Page 25 of Make Them Bleed (Pretty Deadly Things #1)

“I won’t,” Karen says quickly. “I won’t. It’s your house. I just… wish this weren’t the only thing in it.”

Juno stares at her mug. The steam has thinned.

“It isn’t.” She gestures at the coloring book on the coffee table, open to page forty-three, half the petals shaded in bruised purple.

“I color. I sleep sometimes. I—” She almost says I kiss Arrow in a room with too many computers (at least I like to think so) and reroutes. “I remember. That’s a thing.”

Karen nods, eyes bright. “That’s a thing.”

I can’t help it, and the question slips out. “Have you… eaten? Today?”

“I had a cronut,” she says. “Half.”

“Repeatedly,” Bob says, delighted to be invited back into the loop.

Something loosens around my ribs. “I brought soup,” I lie, because I didn’t, but I would. “It’s in my car.”

“We’re not staying,” Juno says quickly.

Karen’s gaze flicks at me with that mom look that says stop poking the bruise . Bob stands, dusts powdered sugar off his jeans, and wanders back to the wall. He finds a doodle of a little cartoon Ghostface in the corner of a page—Juno’s sketching habit when she’s on the phone—and snorts.

“Who’s this little guy?” he asks. “He looks like the world’s worst marshmallow.”

Juno goes very still. A flush licks up her throat. “Just…something dumb.”

I hold my breath because if I cough wrong here, the whole scaffolding comes down.

Karen puts a careful hand on Juno’s knee, thumb making tiny circles. “We’re not trying to invade, Junebug. We just wanted to see your face and hand you a pastry.” Her voice drops. “And we wanted to make sure you know… you don’t have to be the soldier all the time.”

Juno swallows. “Someone does.”

“Let Detective Huxley be the soldier,” Karen says. “Let Arrow—” She catches herself, glances between us and winces. “Let… people who do that be that.”

“I don’t trust the timeline of institutions,” Juno says, and it’s so precise and so her that I almost laugh. “I trust the work.”

Bob sighs, but there’s love in it. “Fine. Then promise me this… don’t go anywhere alone. Not Atlas. Not the marina. Not to meet any man named after a type of cookie.”

“Nico,” Juno says, automatically.

“Nico,” Bob repeats like it’s a code word he will absolutely misuse later. “You take a person with you. Preferably a person with biceps.”

“I have pepper spray,” Juno says, defensive out of habit.

“Pepper spray isn’t enough,” Karen says softly.

Juno stares at the ring of tea in her mug and finally looks at me. It’s quick—like checking a mirror—but it’s there. Something passes between us that isn’t just anger, or at least isn’t only anger. A reluctant acknowledgment. A truce on a battlefield no one likes.

I take the opening. “I meant what I said,” I tell her, careful not to upset her.

“I haven’t looked at your stuff since you told me to stop.

Not your Ring. Not your laptop. I’m not in your air.

” Render is, a little, I don’t say. “But I can stand a sidewalk away. I can sit in a car around the block. I can be the person with biceps.”

“Your biceps are fine,” Bob says, like an impartial judge offering a ruling.

“Please,” Karen says, tiny and fierce at once. “Let him stand the sidewalk away.”

Juno’s jaw flexes. She inhales. “I’ll… think about it.”

It’s not a yes. It’s not the door slamming. I’ll take it.

We visit for another fifteen minutes that feels like a slow-motion relay—topic tossed, caught, fumbled, rescued.

Bob tells a story about a beagle bath that ends in a flooded hallway.

Karen asks about the podcast and doesn’t push when Juno says she recorded a new episode and then didn’t upload it because her voice sounded like a stranger.

I offer to fix her leaky sink because fixing tangible things is a thing I know how to do.

When they stand to go, Karen holds Juno’s face in both hands and kisses her forehead. “Call me when you get home tonight,” she says. “Even if it’s very late.”

“I will,” Juno says, and for once I believe a promise none of us can enforce.

Bob hugs her like she’s made of glass and then turns to me. “You watch her,” he says, no humor.

“Yes, sir,” I say.

In the hall, I hang back while Juno kisses her mom’s cheek again. I want a word. Thirty seconds. Anything. As Karen and Bob start down the stairs, I lean toward Juno and lower my voice. “Can we talk? Just us?”

She shakes her head, eyes flicking toward the stairwell like there’s a timer running. “Not now.”

“When?” It slips out sharper than I intend.

She meets my gaze full-on, and for once there’s no fence in it. Just a tired, honest ache. “When I’m sure you’re not going to lock all my doors for me.”

My throat tightens. “Okay,” I say. “Okay.”

She grabs her bag, slips past me, and follows her parents down one flight, then stops and doubles back. She pokes her head around the corner, finds me still in the doorway. “Arrow?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you for not telling them,” she says.

“Which part?” I ask, because there are so many parts.

“All of it,” she says, and is gone.

I stand in her doorway for a long beat, staring at the blank eye of the Ring like it might blink. Then I lock up, slip my phone out, and type a message I have to get exactly right.

To: Render — If J heads anywhere near Atlas or the marina today, text me. I won’t crowd. Just don’t let her be alone in a dark corner.

The dots dance.

Render: Copy. She’s aiming at Nereus. I’ll keep you a block away, Boy Scout.

Me: Appreciate it.

I slide the phone away and take the stairs two at a time, the way Bob threatened his knees not to. Outside, the air has the clean bite of a storm that can’t make up its mind.

I don’t know whether Juno’s headed for the river tonight, or if she’ll sit in front of her wall and color in a mandala so the panic has something to do with its hands.

I don’t know if I’ll get to stand beside her or behind her, or if tonight the best version of love is the one that looks like distance.

I do know two things: Nico Armand breathes, and that means he can be found. And Juno Kate asked me to wait until she’s sure.

So I’ll wait. I’ll listen. I’ll put the word respect between us like a bridge and hope it holds, even when every muscle in me wants to sprint.

And when she walks out of that door again—tonight, tomorrow, three days from now—I’ll be a sidewalk away, exactly where she told me to be, until she tells me to come closer. Or until the moment requires me to forget permission and step in front of whatever’s coming.