Lenrog does not stop me.
“You unsettled Evie tonight,” he says as I step away from the booth.
Pain twists immediately beneath my ribs.
“I know.”
“She is frightened of losing you to violence.”
“I know.”
“And you are frightened she already sees too much monster in you.”
I stare at him.
He gives a small shrug. “Again, transparent in very specific ways.”
“I hate that.”
“Yes.” Lenrog’s expression softens by a fraction. “But she doesn’t.”
The words follow me all the way to the restaurant entrance.
Outside, the rain has eased into cold mist drifting through downtown lights. Traffic glitters overhead in layered currents while the city breathes beneath storm clouds and neon. I stand beneath the awning for several long seconds, letting wet air cool the violence still simmering under my skin.
Lenrog unsettles me because he sees too much.
Not just my anger.
My hope.
The worst part is that he’s right about that too.
I pull my comm from my pocket and stare at Evie’s contact icon glowing softly against the screen. My thumb hovers there while memories collide inside my head: her laughing at my glasses, her touching my scars like they deserved tenderness instead of disgust, her face crumpling when the milkshake hit my hair.
Love makes maps of vulnerability.
Lenrog said that.
I understand it now.
Because every route in this city eventually leads back to her.
CHAPTER 21
EVIE
The bakery feels wrong without Kauss in it.
Not empty exactly, because Sweet Tooth is never truly empty unless the ovens are cold and the sign is dark. The lunch crowd has come and gone. The floor still smells faintly of coffee, sugar, fryer oil, and lemon cleaner. Rain beads on the repaired synthglass panel, turning the street outside into a smeared watercolor of gray pavement and flickering blue neon. Darlene is in the kitchen muttering death threats at a stuck drawer, and the repaired display case hums with the uneven but determined persistence of machinery that knows it lives on borrowed parts.
Still, the space near the counter where Kauss usually stands feels open in a way I do not like.
I hate that.
I hate that his absence has become a physical sensation, like cold air creeping under a door. I hate that I keep glancing toward the rear entrance, expecting his huge shadow, his quiet voice, his scarred hands reaching for whatever needs fixing before I ask. I hate that after the fight upstairs, after the milkshake and the silence and the terrible knowledge that Savio Lenrog is wrapped around our lives in ways I still do not understand, part of mewants to be furious at Kauss and another part only wants him home.
Home.
