckles. Hers soft and clean, curling into my palm.
“Don’t say that. You don’t get to say that.”
She started to argue, but I cut her off. “You think this is a game of checks and balances? About some fucked-up scale where that man’s life was equal to yours? No. I’d kill every single person in this world for you, Eden. I wouldn’t hesitate.”
I looked away from her, but the weight of her eyes on me made it hard to stay where I was. I wanted to leave again, go someplace where I was alone to breathe, but I wasn’t going to leave her.
“You don’t have to agree with me, but don’t ever say you aren’t worth it. Not to me.”
She let out a shaky breath, and her hand hesitantly reached for my face. Just her fingertips against my jaw. I leaned into the touch, putting my hand over hers.