Page 13 of Sweet Violence
Heat shot up my neck so fast I had to grip the edge of the stool, pulling my knees in like that would make it any less obvious.
Rhys made a noise. “Oh my god.”
“Shut up.”
“You just short-circuited.” His grin widened. “I mentioned bookshelves, and youfroze.”
I exhaled through my nose, jaw setting as I stared at the table. “That still isn’t the point.”
“Isn’t it though? You’re not horrified. You’re barely scandalized.”
He wasn’t wrong.
Goddamn it.
“And for the record,” Rhys added, “wanting him doesn’t make you ridiculous. It makes you human… and super gay.”
A laugh burst out of me before I could stop it.
“You start Monday, yeah?”
I nodded, pulse tripping a little.
“Great.” He smacked his hands together. “You have exactly one weekend to spiral responsibly."
“Spiral responsibly?” I snorted. “That’s not a thing.”
“It is now.” Leaning across the counter, he poked me square in the chest. “You’ll show up to work pretending you’re normal, and I’ll go to my meeting at eight where a man named Carl isgoing to explain synergy to me with a straight face. We’ll both be suffering.”
I slapped at his hand, laughter spilling from my mouth. “You could’ve stayed in Sweden, you know?”
“And miss this?” He gestured vaguely at the apartment. “Why, Archibald… I would never.”
Gratitude settled in my chest, the kind that didn’t need to be named out loud to be real. Rhys had been there for every version of me worth surviving. He’d watched me unravel, rebuild, and never once tried to hurry the process or make it prettier for public consumption.
He carried his plate to the sink and set it down with a soft clink, then paused, leaning his hip against the counter and glancing at me sideways.
“When you inevitably marry him, do I get to be maid of honor, or are you going to make me stand on the groom’s side like some kind of trad nightmare?”
I snorted. “You are not my maid of honor.”
“Rude,” he said. “I look phenomenal in formalwear.”
I rolled my eyes, but my traitorous pulse jumped anyway, and even as I laughed, something quieter in me had already moved ahead, reaching toward a future I wasn’t ready to look at directly.
4
ARCHIE
Hargrove’s admin office smelled like wood cleaner and Rhys’s closet. There was too much oak and not enough lighting, like someone had designed it specifically to make you feel bad for breathing.
Behind the front desk, a woman looked up at me and pursed her lips in a way that made my palms sweat more instead of less. She had unmistakable horror-movie grandma energy.
Her auburn hair was smoothed back into a bun at the nape of her neck, tight enough that it looked like it might hurt if she frowned any harder.
Her nameplate readJudith, and based on the scowl she was wearing, she was already tired of me.
“Name?”
