Page 42 of Riggs
I send the packet, set an alarm for 3 a.m., and kiss the crown of Vanessa’s head because there’s no camera to see me do it and I want to anyway.
“Sleep,” I tell her.
“Order me around again,” she murmurs, teasing.
“Sleep, Vanessa,” I say, and feel her smile.
She does. Eventually, so do I, with one arm around her and the city pressed against the glass like a hand. Tomorrow will be noise and planning and maybe a plate falling just right somewhere we don’t want it to. Tonight is a couch, a vow, and a woman who tastes like lime and laughter and the promise I’ve been careful enough to keep.
We made it back unscathed. We’ll do it again. And when someone sayscloser,I’ll be the line he can’t cross, and she’ll be the light that doesn’t dim.
14
Vanessa
The boutique smells like linen and lemon oil. Sunlight pours through the front windows in fat rectangles, turning the silk dresses on the rack into lit glass. Lina flits around me with pins between her lips, Brice is already bossing a ring light into an existential crisis, and Riggs stands where the room turns into a hallway—back to a pillar, eyes everywhere, hands idle only because he’s dangerous when they’re not.
I’m in the third look—soft green silk that drapes like it knows what it’s doing—when Brice claps for attention. “Quick pivot,” he sings, headset askew. “Vanessa, the designer wants a ‘private reveal’ in the back fitting area, just you and me for an audio confessional before we roll the reels. Two minutes. Everyone else—reset the front for the street shots.”
Riggs’s gaze cuts to me.Privateis not a word he likes. “No,” he says, before I can answer. “She doesn’t go anywhere alone.”
Brice pastes on a sympathetic smile. “Of course not alone. With me. This is from the client. They want to capture her reaction without a wall of people. It’s literally two minutes.” He offershis palms like peace offerings. “We need spontaneity. We need magic.”
Riggs doesn’t blink. “Magic can wait for security.”
Lina, trying to be helpful, chirps, “I’ll hover just outside the curtain?—”
“Fine.” Brice’s tone tightens. He leans in, voice dropping. “Vanessa, this is the designer’s request. If we don’t get it, we lose the hero post.”
I glance from Brice to Riggs. Brice looks harried in the way he always looks right before we hit something big and shiny. Riggs looks like a wall. His eyes track the corridor to the back rooms, the manager folding tissue at the counter, the stack of shipping boxes by a swinging door. Something in my belly pinches.
“Two minutes,” I say to Riggs, trying to make it sound like no big deal. “Curtain open. Lina outside.”
He doesn’t like it. I can see it in the tick of his jaw. He angles to go with me anyway.
Brice steps to intercept, palms up, laugh fake. “Boys aren’t allowed in thesanctum,” he says, hamming the word. “Designer’s rule. Mystic feminine energy and all that. Don’t worry—we’ll be in the first stall.” He touches his headset. “Lina, grab your mic. We’ll keep comms open.”
Riggs weighs—two minutes, my insistence, the client. He shifts an inch, then nods once to me, not to Brice. “Curtain stays open. Lina stays at the doorway. Two minutes means one. I’m ten feet away.”
“Copy,” I say softly.
Brice shepherds me toward the back. The fitting rooms are a little maze of velvet curtains instead of doors, mirrors everywhere. The air’s warmer from too many bodies and a steamer sighing somewhere. The corridor is empty. The security cam in the corner wears a Band-Aid of opaque tape. I stop.
“Why is that covered?” I ask.
Brice doesn’t miss a step. “Oh, it’s angled wrong. It always catches customers changing. The manager covers it when the rooms are in use. Privacy thing.”
It’s plausible. It still feels wrong. I make myself breathe. Four in. Hold. Four out. Hold.
Brice opens a curtain with a flourish. “Look three reveal,” he says brightly. “Give me wonder. Give me?—”
Something slides behind the next curtain. Not a person. A shadow unhooks itself and steps through the fabric like it owns the air.
“Kellan,” Brice says, that pleasant voice he uses with clients, only now it has something ugly coiled under it. “You have ninety seconds.”
My body fails to process the name. Then it doesn’t. My heart trips, skids, slams. Kellan steps fully into the small fitting alcove like we’re meeting for coffee. Cap. Messenger bag. A smile that never reached his eyes even when I liked it.
“Hi, V,” he says, soft, like this is a reunion and not a nightmare. “You look beautiful.”
