Downstairs again, the party had grown teeth. Someone was doing shots off a countertop. The DJ had found a horn sample he loved too much. Jax spotted me first, eyes sweeping left to right like he was clocking damage. Theo whistled like I'd landed a plane.
"Report," Jax demanded.
"Two-for-one," I said, like I was announcing a happy hour special. "Economy of scale."
Theo choked on his beer. "I hate you, but in a folklore way."
Jax threw an arm around my neck and shook me like I was a kid. "Teach me your ways, sensei."
"There's nothing to teach," I said, truth slipping out before I could yank it back. "It's easy. Too easy. Half the time it's like I'm not even there."
Jax's grin faded for a second, like he heard what I didn't mean to say. Then he clapped my back. "Whatever, poet. Come get washed at pong."
I went through the motions—competent, loud, invincible. That thin emptiness sharpened as the adrenaline wore off. This is what they don't tell you about being the guy everyone wants: you start to feel like you're for everyone, which means you're for no one. It's a trick mirror—look long enough and you go see-through.
I ducked out for air sometime around midnight.
The porch was packed with the smoke-break crowd, so I stepped off the stoop and drifted across the street where the noise softened. That's when I saw her.
Not inside the party. Not waiting at the curb for some guy to notice her. Across the way, under the muted glow of a café sign that really should've been off by now, she sat by the window with a paperback open like midnight was prime reading time. Oversized jacket, wide-leg jeans, sneakers that looked clean but lived-in. Braids pulled back with a clip that caught the light every time she shifted. No performance. No theatrics. Just… stillness.
Two guys walked by and did a double take. She didn't give them a smile. Didn't give them anything. She turned a page.
Something in me clicked like a seatbelt.
I crossed the street before I could talk myself out of it—not that I ever do. Confidence is ninety percent posture, ten percent pretending you can't hear doubt over the music. I pushed open the café door and let the warm coffee smell wash the party off me.
"Not much of a party person?" I asked, leaning an elbow on the edge of her table like I'd been invited.
She looked up slow, eyes that brown-gold that catches the light and turns unkind if you deserve it. She assessed me the way you assess a crack in the sidewalk—calculated, indifferent.
"Not much of a drunk-idiot person," she said. Calm as a flat sea.
I laughed, because I didn't have the upper hand and it felt weird enough to be fun. "Touché. I'm Cole."
She took a sip of coffee, then placed the cup exactly in the ring its heat had left, like she was resetting the level. "Congratulations."
It landed. I don't think I've had a woman toss my name back at me like a receipt before. I leaned in, let the grin go lazy. "What are we reading that's better than a terrible DJ and a free hangover?"
She weighed whether I deserved an answer and decided I didn't, which was almost charming. "Something with a point."
"You wound me," I said, pressing a palm to my chest like my heart had feelings.
She closed the book with a finger marking her place and finally gave me a proper look. Not a once-over, not the flicker of appraisal I'm used to. It was surgical. She looked at my face, not the ink, not the hoodie string Kara had knotted and I hadn't noticed. She looked, decided, and didn't care that I watched her decide.
"You smell like sweat, cigarettes, and other people's choices," she said mildly. "Maybe come back another day when you're more yourself."
I grinned because that was the first time in forever anyone implied there was a "more myself" hiding under this. "Maybe I will."
"Maybe don't," she said, and slid her gaze back to the page.
That should've been that. I should've rolled my eyes, tossed out a last line, and gone back to being worshipped by my flock. Instead I stood there like a tourist at an art piece I didn't understand yet.
"What's your name?" It came out unwilling, like I hadn't approved it.
She tilted her head, considered telling me, then changed her mind. "You don't need it."
And she went back to reading.
I stayed long enough to prove—to who, exactly?—that I wasn't thrown. Then I left. The bell over the door chimed me out like I'd failed a quiz.
Back across the street, the party vomited light onto the sidewalk. Jax spotted me first, cupping a hand around his mouth. "Saint Cole returns!"
Theo took one look at my face and snorted. "No way. Did someone just *nope* you?"
"Shut up," I said, but I was smiling as I said it.
"Who is she?" Jax said, craning to see. He followed my gaze to the café window. She didn't glance up. "Oh. Café girl."
"She's not a girl," I said, the word wrong in my mouth for her. "She's… something else."
"Translation," Theo said, counting on his fingers, "he's intrigued, he's confused, he's going to ruin it."
"Untouchable," Jax reminded me, like a warning or a prayer.
Inside, the night swallowed us again. The DJ discovered another button that sounded like a car alarm and fell in love with it. Kara and Lena waved from the stairs like we were still in the same game. Maybe I was. Maybe I wasn't. My head—usually a room with all the doors open—felt like someone had closed one.
As the night dragged on, as girls threw themselves at me, as Jax yelled my name over the music like I was some kind of legend, my mind kept drifting to the café across the street. To the girl who didn't care who I was.
I grabbed a beer I didn't want and went outside again. My eyes kept finding the window across the street like it had a magnet in it. On the other side of the glass, she turned another page. Didn't look up. Didn't care.
I didn't know her name yet. But I would.
Because for the first time in years, someone wasn't playing my game.
And I'll be damned if that didn't make me want to play hers.
Jax elbowed me. "What's the plan, maestro?"
"Don't have one," I said, which was true and new.
Theo whistled low. "He's smiling, but it's not the shark one."
"Shut up," I said again, because they weren't wrong.
I looked back at the café one more time, and she was already closing her book, sliding the receipt back into it as a bookmark, standing with unhurried economy. Jacket on. Bag over one shoulder. She didn't look across. Didn't give me anything.
I laughed under my breath and felt it in my ribs, a small, real sound in a night full of fake ones.
Game on.