9. Artemis
ARTEMIS
Arthur’s car should have been behind velvet ropes in a museum, surrounded by alarms and a cranky docent warning children not to touch anything.
Instead, it sat at the curb outside the library as if it had been summoned for a dramatic getaway scene. The gleaming, black classic car whispered royalty and hand-waxed with the tears of the wealthy.
“Please tell me this is a replica,” I said as Arthur opened the passenger door for me.
“It’s the original,” he said.
I gaped at him. “This should be in a climate-controlled vault.”
He blinked at me, clearly confused. “Why?”
“Because it’s worth more than my student loans, my job, and possibly my weight in gold.”
“I see.” He seemed to consider that. “I take very good care of it. But in my opinion, cars are meant to be driven.”
“That is not the reassurance you think it is.”
I hesitated beside the open door.
Spontaneity wasn’t usually my jam. I liked plans and schedules. Lists that could be color-coded and optimized for maximum efficiency. Six hours in a car with no clear structure should have made my skin crawl—it usually did.
But lately, I had been restless, and I couldn’t organize the feeling away. A part of me craved adventure or just something to knock my carefully stacked routines sideways.
And while my AuDHD brain was already calculating the sensory logistics of a six-hour drive—temperature fluctuations, gas stops, music selection, the probability of needing exactly the wrong snack at mile ninety-three—there was absolutely no universe in which I was turning down an invitation like this.
A beautiful man with a mysterious agenda had just pulled up in a million-dollar car and asked me to go somewhere interesting.
I wasn’t an idiot.
I slid into the seat. Because apparently the rational part of my brain had clocked out for the day and left Adventure Artie in charge. Adventure Artie had questionable judgment but excellent storytelling skills.
The interior smelled like leather, history, and the tears of at least four museum curators.
Arthur slipped into the driver’s seat, and gave me a small, earnest smile. “Ready?”
No. Yes. Absolutely not. More than anything.
“Sure,” I said.
He pulled onto the road with the confidence of someone who definitely did not belong in the twenty-first century.
He checked the mirrors. Then checked them again, like he didn’t quite trust what they’d told him the first time.
His posture was immaculate, shoulders square, hands placed with almost ceremonial care at ten and two.
Not at all how I drove —slouched in the seat, one hand on the wheel, and music blasting.
The city blurred by, unfolding outside the window in familiar stretches.
Old brick buildings hunched close to the street like they were sharing secrets.
There was the coffee shop with hand-painted lettering, the bookstore I’d meant to visit for three years but hadn’t yet.
The river flashed silver through the trees, wide and calm.
Storm clouds still hung low, bruised purple and gray, but the rain had softened into a fine mist that turned the streetlights hazy and unreal. Everything looked slightly off, like the world had shifted half an inch to the left and no one else had noticed.
We passed the train station, the river walk, the quiet residential streets where houses leaned against each other. This was my terrain. My safe haven.
And I was leaving it in a vintage car with a man who had punched someone through the inside of a van.
My pulse finally settled somewhere between thrilled and terrified.
Arthur’s grip on the steering wheel shifted slightly. “Are you truly all right?” he asked. “Physically, at least?”
I blinked, the question catching up to me a second late. “Yes. I think so.”
“I need to be certain,” he said. His voice stayed even, but there was an edge underneath it now. “You didn’t strike your head. You didn’t lose consciousness. You aren’t dizzy.”
It wasn’t phrased like a question, but a checklist.
I did a quick internal scan, the way I always did. Wrists sore. Pride bruised. Nervous system still vibrating like it had been plugged into an outlet. Nothing alarming.
“I’m okay,” I said. “A little shaken. A little annoyed. No concussion. No bleeding. No sudden urge to lie down in the road.”
His shoulders eased a fraction.
“That’s good,” he said. Then, quieter, “I’m sorry.”
I glanced at him. “For the van thing or the existential terror?”
“For all of it. You were targeted because of me.”
My stomach dipped.
He kept his eyes on the road, jaw tight. “I brought danger into your world without meaning to. That is… not acceptable.”
I folded my hands in my lap, suddenly acutely aware of how close I still felt to everything that had happened. “You didn’t ask some guy to shove me into a van.”
“No,” he agreed. “But I am the reason he was there.”
The weight of that settled between us, and silence stretched for an awkward minute.
“I will make this right,” he continued. “However you require. I swear it.”
I huffed out a breath. “You know, most people say ‘I’ll buy you a drink,’ not ‘I’ll atone.’”
His lips twitched. “I can do both.”
I looked out the window, watching the river slide past.
“Let’s start with not letting me get kidnapped twice in one week,” I said. “We can negotiate beverages after.”
“That’s… reasonable,” he said.
Absurdly, that helped me regain my calm.
After a few minutes of comfortable silence, he said, “I’m glad you came.”
My stomach performed an elaborate and dramatic pirouette. “I figured you’d need a translator for… librarians.”
“I don’t mind needing you,” he said simply.
Oh. Well then.
I turned toward the window so he wouldn’t see the full meltdown happening on my face.
I cleared my throat and defaulted to competence, my emotional bunker of choice.
“For the record,” I said lightly, still watching the river, “I’m not just a random cardigan in this situation.
I finished my doctoral coursework in preservation and archival studies and took the comprehensive exams. I’m fluent in three languages.
I can reconstruct a fifteenth-century binding pattern from memory, and I once corrected a tenured historian in front of a room full of people who hated me for it. ”
I risked a glance at him. “So, if we’re doing… whatever this is… I can be useful.”
More useful than I’d ever been allowed to feel.
And if I was being honest with myself—which I tried to avoid before my third dose of caffeine—I had been desperate for something like this.
Not the kidnapping attempt and interrogation, but the current humming under my skin.
The world was larger than climate controls and overdue notices. There were things worth chasing.
I’d spent years preserving other people’s adventures. I had never expected to be handed one.
He smiled. “I consider myself fortunate to have been handed so formidable a partner.”
My stomach did another somersault.
About an hour into the drive, I finally worked up the courage to ask, “So… where exactly did this car come from?”
Arthur hesitated just long enough for me to notice. “I bought it two months ago.”
“You bought a museum car.”
“Yes.”
“In New York.”
“Yes.”
“With traffic.”
“Yes.”
That earned me the faintest exhale through his nose. Not a laugh, but an acknowledgment of absurdity.
“My father died last year,” he added after a beat. His tone stayed even, but it had a tight edge underneath it. “He didn’t see value in things like this. Considered them unnecessary and excessive.”
I waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. He kept his eyes on the road.
“So, you bought it to spite him?” I asked gently.
He considered that. “I wouldn’t phrase it that way.”
“But.”
“But he would have disapproved. And that may have been a small motivating factor.”
That explained a lot. The car wasn’t a flex. It was a statement. Grief wrapped in chrome and leather.
“Well,” I said, nodding toward the dashboard, “nothing says unresolved paternal tension like a vintage German death trap.”
He glanced at me, brows knitting. “It’s not a death trap.”
“It doesn’t have airbags.”
A cute crease formed between his brows. “Air… bags,” he repeated carefully.
“You know. Safety feature? It inflates? Keeps you from slamming your head into the dashboard if you crash?”
Another beat. “Ah. Yes. We call them something different in Canada.”
“You call airbags something different.”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Supplemental impact cushions.”
I snorted. “Absolutely no one calls them that.”
He tightened his grip on the wheel, eyes fixed forward. “Regional variation.”
“It still doesn’t have them,” I said.
“I am a very attentive driver,” he replied evenly
“So,” I said, keeping my voice light, “your father wasn’t a car person.”
“No,” he said. “He preferred other… modes of transportation.”
I waited.
He cleared his throat. “He believed relying too heavily on human systems made one undisciplined.”
“That sounds like a man who would hate New York.”
“Yes,” Arthur said. “And phones.”
I smiled at that, even as the road curved ahead and he slowed with almost ceremonial precision.
“For what it’s worth,” I said, “I think the car suits you.”
He glanced over at me, his eyebrows raised in surprise. “You do?”
“It’s dramatic,” I said. “Beautiful. Completely impractical.”
His mouth curved slightly. “High praise.”
We drove on, the engine humming low beneath us, grief and rebellion riding quietly in the space between our seats.
“I do prefer flying,” he said almost in passing.
I stared at him.
He froze, then corrected quickly, “Flying down the road. Swiftly. With speed.”
“You mean… driving?”
“Yes.”
“You said flying.”
“It’s a modifier of speed.”
“Mm.”
He tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “I meant what humans say when they are moving quickly.”
“That’s not—never mind.”
He gave a small, embarrassed cough. It was adorable. Why was he adorable?
By hour three, my nerves had settled enough for the banter to come naturally. I picked up on his conversational rhythms so easily even though we were basically strangers.