Page 134 of Caution to the Wind

So fucking good.

My off-white knight.

And I’d done the worst thing you ever could to a man like that.

I’d broken his heart and his trust.

We might have reached a kind of truce, but it was obvious by the way he continued to glare at me from across the shop that he was still struggling with my reappearance in his life.

“Yeah, I get you.”

“I don’t think you do. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have a hickey right there on your neck,” he quipped with a roguish grin.

I tried not to immediately cover up my neck with the curtain of my hair. Instead, I levelled him with my coolest look. “I know I’ve only been filling in for three days, but I’ve decided you’re my least favourite Fallen brother.”

Nova laughed loudly, drawing Axe-Man’s attention to us. I could feel his scowly gaze on the side of my face, but I refused to look over at him guiltily. I was allowed to laugh. It was a free fucking country. And I was trying to take Cleo’s advice to heart. See if I could have some kind of…community here after all.

“I’m gatherin’ you’re a lotta complicated things, girl. But don’t make one’a them a liar,” Nova teased.

“Shouldn’t you be working, not gossiping with the staff?” I quipped.

“Nah, them’s the perks of bein’ the boss.” He leaned farther over the counter to peek at the sketchbook I had open on the counter. “What’s that you got there?”

“I’m an artist myself,” I admitted, curling the pencil over the curve of Knight’s wind-swept hair. The image depicted him on the back of a huge white motorcycle on a deserted road, travelling to his next destination.

“No shit. No one told me that.” He moved around the desk to look properly at the sketch over my shoulder. “Comic books?”

“Graphic novels.”

His brown eyes narrowed as he took the sketchbook from me without permission and started flipping through my rough story boarding for the next Off-White Knight story.

“Hey, Axe-Man, you know Blossom here is an artist?” he shouted.

I dropped my head to the desk on a groan. “Jesus, Nova, discreet much?”

I heard the telltale thud of Axe-Man’s boots moving over to the counter.

“Don’t call her Blossom,” he ordered Nova for the tenth time, after Nova’d decided on the nickname for the tiny pink cherry blossoms I had down both arms in memory of my ma. Her favourite movie,In The Mood For Love, had originally been called “the age of blossoms” as a tribute to the fleetingness of youth and time. It seemed a fitting tribute for Daiyu, who was taken too early.

“And no,” Axe-Man said quietly. “I didn’t have a fuckin’ clue.”

I straightened at the hint of hurt in his tone, needing to validate it with my vision. He was holding the sketchbook now, frowning down at a sketch of Knight fighting off a ninja in an alleyway.

When he looked up at me, a question was burned into his expression.

I sighed. “I’m a graphic novelist.”

“Oh good,” Cressida Garro said as she pushed into the shop with her incredibly handsome husband, King, and their baby, Prince, on her hip. “The cat’s out of the bag! I was hoping to ask you to agree to a little signing at Paradise Found. What do you think? We have the full Off-White Knight series. People come in all the time asking when book seven will come out.”

“Well, if these idiots left me alone between clients, I might have an answer for you.” I was used to acting tough, but inside my chest, my heart ran a race for its life. “How long have you known?”

She winked at me. “I’ve been reading the series since book one. The pieces clicked together when I heard Cleo call you Rocky. I always thought Knight looked like Axe-Man.”

“Is that why you were nice to me at Lin’s shop? Because you wanted me to sign at your store?” I couldn’t help but be suspicious.

She laughed. “I was nice to you because life is messy, and I have no clue what happened with you guys back in the day, butno onewrites a series about someone without loving them through to their core. So I figured, if you were in town, you were here for good reasons. Was I wrong?”

“No,” I admitted, before sneaking a peek at Axe-Man who was tracing an image of Knight shouting at his frenemy Rocky, who was constantly pulling him into dangerous situations.