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The whole time he’s talking, I can feel something in my brain turning, like gears or wheels clicking together in an engine. And then once he’s done, it all rushes forward to me at once, like one of those high-speed zoom-in shots in a movie. Like I can feel my pupils dilate and the exhale get squeezed from my lungs.
“Oh shit, Kit,” I whisper. “Are you in love with her?”
“What?” Kit says it so loud that Ruby, passing behind the bar with a tray of drinks, jumps a little, making the glasses clack together.
“Sorry,” he mutters to her quickly. “What?” he adds in a loud whisper to me. “No, no, that’s absurd. I don’t…I’m not even…I can’t.”
My heart sinks. If Kit’s ever been a good liar, he can’t pull it off with me. I know him too well. Know how he gets panicky and fidgety and looks everywhere but in your eyes. And my insides go all queasy, like I’ve been breathing gasoline fumes.
“You could have just said that,” I say. “You could have just—”
“No, it’s not like that. I just, she—” Kit’s caught his lip between his teeth. His fingers have found a cocktail napkin that he’s fraying apart. “God, why does everyone keep insisting that—”
“Everyone?” I say, straightening up on my barstool. “What do you mean, everyone?”
Kit’s eyes flutter shut behind the lenses of his glasses. “Never mind,” he says with a clenched jaw. “Just never mind. I shouldn’t have—”
The front door of the bar bangs open so loud I can’t help but look. It’s Blue. Not who I wanted to see, but he doesn’t even nod at us, just strides up to the bar.
“Anyone seen Pan?” he says to no one and everyone in particular. “Emerald? Ruby?” he barks down the bar, and their heads turn. “You seen him? Pan?”
They shake their heads. It’s two.
There’s a stretch of nothing but the lo-fi music playing and the lights gently pulsing between colors.
“What, did his AirTag stop pinging?” Kit mutters. A joke, I guess. I’m not really in the mood, my pulse still too fast and hard in my neck. “I thought we only had one on the dog.”
Blue glares at him, apparently not in the mood either. “I haven’t seen him all day.”
Kit blinks. “And?”
Blue works his jaw.
“And nothing.” He pushes the door back open. “Fuck off.”
Kit looks at me. “You…think we should be worried?”
“About Pan?” I stare up at the ceiling. “Probably.”
CHAPTER 21
TINK
THEY WOULD KILL, TINK.
Zuzu’s words echo in my mind the whole ride home.
They wouldn’t, though. Would they?
The hum of the road and the purr of my bike as I get Wendy home gives me too much space to think.
I can’t see Kit hurting anyone, even if he did do a decent job kicking the shit out of the pervs at the dog track. Fox…maybe, in self-defense or something? Blue, who knows. Physically capable. In reality? I doubt he’d take the risk.
Pan, though…
Well, he’d have to care about me to do anything for me. And jury’s really out on that one.
Besides, I think, as I whip the bike toward the off-ramp for the Strip, it’s all a moot point anyway if they don’t know.
