Page 32 of Daring You

9

Ben

Damn,Astor looks good.

Who’s allowed to be sexy in a purple sleeping bag and the wooliest hat this south of a Mammoth? It’s not fresh wool, either. It’s pilled, and pieces of fluff stick out in every direction, creating a lopsided halo backlit by flickering, dying subway platform lights.

It’s what I focus on as words vomit out of my mouth. Desperate ones, syllables guaranteed to cut and slice and dice. Anything to get her away from this case. I’ll say whatever it takes to make her second guess her decision to open that file.

I should’ve known it would only make her sharpen her fangs.

Astor’s cheeks have given her away. They’ve bloomed pink, twin circles of passion, and she’s doing her best to cut me down at the knees.

Even though I’ve cut her down first.

I know what my words have done. Disgust. Shame. Mistake.

All meanings I’ve made her understand before. And I did it purposefully. Used them shamefully because I knew they’d wound the most. All utilized instead of giving her the truth.

Worth it. It’s all worth it, Donahue.

When she shoves me, when Astor disguises her distress with her own verbal arrows and walks away, I don’t stop her.

Many believe Astor’s cold and callous, with a complete disregard to human emotion and feelings. I don’t know why I’ve been given the gift, but I can see that lie so clearly. She wears her emotions where people forget to look. In the way she holds herself—too strong, too stable, to be real. How she places her hands, fingers too stiff and straight. And when, when you really get to her, her throat jerks with an untimed swallow.

All signs of successfully chipping away at Astor Hayes.

I use that knowledge, the well of wisdom I didn’t earn from six years ago, to my advantage, almost like a play on the field. Something was already going on with her at brunch, making it too easy to punch through her weakened glass and scatter some shards across a subway platform.

So, when she doesn’t look back at me as she boards the same train I do, ensuring she’s at least four cars away from mine, I don’t blame her.

And I don’t think I’ve convinced her of anything. But failure isn’t in my DNA, so I’m gonna keep fucking trying.

I have to pray, to whatever gods are listening—Atlas, Achilles, God—that Astor doesn’t think too much about the little boy in the pictures.

And I have to believe, with all that makes me into Ben Donahue, that the people that came after me and my family, won’t come after her if she fails in proving them not guilty.

* * *

The problemwith the subway is that it’s public.

I’m assailed almost as soon as eyeballs hit my face, then go to their phones. The good ol’ days of asking for autographs are long gone, Instead, fans shove phone cameras at your nose and make sure the flash is on.

Other, more intrepid ones, throw an arm around you, catch a selfie, and don’t even say hello.

I get all three.

“Yo, Donahue, you rock!”

“Sorry about the playoffs, man. You were robbed.”

“Your fucking quarterback is a limpdick.”

“Go, Jets!”

I sneer at the last parting shot before I step off the train and into the anonymity of the TriBeCa sidewalk. I’m supposed to meet Ash at a mysterious location he won’t tell me the name of, only the address, but I’m more feeling the gym at this point. Get out some aggression.

My phone vibrates and I slide it out of my coat pocket, groaning when I see who it is.

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