Page 18 of Make Them Bleed (Pretty Deadly Things #1)

Juno

Is it bad I thought about Arrow while some stranger was feeling me up? I’m going straight to Hell. Seriously, I am. Having thoughts about Arrow while some man touched me in my parking lot and made me orgasm out of my mind is not healthy.

“Junebug?” Arrow calls through the door, cheerful in that offensive morning-person way he only deploys for me. “I come bearing caffeine and carbs.”

Guilt punches me so hard I sway. Right. Morning ritual. Bagels. Boy next door. Not the man in a mask who made my pulse forget its job.

I fumble the deadbolt, open the door, and there he is. He’s dressed in jeans and a navy hoodie, wind-flushed cheeks, the exact soft smile that used to mean “everything’s okay.” He’s holding two cups from the Bean Flicker and a paper bag that leaks the fragrance of toasted sesame.

“Emergency delivery,” he says, stepping in like he belongs here—which, on most mornings, he does. “You look like a raccoon that’s been kissed by electricity.”

“Flattering,” I croak. I take my cup—oat-milk cold brew with cinnamon, because he knows if you wake the dragon, you better bring sugar—and wrap two hands around it like a pilgrim at the altar. “What did I do to deserve you?”

“You were born,” he says, like it’s obvious, and the comment flickers somewhere behind my ribs.

We move to the kitchen. He sets the bag down, pulls out a sesame bagel and a cinnamon-raisin, hands me the sesame because I’m salty by default, apparently.

He’s humming under his breath, some synthy loop that could be a Maddox Security hold tone.

The hum vibrates in my skull until two words float to the top: standing order.

Because that’s exactly what he says next, casual as the weather: “Standing order: you eat before your brain starts solving murders.”

The phrase knifes through me. Standing order. Hoover’s words from last night. My teeth go cold against the paper cup.

I look up, too fast. Arrow’s already reaching for a knife, splitting a bagel with focused gentleness, like he’s performing minor surgery. He hands it over to me, and my brain tries to keep up.

I bite into the bagel, mostly so I don’t say are you Hoover? out loud. It burns all the way down.

“How was your night?” he asks, spreading cream cheese with unnecessary precision. “Sleeping? Editing? Summoning demons for content?”

“Editing,” I say too quickly. “You?”

“Firewall fun,” he says. “Then I crashed.”

Firewall fun. The words land, then slide.

My mind supplies a scene of cream-lit hotel ballrooms and cigar-scented rooftops, the word funeral shaped by a man named Valentino.

I’m going to rip his smug cobalt suit in half.

Then I remember who was there beside me, a rubber scream and a steady hand.

Two versions of safety perched on either side of the same person.

“Is Maddox eating your soul today?” I ask.

“Standard nibbling,” he says, tearing the bagel in half. “Dean wants me on a pen test at noon. I’ve got an hour before I head out. Thought I’d check on you.”

“You always check on me,” I mumble. It comes out half gratitude, half accusation. I’m not sure which one I mean more.

Arrow leans on the counter, eyes soft and searching. “You okay? You look…” He trails off, squinting at me like I’m code he can’t debug.

“Like a raccoon who’s been kissed by electricity?” I supply.

He grins. “I was going to say ‘like you didn’t sleep.’”

I shrug. “Weird dreams.”

“About?” His tone is light but there’s a wire beneath it.

“Killer tuxedos and…ghosts,” I say, and wait for the flinch. There is one—so small I almost miss it. He covers it by sliding the cinnamon-raisin into the bag and pressing it into my hands.

“Afternoon snack,” he says. “I’ve gotta run a few errands before Dean’s. Need anything? Batteries? String? Ten thousand sticky notes?”

My heart clanks. String and sticky notes, I think. Intel Narnia. It’s either the world’s strangest coincidence or he’s audibly confessing.

He kisses my forehead—Arrow kisses my forehead now, when did this become normal?—and the tenderness makes something ache. “Text me if you need me,” he says, and heads for the door.

“Arrow?” I blurt.

He pauses, one hand on the knob. “Yeah?”

I should ask. I should pin him to the cabinet with the truth until it stops wriggling. Instead I hear myself say, “Be careful.”

His smile crinkles the corners of his eyes. “You too,” he echoes, and the click as the door shuts is a gavel.

I last twelve minutes before I grab my keys.

If Hoover is Arrow, then Arrow isn’t just lying to me—he’s protecting me in the one way I can accept without screaming. If Hoover isn’t Arrow, then there is another man who knows the exact voltage of my fear and desire and I’ve got two parallel universes folding in on each other.

Either way, I’m done living in quantum uncertainty.

I take the stairs two at a time and hit the sidewalk just as Arrow rounds the corner onto Baylor.

My body moves before my brain gives consent.

I fall into a tail two storefronts back—hood up, sunglasses on, my best don’t look at me, I’m a sad girl in athleisure vibe.

I’ve watched enough crime shows to know Rule One: don’t be interesting.

My thighs protest the pace. The coffee in my hand sloshes. I refuse to waste cinnamon.

Arrow’s first stop is the bodega on the corner, the one with the faded mural of a blue heron and Raúl who gives me free gum when I cry.

I pause outside the fruit stand and pretend to examine avocados with the gravitas of a surgeon.

Through the glass, I watch Arrow toss three packs of mint gum on the counter.

My eyebrows climb into my hairline. Bodega Raúl tilts his head at the loot. Arrow says something that makes him laugh, then slides a protein bar into the pile and pays cash. Cash. Who uses cash? Vigilantes and people avoiding paper trails, that’s who.

I bag an avocado I don’t need (sorry, budget) and step aside as Arrow re-emerges, tucking the gum into his backpack like contraband.

He heads south, easy stride, like a man with nothing to hide.

I trail him past the nail salon that plays telenovellas on loop and the psychic who told me I’d meet a tall dark stranger (check) and the church whose marquee says GOD KNOWS YOUR SEARCH HISTORY. Cool, cool, noted, God.

He ducks into the hardware store next—Hancock’s, all creaky floorboards and two aisles of a thousand solutions to problems you didn’t know you had.

I linger at the window display of Halloween decorated tools and sneak a peek.

He grabs a headlamp, two small padlocks, and a box of contractor-grade trash bags.

The cashier is new—pink hair, septum ring, bored.

Arrow walks out with red tape and zip ties.

“Subtle,” I mutter into my cup.

He cuts across to Ink I count to thirty, buy a pencil I don’t need, and follow.

We pass a dog in a sweater. We pass a busker singing Leonard Cohen off-key.

Arrow jaywalks without looking ridiculous, which should be illegal and is probably part of his hacker skill tree.

He cuts down Riverside, past the shuttered print shop with the faded sign and the side door with the keypad lock.

He checks the street—left, right, up. I flatten myself against a mural of octopus tentacles wearing a crown. He enters a code I cannot see (but my blood shouts 1948 like it’s a winning lottery number), slips inside, and the door wheezes shut.

I take a long, slow breath. The river smells like cold pennies and wet rope.

A gull screams like a hinge. I stand there with my ridiculous avocado and my cinnamon and my heart pinging off my ribs and know that some days the universe does you the obscene courtesy of confirming your worst suspicion and your best hope in the same breath.

He’s Hoover.

He’s been Hoover all along.

My emotions pile up, then bottleneck. Relief slams grief, which rear-ends fury, which cuts off desire, which honks at betrayal, which flips a U-turn into something suspiciously like giddiness. The traffic jam makes me dizzy.

With Arrow being Hoover, that means his ‘team’ has to be his closest friends, and roommate. Gage, Render, Ozzy, and Knight. I’ve known Gage, Render, and Knight since high school, and only met Ozzy once or twice through Arrow.

Grrr. Did he think I wouldn’t find out?

I find the buzzer on the side door. My finger hovers.

I could press. I could walk up those industrial stairs, push open the door, and say you idiot, you beautiful idiot, how dare you and thank you and take that mask off or I’ll rip it off with my teeth.

I could watch his face crumple and rebuild in real time. I could lay it all in the open.

Or.

Or I could have a little fun.

Because here’s the thing: I’m hurt. I’m also thrilled.

And under both, I’m me—Juno Kate, a girl who used to prank her sister by swapping the sugar with salt before brand shoots and live-tweet the chaos like a tiny goblin.

If Arrow thinks he can hide the entire Hoover operation behind a rubber face and a voice changer, then he underestimates the lengths to which I will go to make a man sweat.

I step back from the door and check my phone. A text sits there, unread from ten minutes ago:

HOOVER: Running late. Ten minutes.

From where I’m standing, I can see the shadow of him pacing past the second-story window, a shape in motion, waiting for me.

I type, thumbs flying:

Copy. On my way. Hope you’re ready, Ghost. I have questions.

I hit send, then take the long way around the block to the front entrance, because dramatics matter.

My pulse steadies into something like a plan.

I tuck the avocado deeper into my bag—it seems rude to interrogate your vigilante while holding produce—and fix my hair in the warped reflection of the glass.

Up the metal stairs, past the peeling “RIVERSIDE PRINT” letters, down the corridor that smells like ink and old paper.

I pause outside the loft door—the one I’ve entered half a dozen times now, the one with the keypad code that means we built something together I didn’t know was ours. I don’t knock. I wait.

Inside, I hear him. Footsteps. A chair scrape. The faint rustle of plastic, then the soft click of a modulator. When the door opens, Ghostface fills the frame, tall and careful, the scream smiling at me like an inside joke that’s about to become a confession.

“Juno,” he says, voice deep and altered. “You made it.”

I smile back—sweet as a knife. “Of course I did,” I purr, stepping past him, letting my shoulder brush his chest. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

And suddenly, I can’t wait to see how well the man I think I’m falling for lies when I’m staring straight into his mask and calling him darling.

Time to see how good Arrow Finn is under pressure.

Time to see how good I am at playing with fire.