Page 27

Chapter Twenty-One

I compose a letter. I spend an hour getting the email addresses of every major reporter and newspaper in Upper Canada I can find.

Hit send. It lingers in my inbox. Server issues.

Won't go. I send a test email to Hadi, some random jumble of bullshit asking how the crowds are at work. It goes through.

The operator laughs me off, and when I try to call the non-emergency line, my call won't connect. The robotic voice bleeps obnoxiously and tells me that number is blocked. I try from Hadi's landline, and when I reach an officer, I'm told to stop wasting their time.

All my life I've known that dragons run the world, but in a sort of vague, abstract way.

They head Business Associations, they own land that they manage for municipalities, they have parallel parliaments and support human governments, they write policy and invest in charities, they create structure.

What I didn't realize is that they don't just run the world… they control it.

So much of what I know about dragons has been fed to me by those very dragons themselves. It's the ultimate propaganda machine, and I've been raised inside of it.

I spend the rest of the night trying to reach out to someone, anyone who might help, and can't. The news is playing a loop of me looking like hot garbage whispering "We didn't break up", delusional and desperate.

The commentators insinuate that Dav's brief blip of a reappearance was just that—a blip. And that I’m a mistake he's retreating from.

Lies!

…aren't they?

Dav would come back to me if he could.

Right?

He loves me. He said so. Even if I never got to say it back.

After a shitty, nightmare-plagued sleep on Hadi’s sofa, I expect to have to elbow my way through a sea of cameras and obscene shouting the next day.

But when I leave the building, there's nothing but footprints scoured into the trampled grass. I slink home, hollowed out by the perpetual fear that I’m worth abandoning, and drop into bed, missing the warm comfort of Dav with an ache that's physical.

I yearn for the way we curled together, heads sharing a pillow and the small gap between our bodies cupping our world, our future, and all its possibilities.

Mum visits for a few days. She believes what the news says, tells me I'm better off, while I lay on the sofa with my head in her lap. She doesn’t say ‘I told you so’, and I don't try to tell her the truth. What would be the point?

After she goes home, Gem and Stu call every night. They trade off, as if they're on self-harm watch.

Huh.

They're probably on self-harm watch.

Another week passes. Then two.

I talk to Dr. Chen every other day, and on the days it's not her, it's Dike, or Mau, or both "just popping by" with takeout and beer, or new video games to try, or some academic journal article to read aloud and mock.

I try very hard not to resent everyone.

They only want to make sure I'm healthy.

Fuck.

I just want to sleep.

I sleep too much.

With nothing better to do, I go back to work.

Our popularity has remained the same, but now it's not because of the coffee. I don’t want to be gawked at, so I stay in the kitchen, hiding in the stainless steel cave like Dav did.

I roast. I bake. I call, I post to social media, I email.

Letters are returned unopened. Security won’t let me get close to government buildings.

(Though, even I know better than to rock up to Chorley Park and bang on Lt. Gov. Scumbag’s door.)

I reach out fruitlessly, work resentfully, sleep fitfully, and miss Dav terribly.

By the fourth week, I’m mad at myself.

How could I let him mean so much to me, how could we spend so much time together, and I know so goddamned little about him? His home address, his family’s names, I don't even know what his dragonshape looks like. Why didn’t I push more? Why didn’t I care more?

It's stupid, but Dav never got to tell me what it is that "I've done it again" meant, and I think that out of everything, that's what pisses me off most. He promised me he would explain, and they wouldn't let him keep that promise.

The sharp pain of missing Dav turns into something else, something resentful and moldy.

It feels like giving up. I'm just human, after all.

What can I do if the Draconic Powers That Be want to do something horrible to the man that I love?

( Yes, I still love him, and they can choke on it. ) Shit-all. And it's wretched.

And then somehow, it's been five weeks.

Then six.

It takes a few weeks for me to catch on, because I'm so cocooned in misery, but one morning I leave my house, I realize with a sudden-fog-clearing fury that I have a stalker.

There's some goddamned dragon following me around.

Or at least, I assume he's homo draconis because he’s a mountain of muscle with a vibe that frazzles my short-hairs when I walk by his vehicle-du-jour.

Maybe he thinks he's being inconspicuous, but hanging out in different cars outside of my apartment and my place of work only functions in movies.

Especially with a neck like that—you don't get a neck like that just being a driver.

Is he security?

Or am I being tailed to make sure I don’t do anything naughty?

Fuck 'em.

Fuck every single one of the split-tongued, scaly-assed bastards keeping me and Dav apart.

So I…

I don't know why I do it. Except that I'm angry. I want them to know that no matter where he is and what they're doing to him, Dav is mine. I am his, and he is mine.

So, on the morning of the forty-sixth day, I step out of my apartment, stare the security dude straight in the face, and put on the little rose-and-laurels lapel pin. I stick it right on my Henley, directly over my heart.

The guy's face goes ashen. His car peels out of the parking spot.

And three hours later, Onatah calls me for the first time.

Alright, so you remember what I said about the Inciting Incident?

That it’s the tripwire that sends the protagonist hurtling towards the first major obstacle in their path?

Well, if I can stretch the already thin metaphor, the protagonist then fetches up against the wall of the first landing.

Getting their feet under them, they can either head back up the stairs, and the story is over, or they can peek around the corner and see what comes next.

You know, if they haven't already broken their necks.

After that comes something called the "pinch point". At the top of act two, the hero is squeezed, and either they slither out and go home, or stay there while the pressure becomes unbearable, forcing them to make difficult decisions that affect the rest of their lives.

"The Vice," my English professor had called it.

Of course, most protagonists aren't dumbfuck enough to sit in the chompy part of their own volition, let alone reach around the machine to turn the crank themselves.

But hey, whoever said I was smart?

I put on that pin. And okay, I didn't know what it meant at the time, but the thing is… when I found out? I didn't take it off.

I'm getting ahead of myself.

Phone call. Blocked number. I ignore it. I'm at work and I have better things to do than listen to fake-ass shit-stirring ‘reporters’ asking me invasive questions. It's not until a few hours later, when I’m heading off on my break, that I realize someone left a voicemail.

I schlump to the back deck. There's no shade from the late-August sun.

I could stay inside with the air conditioning, but that defeats the purpose of having a break, because I'll just end up puttering.

And it's too damn hot to go for a walk. And , and I don't want to go to any of the restaurants around us on St. Paul because every single one of them is somewhere Dav and I once had a meal and I hate that it's all I can think about.

With nothing better to do, I decide to give the voice mail a listen before deleting it.

"Hey, so, listen," the message says. The speaker sounds like a woman, voice resonant. I can tell English isn't her first language, but her accent is nothing I’ve heard before. "Man, you gotta knock it off."

Anger flares hard and fast under my skin. How dare they try to intimidate me!

There's a silence, and I expect the speaker to hang up.

Instead, she sighs. "Dav says I'm supposed to tell you he's sorry and this is bullshit, although we both know he'd never actually use that word, and he's fine, but you gotta knock it off because the wrong people are paying attention and he doesn't want that, okay?

He's a noble fuckwit and you're giving him heart attacks on the daily.

" There's another deep sigh and then, quietly, almost like I wasn't supposed to hear it: "Shit, man. You had to don the token."

The message ends and I sit there, wide-eyed and gawp-mouthed.

Dav's fine . It's all I can think, the two words crashing around the inside of my skull. Dav's fine. Dav's fine. He's fine, and he's worried about me.

Before my brain catches up with my fingers, I've already hit redial. The annoying bleeping reminds me the number is blocked, and I can't call her back. Whoever her is.

I'm suddenly full of buzzing energy. I need to do something . I want to rush off like the heroine in one of my romances, to hail a cab, to tumble out of it at the base of the office tower, race to the elevator, break into the board meeting, confess my love—

I can't.

First, because I don't know where Dav is. Second, because the way this voicemail was phrased, it sounds like maybe he doesn't want to see me. Or maybe he can't see me.

We've broken enough rules as it is, and look where it's gotten us. If he's not allowed to contact me himself, if he had to ask a friend to do it for him in secret, then rushing to his side would not only be clichéd, it might be risky.

Third, because I don't know where Dav is .

Spinning the pin over my heart, I wrack my brains for a way to not only let the mysterious caller know that I got the message and am dying to hear from them again, but also to let Dav know that I've heard him. Message delivered. The only dragon I’ve seen directly lately was my stalker—and he's vamoosed.

Ah! Someone is curating my social media feed, which means maybe Dav is reading it?

I open the app and type: It's so nice when friends reach out and slap you upside the head. Even better when you can catch their hand and not let go. Rules 4, 6, and 7 still apply.

Hit send. Posted.

Mauli immediately replies with a string of question mark emojis. Rebekah replies a few seconds later with heart-eyes face.

Know-it-all.

My phone does not ring.

With five minutes left on my break, I return early. I'm getting a sunburn, and I'm going to go crazy if I just sit here, willing my phone to make noise. I turn the ringer up as loud as it will go, shove the phone into my pocket, then head through the empty kitchen to the cooler front-of-house.

Where Pedra is accepting a coffee from Rajish.

She looks up and freezes like the proverbial deer in the headlights. It's an accurate metaphor, because the second I see her, I careen around the side of the counter toward her like an eighteen wheeler.

I'm not much of a violent person, okay?

Dad taught me how to throw a punch, and I've tussled enough with Stu to more-or-less hold my own. But I've never lashed out in anger, or deliberately sought to hurt somebody. Which means that even I'm surprised when I reach out, grab her coffee out of her hand, and throw it in her face.

I am lucky, really lucky , that she ducks and the steaming hot liquid doesn't catch her skin.

But right then, it doesn't feel lucky.

It feels like I've been cheated. I fist my hands in her lab coat and swing her around hard enough that she smashes into the counter.

"Colin!" Hadi snarls, from somewhere behind me.

All around us, people are standing, gasping, shouting at me to let Pedra go. Rajish is leaning across the counter, his hand around one of my wrists, trying to pull me off.

"I'm sorry!" Pedra wails, arms up, protecting her face. "I'm sorry!"

"Damn fucking right you're sorry!" I roar. "They took him, and you dare come back—!"

"Colin!" Hadi snarls again.

Rajish manages to break my grip on Pedra. She stumbles away, horrified and wary. A few customers get between us, eyes hard and chests squared.

"I didn't know they would do that!" Pedra says.

"Get out!" I shout, and it feels like vomiting. It feels like hurling every broken and jagged shard of the happiness I'd once had with Dav at her, weaponized shrapnel.

Dav is fine . The lady on the phone said so. But that doesn't mean I might never see him again.

"Get out!" I repeat when Pedra looks from Hadi, to Rajish, and back to me.

"Hey!" Hadi says, getting right in my face, blocking my line of sight. "This is my place, not yours!"

"It's her fault they took your beans!"

"We've already talked that out, and she's apologized."

"I can't believe that after all this time she has the balls to—"

"This isn't her first time back."

"What?" I ask, the revelation like a slap to the face, fury crystallizing to shock. "What did you say?"

"I've, uh, been timing my trips to your, um, breaks," Pedra confesses softly.

"Unbelievable," I mutter, fury crystallizing to shock. "And you helped her?" I ask Hadi, who nods. "Unbe-fucking-lievable."

"You don't get a say in who I allow in," Hadi scolds.

Hadi.

One of my most cherished friends. A great boss, who made sure I ate, and slept, and studied when I was failing because I was still grief-stricken and dealing with Dad's loss.

Who teamed up with Gem to bully me into staying regular with Dr. Chen.

Who wrote me the Rules because she wants to see me happy.

Hadi.

Standing between me and the person who ruined everything .

And telling me I get no say on whether I have to see her every day for the rest of… for the rest of my… until—

"Fine then." I sound calm.

Am I calm?

I might be calm.

I might be shrieking.

I can't tell.

My heart is in my throat, my ears rushing with blood, every sinew and muscle pounding with the desire to fight scream rage hurt lash out. I do none of those things.

Instead, I strip off my apron, and drape it over the arm Hadi has out to keep Pedra and I separated.

"Fine," I repeat. "Your business. Your decision."

I pull my keys out of my pocket, and wrestle the one for Beanevolence off the ring.

I don't say - But I've been here since day one.

I don't say - You've always relied on me. You've always trusted me.

I don't say - This place means as much to me as it does to you.

I don't say - I need this to feel wanted and useful. Please. I don't have anything else.

I do say - "Bye, Hadi."

And put the key in the apron pocket.