Page 80 of Red Flag, Green Light

Still worried, but now also mildly intrigued by the possibility, I fortify myself.

Swallowing hard, I slip from beneath the covers and watch Mars’s face heat before he tugs his attention off my shorts and camisole. He coughs. “Anyway, I’ll let you get dressed in peace.”

“You aren’t going to watch?” I protest.

Already heading toward the hall, Mars releases a string of hollow laughs, then closes the door on my smile.

Looking down, I reread my first hint and find my second nestled against my toothbrush in the bathroom. It leads me to the kitchen, where Mars is preparing a breakfast that is absolutely not on my modest month-long meal plan.

“I don’t normally eat breakfast,” I say, scanning the kitchen for a bright plastic egg.

“Pity,” Mars says, showing me a blue egg betwixt his fore and middle fingers. Sly, he glances back at me and smirks. “Only good girls who eat breakfast get their next hint.”

How. Dare. He.

I drop myself down into a chair at my kitchen table and cross my arms.

“The real birthday gift,” he begins as he sets a plate of avocado toast and scrambled eggs before me, “is the coercion along the way.”

“Implying there will be more coercion?”

“Oh, all day.”

I pick up my fork and try not to look positively chipper at the idea.

“Why doesn’t Hannah like you?” I ask, slipping my next hint—locate a treat from somewhere Salty & Sweet—into my egg-collection bag. “Doesn’t her boss, Brandi, work on your brother all the time and know that the big, bad Rogues aren’t all that bad and only half of them are big?”

Jove has two full sleeves of tattoos, and Hannah is the most upbeat assistant I’ve ever tried desperately not to meet. Both her and her boss are extroverted hazards in this town. But today she’s about-faced in light of Mars’s presence twice. Both times, she was walking toward us on the sidewalk in Downtown Bandera…and now she is walking away from us, on the other side of the road.

“How do you know about Jove’s tattoos?” Mars asks, perfectly secure, of course. And definitely not scowling at me because I implied he was small. Again.

“I live next to you both. I go outside a lot. He doesn’t always wear long sleeves. What do you meanhow do I know about Jove’s tattoos?”

“Please tell me it’s because you’re observant, and not because you have a thing for tattoos or were checking out his arms.”

I stare at the bundle of anxiety walking beside me while hefocuses all his attention on the deck of cards in his hands. Then I say, “Please tell me why Hannah hates you.”

“Everyone hates me. What else is new?”

“I’m not accepting that answer.”

Deflating, Mars stuffs his deck back in his pocket and cuts his fingers through his hair. “Jove’s…easy,” he says. “Don’t be a jerk, and you’re safe. Some people get that. I’m more of a wild card. I don’t usually retaliate or attempt to impose karma on people. Jove’ll hear about crimes against me, and Jove’ll take care of it. Instead, I pick projects, which means I’m less predictable and my methods aren’t as traceable, or stoppable, which helps with my success, but not my popularity.”

“Projects…like what?”

“Projects like choosing to set a courthouse on fire in order to steal information for a foster kid who wanted to know about their parents, then getting caught again later so I’d be sent to juvie for a hot second in order to make connections with the local, up-and-coming ne’er-do-wells. Now I possess a web in adulthood of contacts on the darker side of the street, just in case I ever need them. And I do. Sometimes.” His fist grips his hair, and he mumbles, “I learned young that it’s good to be prepared for any eventuality, so it’s rare I ever take steps forward without first analyzing the absolute best course of action in order to heighten chances of success.”

Mouth agape, I stare. “You…are joking, aren’t you?”

“Not even a little bit. But that’s what I mean. My plots aren’t as linear asyou did a bad thing, so now you need new tires. They’re very much decided on a whim, when some kid’s crying and keeps running from their foster parents even though their real parents are a thousand times worse. Sometimes you just need to see it with your own eyes when you’re old enough to understand. That kid’s happily adopted now, by the way.” He won’t look at me. “I…keep track of my projects like that. To makesure I didn’t set the world on fire only to leave it burning.”

I have never met kindness or intellect like Mars’s outside of stories. Adjusting the bag of eggs over my shoulder, I lift my attention to the town around me. I’ve been wandering all over this morning, unafraid. Even though I’m acting like an idiot toddler and pulling colored eggs out of half a dozen potted orchids Mars set up all over the place a month before anyone else is doing Easter egg hunts.

It has been quiet in my chest.

Calm.

Because Mars is here.

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