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Chapter Two

Vanessa

“It wasn’t that bad,” Margerie insists for the four hundredth time since arriving at Bah Bah Black Bar. It’s already packed, the bar area more so than the restaurant side, so we head there, Dan and Jeremy crowding after Margerie and me, Garrison and Vanya pushing ahead of us, Jem leading the charge. We snag a high top, the last one available, and Jeremy immediately orders a round of red wine for everyone.

“Red wine?” Vanya asks as she slides onto the stool between Margerie and me. She’s fresh out of her master’s program, a Russian woman who majored in Arabic. Immediately afterward, she realized she didn’t want to become a career diplomat, as she’d always envisioned, and was desperate for a job, and I wasn’t stupid enough to let her slip through my fingers when her résumé landed on my desk. She’s a genius, and if we’d landed that COE contract, I’d have had enough to give her a significant pay raise. Combined with my incessant prayers, I’d have stood a good chance of her not getting poached. Now I’ll be lucky if any of them last the week. For the thousandth time, I flush, embarrassment making me choke.

I think the sheer overwhelming force of my embarrassment is the reason I’m here at this bar to begin with. I never go to bars. Never ever never. Too big a chance for strangers to try to talk to me—but after the day I’ve had?

The waiter slides a glass of dark-red liquid in front of me and I sniffle once into my glass before taking a sip. And then a bigger sip. “Tastes good,” I mumble. There’s a lipstick stain on the rim, but I don’t even bother sending it back. I just wipe it off and keep going. That’s how far gone I am already, and I’ve only had a few sips. I’m surprised I didn’t break down in the bathroom, but I think the strange feeling in the pit of my stomach kept me from it. Shock, probably.

Meeting one of the Forty-Eight turned out to be just as traumatic as I imagined it might be. Maybe Elena is right. Maybe there is something off about them and they should never have come here. Or maybe the problem wasn’t with him. Maybe it was me?

“That’s because it’s a day red,” Jeremy answers as if that means something.

“Day red?” Vanya smirks, then her expression switches to something more appreciative as she brings the glass against her glossy red lips. “Wow. That’s delicious.”

“Strong.” Jem makes a face and whispers something under her breath in Amharic. She’s head of my legal team and the most impossible-to-please woman I’ve ever met. She’s only been working for me for six months, way overqualified and way beyond our budget, but she’s amazing. If she doesn’t turn in her resignation Monday, I’ll have to make a sacrifice to whatever god takes sacrifices and has a special affinity for legal.

“I know. Fabulous, isn’t it?” Dan adds, releasing a sigh as he sips happily, his hand on Jeremy’s thigh under the table.

“What makes it a day red?” Jem says, hailing a waiter and ordering a margarita instead. Mezcal. Top shelf.

Jeremy loops his arm over the back of Dan’s high stool and makes a reproachful sound as he toasts his glass of day red in Jem’s direction. She hisses at him, actually hisses, like a cat. He laughs, actually laughs—like we weren’t fired only an hour ago!—and says, “It’s an easy-drinking red wine, dry but with fruity forward notes, that’s served chilled and cures any and all instances of did-that-meeting-really-just-happen and I-can’t-believe-what-an-asshole-the-Pyro-turned-out-to-be. Womp womp. What a disappointment.”

“Meeting your childhood heroes always is,” Jem says.

“Or your childhood villains?” Vanya adds, making Margerie and Jem laugh despite her cynicism. “What did you even expect from him? He gets a perfectly adequate subsidy from the SDD, doesn’t need to work, gets to sit around on his butt all day and do nothing if he feels like it.”

She shrugs and drains the rest of her glass in one swallow, then flips back her blond hair. Her bright-red lipstick screams confidence, and I envy her in this moment, how flippantly she seems to be able to shrug off such a brutal and unwarranted rejection. But then again, she didn’t feel the full force of his ire like I did—ire and whatever else that was.

Jeremy huffs. “I don’t know. I expected something else. More. The other Champions go out and save people from burning buildings, act where the police and emergency workers are too slow or in places they can’t access. Fight the villains. And even if he was a villain, I thought he’d be more ... like ... I don’t know! Cool, I guess.”

“He was pretty hot, though,” Dan adds, winning him an elbow to the ribs from his partner.

Jeremy smiles, his cheeks turning pink. “Okay, yeah. He was, kinda. In a rugged, unwashed mountain man kinda way.”

“Are you all insane? He was rude, a scoundrel. I didn’t like him one bit,” Jem says.

“Is that a line from The Mummy ?” I mumble.

Jem winks at me. “Of course. But I’m serious. Did you see his clothes? They had holes all over them, and he looks like he hasn’t shaved his beard in three weeks.” Her perfectly coiffed curls bounce around her cheeks as she shakes her head in disgust. “He was exactly as expected. Boring and full of himself—as all the Forty-Eight are. I’m glad we didn’t get the contract. We’ve gotten dozens of other proposals that Jeremy and I have been weeding through since our bid was accepted by the COE and the press had a field day dogging us—good proposals. I’m excited to get back to the office and have a look. What do you say?”

I realize she’s talking to me and wrinkle my nose, drain my day red, and then roll my shoulders back. “You’re right.” But you didn’t feel what I felt. Not the energy. Not the humiliation. “You’re right. I just hope you all aren’t too disappointed ...”

A collective groan goes up from the team members gathered around me. Embarrassed, I look away and find the waiter, order another round, and distract myself with day red when the waiter returns with full, fresh glasses.

“It’s not like we had real hope of convincing him to the good side. Chances are he’s working with the VNA anyway,” Dan adds.

Nodding all around helps ease my humiliation. “Probably,” I whisper.

“And after how he treated you, we wouldn’t want to work with him anyway,” Margerie adds.

“Well ...” Dan starts.

I feel my cheeks heat and watch as Vanya and Dan exchange a few words in Arabic. I can tell Vanya is admonishing him in her standard Arabic mixed with the Egyptian she learned studying abroad, while Dan replies in his Syrian dialect. She rolls her eyes at whatever he says, but I don’t want to hear the translation. I just want the day to be over.

Jeremy—who’s been learning Arabic for Dan, his partner—asks Vanya, “Did you just call him an ass?”

“Yes. I told him he has a red ass, like a baboon.”

Everyone laughs at that—except me. “I just ... don’t know what I did so wrong,” I say, my voice a little slurred. Very slurred? I’m not totally sure. How many glasses have I had now? The waiter keeps coming back with more. How long has it been since we got here?

I glance at my wristwatch, but my wrist is bare because I’ve never worn a watch in my entire life. We’ve been here an hour so far? Maybe fifteen minutes? My team shushes me with docile platitudes, Margerie and Garrison leaning in from either side to give me one-armed hugs. I shrug them off and try to shrug out of my jacket, but I’m not wearing a jacket. Was I wearing one when I started the day? Such a hopeful girl I was back then. Back before I fell and the entire room fell apart around me.

“You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“You guys haven’t even let me talk about me falling,” I all but wail. “That was an insane domino effect.”

“Because it wasn’t a big deal,” Margerie says, squeezing me tighter and trying to shush me at the same time.

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” Garrison adds, but he’s hiding his smile in his glass, and when I elbow him in the ribs, he chokes and red wine dribbles down his chin and onto his tie.

Even though Garrison moved from Tokyo three years ago, he hasn’t adapted to the more relaxed corporate culture of our office. I don’t mind what anybody wears, so long as they are actually serious when they say that losing the contract won’t cause them to run shrieking from our offices Monday morning.

“I think even Mrs. Morales ended up on the floor,” Jem grumbles. “You got coffee in my hair,” she accuses.

She and Jeremy start bickering back and forth while my head continues to swim. I think I ... drank too much. Not wanting to be seen completely plastered in front of my team, I excuse myself and make it to the bathroom. Hiccuping on my way back, I come to a stop, debating ...

What’s the worse option?

Be seen completely sloshed by all my team members I just made a total idiot of myself in front of earlier today? Or take a chance at potentially having to talk to someone I don’t know at the bar as I get a water?

I glance at the daylight streaming in all the way at the other end of the bar. I can do this, I think, taking a deep breath and veering away from the restaurant area into the bar. Spring has sprung early this year. It’s only barely April, but I still haven’t needed a proper coat for two weeks now. That also means the darkest evenings are behind us.

Someone bumps into me from behind. They apologize at the same time I do, and I quickly duck and make my way forward, squeezing myself through a crowd made up of folks off work early on a Friday until I finally reach the bar’s sleek black concrete countertop.

Call it luck of the day red, but as soon as my fingers touch down onto the bar, the couple sitting to my right slides off their stools. With a meek smile, I quickly take one of them at the same time that a my age-ish man takes the other. Our eyes meet as we take our seats, and he winks at me. I force my face to form a small, awkward smile, which he returns in a much more natural way.

He’s got brown hair and perfectly clear white skin with a blush in his cheeks that would make most women envious. He’s wearing a badge of some kind clipped between two of the buttons of his shirt. I don’t get a good look at it, distracted and startled when he asks me what I’m drinking.

“I, uh, um—it’s day red.” I flush. “But I was going to get a wa—”

“Day red?” He smirks at me, cutting me off, his blue eyes bright.

“I ...” I swallow hard, nervous that I might be sweating again. “My friends got the first round—” The first three—four? Good grief. “I’m not sure what it’s called.”

I feel a blush rush to my cheeks as his gaze drops to my outfit. I’m wearing my clothes from the meeting. They’re all rumpled now. His gaze lingers on my legs, and I get that uncomfortable feeling that he’s judging me and place my hands awkwardly over my knees.

The bartender fortunately interrupts us then, and my stool neighbor orders me a glass of merlot—not day red, sadly, and not a water, even more tragically—and himself a rum and Coke. Then he sticks out his hand. I take it automatically, unsure of how to get myself out of this, and let him shake my arm like it’s jelly while he says, “I’m Jeremy.”

“Jeremy? That’s funny. My coworker’s name is Jeremy. He’s right over there in the restaurant area.”

Jeremy—new Jeremy—looks over my shoulder, trying to root him out. His eyebrows furrow a little. The bartender slides our drinks across the table. “Your coworker waiting on you?” I don’t know why he says the word with such sudden hostility.

“Uhh ... they might be?” I want to get back to them, but the heat in my face and chest has melted me to my seat. My stomach is a bundle of nerves. This is why I should have chosen the awkwardness of being drunk around my colleagues. At least I know them. Now I have to somehow get myself out of this. Panic!

My brain fires in every direction, anxiety making my stomach lurch, but I focus on my breath, on counting up to three, and then ten, and then finally on his next question.

“You’re with a group?” I feel like he’s accusing me of something, and I wrinkle my nose.

“Yeah, I should, uhh ... probably get back,” I say brittlely.

But he perks up. “I didn’t get your name.”

“Vanessa. Sorry.” I wince as I apologize again.

“No worries. You okay to stay and chat? At least until you finish your day red?”

I shuffle on my stool and give him a tight, nervous nod. Jeremy smiles and swivels on his seat until his knees point toward me. “What do you do, Miss Vanessa?” I notice him glance at my left hand and feel my fingers tingle. I’m not wearing any jewelry at all, so there’s nothing to mistake there for a wedding ring.

“Marketing.” My voice is soft. I’d meant for it to be louder. I drink my merlot even though I shouldn’t. The world is tilting sideways, and my words are coming out syrupier than they should. I should get back to my coworkers, but he’s already bought me a wine ... and I don’t know how to extract myself from this. You’d think with five brothers I might have developed a better sense of men in general, but they might have actually been a hindrance given how obnoxiously overprotective they are of me.

I love them for it deeply.

“Marketing?” He leans in closer. “Like an associate or an intern or something like that?”

I nod quickly and drink more of my wine. “Yes.” And then I clear my throat, eager to divert his focus anywhere but toward me. “What do you do?”

He points at his name tag, a confusing action. He seems proud to be wearing his name badge at happy hour, pointing at it like I’ve asked him for his name and he’s forgotten but is proud at least to have written it down.

QNTEQ is what it reads, though I have no idea how to pronounce it. I smile and say, “Wow. Sounds fancy.” I wrinkle my nose, hoping I don’t sound too dismissive, but I don’t want to pronounce it wrong, and I’m guessing by the way he shows off his badge so proudly that he assumes I should be excited about Centech? Cue-en-tech? Q-and-tech?

“I like to think so.” He seems satisfied by my reaction and slides his hand across the bar closer to mine. “You know, you’re really cute.” My eyes widen. I feel totally unprepared for this level of flirtation and wonder if I’ve misheard him through the haze of day red. His hand edges a little closer, fingers brushing mine, and I jerk, lifting my glass too forcefully and sloshing red wine over the lip of the glass and onto my shirt.

“Ohmigosh, I’m so sorry. I’ve really had too much ... day red ...” I scramble for a napkin, but I haven’t released my glass and end up spilling more of it onto the bar counter. He chuckles, and with the ease of someone to which everything in life comes easily, he reaches behind the bar and grabs a wad of napkins from a holder.

“Oh, thanks,” I say, stuttering wildly, but he doesn’t hand them to me and instead moves them toward my chest where red wine seeps through my shirt over my bra.

“It’s all right,” he says in a deeper voice than he’d been using. “I can tell you’re shy.” I’m shocked stiff, stunned in disbelief and far, far too gone to stop this train smash. I just watch, my jaw hinged open as this strange man reaches for my boob —my actual breast—and says, “I like shy girls ...”

He touches my chest—the upper curve of my boob where the bones of my chest soften out into full D cups—and the glass I’d been drunkenly wielding like a baton tumbles toward the floor. I watch it happen in slow motion, breath gathering in my mouth as I wait for everyone in the bar to turn at the sound of smashing glass and see me sitting here, white shirt covered in red, a random guy who can’t remember his own name and has to keep it written down on his lapel pawing at me in a way that would have made all five of my brothers smash chairs and beat their chests.

But my brothers aren’t here, and even though I manage multimillion-dollar advertising budgets for some of the country’s biggest brands, I suddenly can’t remember a damn thing my therapist has been telling me the past two years I’ve been seeing her to tackle situations like this.

I can even hear that boundaries song they make little kids learn playing on a broken loop in my head. Because being touched without permission, and by a stranger no less? It’s triggering something deeper than that. As if my social anxiety is just the Band-Aid covering wounds too deep to stitch. And trust me, I’ve tried, but every time I do, I end up bleeding all over the place.

Stop crying, and get up off the floor. I didn’t even hit you that hard. You’re such a little shit, Vanessa.

“ Vanessa. ” The word washes over me in a whispered hush. No breeze off the sea ever felt so lovely or so warm. The strange thing is, I’m not sure the word was said aloud. My ears cock, but all I hear are the sounds from the bar. But that breeze? That decadent rush of heat followed by cool? My spine arches as I suck in a breath, and my whole body sways toward it. I open my eyes ... and would have jumped out of my own skin if I weren’t attached to it.

The Pyro is standing there. Right there. Head lowered, nose only a foot away from mine. He’s staring into my eyes, and as I register their pretty shape, I notice the same miraculous thing I did earlier when he had me in a position not utterly unlike this one, seated on the tabletop in that boardroom.

“Pink.” It takes me a moment to realize the word belongs to me.

The Pyro has the same medium-dark-brown skin and jet-black hair I recognize from every photo of him ever taken, the same full lips, pretty mouth, high cheekbones decorated by thick scruff rolling down a brutal jaw, but his eyes ... There’s no doubting it this time. His eyes are a deep, striated pink. Fuchsia toward his pupils, darker and wine colored on the outsides.

I open my mouth and ... burp. The cold hand of humiliation is valiantly trying to creep up my spine, but it’s having a hard time getting past that lingering warmth. It doesn’t seem squashable, not even when the Pyro’s lips flatten and a muscle underneath his left eye twitches.

And that’s when it finally hits me, what’s so off about his expression and demeanor and hard-cut countenance: he’s pissed .

He slams the glass—my glass—down onto the bar top beside me, bracketing me within the cage of his arms and chest. My back presses against the bar top as I try to make space between us, and my strange, treacherous body doesn’t know what to do with the closeness. I flounder and repeat, “Your eyes are pink.”

“I fucking know that. Why was that dead man groping your chest?”

“Dead ... dead man?” I glance to my left where Jeremy was sitting a second before, only to find the barstool empty and Jeremy motionless on the floor. The people who were standing behind us have cleared out a small space, but not a soul has reached out to help him.

“Is he ...” I gasp, horror flooding my veins. I reach up, touch my mouth, and whisper through the gaps between my fingers, “Did you kill him?”

“No. Why was he touching you?” He fires his words like bullets, and I’m struck by every one.

I reach for a shield, but my hands come up empty, so I carry on. “I ... spilled.”

“You wanted his hands on you? You know him?”

“I ...” I shake my head in a very small gesture.

The Pyro curses and makes a lunging gesture toward the motionless man on the floor that almost makes me fall off my stool. His hand shoots out. He catches my elbow.

I hiccup. “D-don’t ...” I start, wanting to tell him not to hurt the guy on the floor any more than he has already, but his eyes have narrowed even further. He lets me go like touching me pains him, flexing his hands as he draws them back toward his pockets, and my voice trails off.

“You pissed?” he hisses.

It takes me way too long to understand the question. I point at him first, then at me. “You ... you’re pissed,” I answer, distracted when two random guys, also wearing name tags with the same Q symbol printed on them in huge block letters, scuttle forward and grab Jeremy by the arms. They drag him away, throwing cautious and curious glances back at the Pyro while Jeremy’s hair collects the red wine I spilled all over the floor. I wonder if those men recognize the Pyro. For the sake of whoever lands his PR contract later, I certainly hope they don’t—and for my sake, I pray. I do not want to be caught on camera beside him, especially in my current not-so-sober state.

“I meant, are you drunk?” Though he’s speaking at a normal volume and the room is loud, he feels louder. His cheek ticks, and that vein in his forehead is standing out. I realize too late that every single part of him is impossibly tightly clenched ... and he’s a dangerous male. No, he’s a male capable of incredible violence. And I’m just ...

Drunk. “Yes.” I hiccup, as if to accentuate the point. I could have told him I’m tipsy or not that drunk really, because if I’m being honest, I have been drunker than this a few times before.

The first time, my brother David added vodka to the house orange juice, trying to get back at my other brother Vinny for some reason nobody can remember now. I’d been fourteen and hadn’t had alcohol before, and I just thought the OJ was off. Unfortunately, I threw up all over Vinny, so David’s revenge plan sort of worked. Fortunately, I hadn’t yet made it out of the house.

The memory triggers my gag reflex, and my stomach clenches with force. I meet and hold the Pyro’s stare with a boldness that’s only fueled by a desperation to keep the vomit down .

The Pyro looks down, his nostrils flaring for a moment, then, just as quickly, he wrenches back like he senses what’s about to happen. I burp again and slap my palm over my mouth. The Pyro glares at me.

“You let him call you an intern.” Orange blazes in his pink irises so brightly, it expels light onto his cheeks.

The taste of wine crawls up the back of my throat, and I fight it down . I nod. I don’t need to explain to this supernatural maniac that I can create pivot tables with conditional formatting encompassing decades of data in just a few minutes just as easily as I can illustrate short animated videos for ads but can’t tell a guy at a bar no.

He makes that same rumbling sound he did four hours ago, right before he kicked my sorry ass out of the building, and this time I know I’m not imagining it. I can see movement past his impossibly broad shoulders. People are starting to stare and point at him, sure, but also at me . My stomach clenches. No no no no no no no. This can’t be happening ...

He doesn’t seem to realize how close we are to doom because he doesn’t back up. He doesn’t even cast a cursory glance over his shoulder. His intensity is just as brutal and fixed to me as it was earlier. “Why aren’t you with your people? Why are you over here by yourself?”

I reach up and hold my left temple. My adrenaline is peaking. I need some air.

“Hey.” His voice is hard as brick and so is his hand as it shackles my upper arm. I cringe away from the violent touch, extracting myself from it while my stomach completes another revolution around a dark sun. “Hey.” He lets me go immediately, and when he speaks next, his voice is a little softer than it was. “Did he hurt you?”

I shake my head. “I have ... anxiety,” I say simply, hoping that’s enough. I certainly have no intention of giving him my full medical history here or ever. I just need him to give me grace, and I’m shocked as hell when he does.

“Fuck.” He takes a step away from me and curses under his breath twice more in quick succession. “I’m sorry, okay?”

The words are such a shock, I get a pang in the left side of my neck with how fast I whip my head up to look at him. His expression hasn’t changed much . He’s still glaring at me like I stole his ice cream, only now there’s a crease between his thick eyebrows, he’s got his arms crossed over his chest, and his eyes are white instead of pink or orange.

“Okay?” he repeats more angrily this time.

“Oh ... kay.”

“I need you to get the fuck out of here.” He points at the exit, not that I can see it through the sudden mass of people who are staring. Some have their phones out, and I can see little beams of light shining our way.

Oh no. No, please no.

I’m shaking my head, but he doesn’t understand. I’m not telling him no. I’d love to get the fuck out of here. I’m just trying to shake away what’s to come, but the burning in the pit of my stomach increases with every click of a phone camera. With every shrill laugh from the bar patrons. With every whisper.

“No?” he hisses.

I manage to glance back up at him but not past his neck. His throat works like he wants to say more but doesn’t. He doesn’t move out of my way either. I feel myself starting to sag. My adrenaline is dipping. My stomach is pitching. A wave of heat overwhelms me, followed by a dangerous cool.

“I don’t feel well.”

Instead of immediately making fun of me, the Pyro inhales sharply. His hands move from his pockets to my chin, and he tilts my face up with his fingers. All of them touch me at the same time. My stomach rolls. Nerves blitz me. Uh oh. Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. And then I blink and register the anger in his eyes, and I try to jerk back, but he doesn’t let me. His left hand circles the back of my neck while his right hand very, very gently moves over my forehead, back through my hair.

“Shit, you’re hot. Grab your things. I’m taking you to a hospital.”

“No.” My voice is firm. Firmer than it should be. My stomach is soft. Softer than it should be. “I’m fine.”

His eyes narrow and he stops touching my face, but his hand on the back of my neck never moves. It’s so warm. “You’re piss drunk, and your skin’s fucking on fire. I’m taking you.”

“I ...”

“Don’t be stupid.” You’re so fucking stupid, Vanessa .

I flinch as if struck, but when I try to back away from him, my spine hits the bar. I have to push his hand off my neck with my own palm, and I immediately break out in cold sweat. Stupid, stupid, stupid .

“ You need to leave,” I wheeze, the world starting to close in, the lights starting to dim. My body is on fire, but it has nothing to do with the booze—well, it has less to do with the booze than it does with the knowledge that my photo is being taken alongside one of the most famous people on the planet and is likely to end up all over the internet. I don’t want to be seen. And not only is the Pyro seeing me, he’s making me visible to everybody.

“Excuse me?”

“You and I ... we don’t ... d-don’t work together, Mr. Casteel.” Mr. Casteel. I’m proud of myself for remembering that he actually has a name and for actually using it, because I can see as I use it that he visibly stiffens. With that small confidence, I manage to lift my gaze to his.

“And?” His jaw is clenched; I can tell even beneath the beard. It’s an attractive look for him, this mountain man, warlord, king of the wildlings thing he has going on. It makes him look volatile and dangerous, which is why it’s a look I’d have rather admired from afar. A very far.

“I’m not being paid to have to talk to you.” Mr. Casteel doesn’t move much, but his nostrils flare again, and this time smoke curls out of them. Smoke. He still doesn’t speak, so I slur, “I need space.”

“I’m not leaving you here.” He takes an abrupt step to close some of the distance between us, and I can’t help the way I lower my head and lift my arm, a trained response. Old habits die hard.

The moment catches around me, swirling winds from a past life tickling the wine cooling on my clothes and making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I hear the clack of thunder, the bolt of a door, the creak of my trailer’s musty floorboards, but when I breathe in ... all I smell is smoke, a bonfire after a blaze when only the embers lie lonely. And then I’m pulled back into the present by the curl of warm fingers around my raised left wrist.

I open my eyes as Mr. Casteel coaxes my arm away from my face. His eyes are narrowed but blazing the brightest white, so white that the light they cast chases away the darkness under his brow. His mouth has an angry set, but when the line of our gazes clash, he blinks. Mr. Casteel swallows once, twice, a third time, and wipes his free hand, the one that’s not lightly draped over my palm, on his sweatpants.

He leans in toward me without moving his feet and gives my hand a firm squeeze. “I may be many terrible things, Vanessa,” he whispers, and his voice is rougher, like he swallowed nails dipped in whiskey and gasoline. “But I would never do that.”

And the strange thing is that the tension releases from the tops of my shoulders and eases down the rest of my back before dissolving at my feet. I bask in the feeling and then immediately hate myself for it—for wanting to believe.

“Words without actions are meaningless, Mr. Casteel,” I whisper and then hiccup. “And today, your actions did enough.”

His expression shutters even though the light in his eyes continues to beam, maybe even a little more brightly. “Roland,” he says suddenly, and the tension in his forehead releases like a rubber band snapped. His whole demeanor changes in a way that I find alarming.

I open my mouth to ask him if he’s okay, but the pit of knots in my belly chooses that moment to finally release. My stomach heaves, and this time I can’t stop the inevitable. I hiccup, and the burn in the back of my throat gets hotter. I flail my hands, trying to gesture for him to back up, which of course causes him to do the opposite ... just in time for me to projectile vomit ...

All over him.

The force is enough to propel me out of my chair, but a heavy arm blocks my fall, and the pressure of that arm on my stomach causes me to throw up another belly full of day red all over his gray sweatpants. Did I say gray? No, not anymore. Now it looks like he’s been dipped in a vat of my blood.

As he holds me in his arms like a bedraggled damsel, his hoodie looking like it’s been dipped in my insides, I can’t help but wonder if maybe it’s not such a terrible thing that we didn’t win his contract. After all, with the photos that will come out of this evening, he really will look every bit the villain that I know he is in his heart.

There’s a pause, and then a woman’s shriek marks the final fall of the axe over my throat. “Oh my God, it’s the Pyro! She just threw up on the Pyro!” What a lovely headsman, I think as I stare up into the Pyro’s shocked pink eyes before I finally, thankfully, pass the fuck out.