Page 5 of My Vigilante Valentine

I was never going to recover from this.

And then—he vanished.

In the time it took me to blink away my embarrassment, he was gone, slipping away just as glaring red-and-blue lights filtered through the glass doors.

I stared at the spot where he’d been standing, my stomach doing an entirely inappropriate swoop.

I willneverforget this moment.

We sat there for a beat longer before Chris turned to me again. “…Are you serious right now?”

The silence shattered as if someone had hit play on a paused movie.

The bank tellers burst into tears, a few sobbing openly behind the counter as they clutched each other in relief.

A businessman in a suit sat back against a desk and muttered,“I need a raise.”

An older woman wiped at her eyes with a tissue and whispered,“I always knew he was real.”Relatable.

And me?

I was still on the actual floor, clutching the back of Chris’s shirt like a lifeline. Sirens wailed, voices shouted, and the world kept moving—but I was stuck.

I sucked in a breath, heart still doing wild gymnastics in my chest, and muttered the only thing that made sense. “Oh, yeah. I think I’m in love.”

Chris slowly turned to me. “You think you’rein love?”

“What? No.”

He scoffed. “You literally just?—”

“I was in shock.” I waved a hand, attempting to regain some shred of dignity. “It was an adrenaline-fueled reaction. It didn’t mean a thing.”

Lies.

All of them.

Chris squinted. “You look like you’re waiting for him to come back and sweep you off your feet.”

I pursed my lips. “No… I just think—” I inhaled deeply, regrouping. “That it’s important to appreciate community service. And, you know, he saved our lives.”

Chris hummed, like he was deeply considering this, then leaned in conspiratorially. “You’re right. It’s totally normal to writeMrs. Luna Bladein an imaginary notebook after one little life-saving experience.”

I rolled my eyes.

But the thing was?

One little life-saving experience seemed like a perfectly reasonable reason to fall in love with someone.

2

rule number one

Some murders were easy to read.

A body dumped in a dark alley, a convenience store holdup gone sideways, a gang rivalry ending in blood.

Random. Messy. Predictable.

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