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"Noted," Antonio said.

"But the new one might be better."

"You read three pages."

"I read enough."

Antonio regarded him with an expression Hakeem was going to spend a long time learning to recognize. It had been there since the first week, misread and misnamed, buried under Hakeem's theory like a heartbeat under floorboards.

Attention. The most dangerous and the most ordinary thing in the world.

Chapter Eleven

Twenty-Seven

Chapter 11 - Twenty-Seven

Hakeem woke up on his birthday to a text from Layla that read simply:

LAYLA:

U SURVIVED !!!!! happy birthday king

And beneath it:

LAYLA:

also antonio better have done something cute or i will riot on your behalf

Hakeem smiled at the ceiling. Twenty-seven. The number that had been ticking toward him like a clock with bad intentions for the better part of a month. The number Antonio had turned into a running joke that had, at various points, made Hakeem's blood pressure spike, his paranoia crystallize, and his notes app make several convincing points. The number that now, in the warm late-October light coming through his bedroom window, felt like nothing more dangerous than another year.

He got up and brushed his teeth. He examined his face in the bathroom mirror with scrutiny, checking whether aging had done anything interesting overnight. It hadn't. Regardless, he felt more alive than he had in years. He looked entirely self-possessed, he noted—a reassuring change after a solid month of borderline mania.

He went downstairs.

Antonio was in the kitchen, standing near the counter with something not yet visible in his hand. He was wearing a deep V-neck that did everything for his pectorals, Hakeem noted, and jeans that fit him the way Antonio's jeans always fit him, which was to say in a way that suggested God had a preferred customer.

He looked up when Hakeem appeared.

"Congratulations on your survival," he said.

Hakeem stopped in the doorway. The sentence landed with the exact cadence of every 27 Club joke Antonio had made since September. It was specific and carried a weight that could be read as sinister if you were inclined to read it that way. Except now Hakeem heard it differently. He heard the warmth underneath the delivery. The tenderness disguised as dark humor. He heard admission in the deflection and remembered that the birthday references were from this beautiful man in front of him, who didn't know what to do with what he was feeling.

"You've been waiting to say that," Hakeem said.

"Since late August."

Hakeem laughed. It came out easy and surprised. He let it happen without second-guessing it in Antonio's presence, which was a recent but pleasant development.

Antonio set his mug down and held out what was in his other hand.

It was a book. A paperback, old, with a cover that had the particular saturated color palette of 1970s horror—warm yellows, deep browns, and the suggestion of a house that was up to something it shouldn't be. The spine was cracked in the way that meant it had been read, not displayed. The edges were softened with age.

Hakeem took it and turned it over.

Burnt Offerings. Robert Marasco. 1973.

He stared at it.