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“That doesn’t answer the question.”

Antonio took a drink of water. “Maybe I’m curious what you notice.”

Something in Hakeem’s stomach braced.

That was too intimate a sentence for this hour, this room, and this man who didn’t have the decency to be less hot, even in loungewear. Especially in loungewear.

“Mercy House,” Hakeem said.

Antonio’s gaze flicked once to the cover, then back. “Why?”

Hakeem let out a breath through his nose. “You interview people in a really invasive way.”

“And yet you keep answering.”

Antonio was proving to be devastating. Hakeem briefly wondered if he could survive a man like him, living in such close quarters. Was The Last Cue messing with his head? Maybe he should come up for air occasionally, after immersing in horror as a lifestyle for most of his life.

He couldn’t stop himself, even if he wanted to. “The hallway scene.”

Antonio was still, with his deep eyes locked on Hakeem’s face. Hakeem stood exposed, yet for some reason, he wanted Antonio to see him. Something was taking shape between them, but he couldn’t trust his own judgment anymore.

Hakeem kept going because he had already committed himself to embarrassment. “It’s paced really well. The tension works because it doesn’t rush. It lets the character realize what his body knows before he’s willing to admit anything.”

The room went very quiet.

Antonio’s expression did not change much, but his attention was very focused, and Hakeem felt it like heat. He was pretty sure Antonio was staring at his mouth.

“Is that your professional critique,” Antonio asked, voice lower now, “or your personal one?”

Hakeem looked at him. There were ten possible ways to answer that question, and at least eight of them would end his life on the spot.

He settled for, “You’re annoying.”

Antonio’s mouth finally smiled.

It altered his whole face just enough to make Hakeem understand, with miserable clarity, why withholding one should probably count as a controlled substance.

Antonio looked at him for another beat, then straightened and picked up the book again.

“Glad you made it home alive,” he said.

There it was again: the joke about his death. The little thread Antonio seemed so determined to keep tugging.

Hakeem’s spine tightened. “Again with this?”

Antonio slid the paperback back into the shelf. “It seems worth acknowledging. You do work at The Last Cue, after all.”

“What does that mean?”

“That you continue to come home from your shifts in one piece.”

Hakeem narrowed his eyes. “You joke about me dying a lot for someone who performs normal.”

Antonio turned his head and regarded him in that unreadable, too-steady way of his. “You’re twenty-six.”

“That is not an explanation.”

“It is the beginning of one.”