Chapter 13 Sable
SABLE
Something’s different now.
Not just in the way Voltar looks at me—though that’s changed too. Softer. Steadier. Like he’s not just watching my back, but watching me. All of me. The cracks and the steel and the silly parts I used to hide. There’s no hiding anymore. Not with him.
It’s in the way we move, too. We’ve always had rhythm, but now it’s sync.
Like breathing. Like a dance we didn’t even know we’d memorized.
I open the salon at nine, and he’s already perched at the window seat with his arms crossed and that watchful scowl softened just enough to keep kids from crying but still make potential threats think twice.
My customers have started calling him “The Shampoo Sentry.”
I call him that too, usually with a smirk and a flick of the towel over my shoulder. “Voltar, my liege,” I’ll say, “your presence is required in aisle conditioner.”
He plays along, mostly. Grunts, but doesn’t deny me. And when old Ms. Tora runs her hand along his bicep while asking if he’s single, he only gives me a look—a little side-eye smirk that says, help me without ever needing to say it.
I pretend to be scandalized. “You’re public property now. We all get to enjoy the view.”
He growls, but it’s not a threat. Not anymore. I’ve learned the difference.
Gods, I love the way he smiles now. Not the cocky, self-assured smirk he used to wear like a blade, but the quiet kind. The one that starts in his eyes. Like he’s letting himself be light. Just for a minute.
Everything is good. Too good.
And that’s when Saul walks in.
The door chimes, and I don’t look up at first. I’m mid-trim, chatting with Dee about her son’s hoverball championship. My hands move automatically—section, snip, comb. It’s muscle memory. Habit.
But I feel Voltar shift.
It’s subtle. Just a weight pulling tighter. A silence that rings louder than noise.
Then I glance up—and there he is.
Saul. Same smarmy smile. Same expensive coat. But he’s twitchier than I remember. His eyes cut to Voltar the second he steps through the door, and the smirk falters.
Just for a breath. Just long enough.
“Just getting a trim,” he says, all oily charm. “Didn’t mean to interrupt the fortress.”
My stomach drops.
Voltar doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak.
But he growls.
Low. Quiet. Lethal.
The sound rumbles through the salon like a pressure shift. The mirror by the front desk trembles. My hand tightens on the shears.
Saul freezes.
I meet his eyes—calm, unreadable. I won’t let him see me flinch. “Chair three,” I say, nodding to the far end. “You’ll have to wait.”
He hesitates. For half a second, I think he’ll push it. But then Voltar takes one deliberate step forward. Just one. And Saul bolts.
Like a coward. Like a spy caught red-handed.
The door slams behind him so fast it almost unhinges.
Silence falls.
Dee blinks. “Well,” she says, “that was weird.”
I force a smile. Finish the cut. I laugh at a joke. I check out three customers and sweep up clippings with a smile stitched across my face like a damn mask.
But I’m shaking inside.
After closing, I find it. Nestled between two magazines on the waiting table—a compad.
Black, sleek, nondescript.
But it’s not a customer’s.
Voltar’s hand wraps around it before I can even touch it. He turns it over once. Twice. Then growls again.
“They were testing me,” I say, my voice flat.
“No,” he says. “They were testing me. Seeing if I’d protect you. If I’d… hesitate.”
“And?”
He crushes the compad in one massive hand, metal and circuits snapping like bones.
“I didn’t.”
I nod, but my blood’s turned to ice.
They know where I am.
They’re watching again.
And this time, I’m not just a loose thread.
I’m bait.
Once we’re alone, I let him have it.
“I’m not a pawn!”
My voice cracks across the walls like thunder. It echoes in the loft, slamming against the metal beams and glass fixtures, loud enough to make the dog next door start barking. I don’t care. Let the whole block hear. Maybe if I yell it loud enough, I’ll believe it.
Voltar stands in the doorway of the kitchen, arms folded, eyes calm. Too calm. That’s what makes me want to scream more.
“You’re bait,” he says, quiet. Even. “But not without backup.”
Bait. Like a worm wriggling on a hook, waiting for something sharp-toothed to bite. My hands shake, but not from fear. I can handle fear. It’s the helplessness I can’t take. The being-used. Being-seen and set out.
I whirl away from him, pacing. “You think that makes it better?”
“I think it makes it real.”
“Stars, you’re infuriating.” I rub at my temple, pacing harder, faster. The floor creaks under me. “You should’ve told me sooner.”
“You already knew.”
I spin on him. “That is not the same thing.”
He doesn’t answer. Just watches me. Always watching. But this time, his gaze feels like a wall. Not cruel. Not cold. Just... steady. And I hate how much I want to crumble against it.
I stomp into the bathroom and slam the door harder than necessary.
The water’s scalding. I want it that way. I want it to burn off the tightness in my chest, the buzzing behind my eyes. But it doesn’t. I brace my palms against the tiles and let the steam fog up the mirror and my vision. My breath hitches.
It isn’t fear. Not really.
It’s frustration. It’s being pulled into something bigger than me, again, and feeling like the only way to survive is to become steel. Again.
But I’m tired of being steel.
Tired of pretending that not caring is strength.
I don’t know how long I stay in there, but when I finally shut the water off, the silence on the other side of the door is thunderous. My body’s pink from heat, my fingers pruny. I wrap a towel around myself and reach for another, but it’s not on the hook.
Voltar’s holding it.
He’s leaning against the wall like he’s been there the whole time. Just waiting. Not pushing. Not speaking.
He holds the towel out like an offering. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he murmurs.
I look at him. At the way his hair clings to his temple from humidity. At the way his jaw is tight, but his eyes are soft. Open.
Then I drop the towel.
And kiss him like I need air and he’s the last breath in the universe.
“Shut up,” I whisper against his mouth.
Clothes vanish. Hands fumble. His mouth finds my neck, my collarbone, my shoulder. We knock over a chair. Neither of us cares. The loft’s full of half-formed moans and muttered curses and the kind of groans that sound like prayers with teeth.
It’s not gentle.
It’s not slow.
It’s real.
It’s bodies colliding with desperation, a fire lit by fury and banked by days of soft tension snapping all at once.
I claw at his back like I want to keep him inside my orbit.
He lifts me without thought, presses me to the wall like I weigh nothing, like I’m something to be worshiped and broken open at the same time.
He growls against my skin, low and wrecked. “You drive me mad.”
“Good,” I pant. “That makes two of us.”
When he moves, it’s with purpose. With hunger. Like every moment until now was him holding back, and this is what happens when the leash snaps.
And somewhere, in the heat and the chaos, the heady crash of skin and breath and want—I realize something.
I don’t want to go back.
Not to the silence before him. Not to the cold war of survival, the pretending I didn’t need anyone. Not to a world where I go to bed alone and wake up harder than before.
I want this.
Him.
All of him.
The growls and the scars and the quiet towel offerings outside the shower.
I wrap my arms around his neck and pull him down again. “Don’t stop,” I whisper.
He doesn’t.
Not until the walls rattle, and my name becomes a broken thing on his tongue.
Not until the storm inside both of us burns itself quiet.
And even then—
Even then, he stays.