Page 35 of House Rules

The girl purrs at me—hey baby why don’t we…—I don’t bother to listen.

Even from beneath hooded lids, and around a twitching plaid mini-skirt I have to dodge, Phoenix’s eyes are the only ones I’m watching. When I shift my attention, something incandescent flickers to life in hers—anger, maybe, or a little sting of jealousy, or even a hit to her pride at being ignored.

Whatever it is that’s brought to life in her gaze, it burns, and it reminds me that this thing between us is real.

The flame drags me back to the first time I really saw her.

In the days after her mother died.

I didn’t expect Phoenix to come back to the resort, not with that father of hers orbiting the bars of the casino like a bad planet. He was an asshole on his best day and a gravity suck on his worst.

Her mom had been sweet, though—housekeeping management, I think. I don’t remember the details of her face. I remember Phoenix, flittering around the hotel from the time she was little.

After her mother died and the funeral was over, she stretched out on a chaise near the pool, head tipped back and eyes closed for all the world like she was sunbathing. It didn’t matter that the sky was a slate bruise and the air had that taste you get right before rain.

The staff whispered as they moved around her—how strong she was, how well she was handling it—and I remember thinking how people loved topraise composure because it let them keep walking.

I watched the fractures in her façade instead. Watched the seams pulling apart at the stress points. Saw pain sitting under her skin like static.

I wanted to numb it for her.

Numb is my specialty.

I thought about bringing her a drink. A rum and Coke, maybe, or something strong folded into something fruity. Then I pictured her father at the casino bar after the funeral—one drink, then the next, then the next—and the idea tasted like rotten in my mouth. I thought about the easier chemicals, how quickly they can reroute a nervous system, and discarded that, too.

She was too clean for that. Too bright.

So I did the only thing I really could. The only thing that might have mattered. I went and sat beside her. Didn’t say a word. Just—was there. With her.

It’s a small thing, to take that time. To take the time to inhale and exhale slowly with someone, repeating the movement until their breathing evens out. It’s asmall thing that can mean everything. When her shoulders finally lowered a fraction, when her throat worked like she’d taught herself to swallow again, I knew I’d made the right choice.

I liked her. Holy fuck, did I like her.

But liking isn’t an excuse to take. Time is the only gift that doesn’t come with strings, so I gave her that. Time to grieve. Time to process. Time to remember there was ground under her feet.

Conrad didn’t give her time, though. He looked at her like he was a drowning man and she was the rope above a well—when she was the one fraying at the edges.

I couldn’t pull her away from him.

We’ve all got our demons, and Con’s don’t live in the dark like mine do. He wanted saving.Neededsaving.

I only know how to drown.

Maybe she could’ve saved him. Maybe that was the point.

Hands on my shoulders, party girl leans closer, her perfume thick and sugary as she whisperssomething in my ear. It’s still Phoenix’s eyes that have me by the throat, though, lit from inside with heat, narrowed with irritation. She could set this whole floor on fire without lifting a finger.

It isn’t a concern anymore—what Con needs. Phoenix broke his heart. And with the bet on the table, the lines are clear.

Fair game.

I still see that light in her, but it’s tempered now, the way gold looks darker after it’s taken heat. I think they call it tempered.

She’s still an angel, only her wings are singed where they used to be clean.

She’s going to keep falling. That’s what gravity does when you step off something high—it pulls you down, and pulls you downhard—and when she falls far enough, when the noise of the world fades and the dark gets thick, that’s where I’ll be.

Waiting.