Page 24 of The Shield
“Anyone didn’t,” I said, because I’d watched the crowd part and the phones lift and the man in the hoodie sprint.
His jaw worked once, a muscle jumping there. “You learned anything from that?” he asked lightly, a rasp of humor under it.
“Yeah,” I said, and then because the filter was soaked through and useless, I let the rest out. “That I shouldn’t leave my purse on a chair.” I held his gaze. “And that I’m in trouble where you’re concerned.”
The not-quite-smile came and went. “You don’t know me.”
“I know enough.” I tilted my face up an inch. He was so close I could see the pale line where one scar crossed another under his jaw, could count the slow blink that meant he was choosing restraint on purpose. “I know what it does to me when a man like you moves like that.”
“Natalie,” he said, warning and want braided in the syllables.
A car rolled past the alley mouth, a hiss on wet pavement. Somewhere behind us, someone laughed, too loud, the sound cutting off as a door shut.
I felt the shape of a future headline stir in the back of my mind—Planner seen kissing stranger in alley while city preps for flood—and my stomach tightened at how easily the world twisted things into the wrong kind of headline. Public perception was a dam with hairline cracks I’d been staring at my whole life.
Not now, I told myself.Not with rain coming. Not with cameras eager. Not with a man at my mouth who looked like he’d been built to break me on purpose and put me back together better.
I stepped back an inch. He let me. The restraint tasted like sex more than kissing would have.
“I promised a tour,” I said, breath shaky but brain returning to its job. “It’s not going to be coffee-and-pastries pretty anymore. You still want to come?”
“I’m here,” he said, simple.
“Good.” I swiped a strand of wet hair off my cheek, trying to feel like a person and not a live wire. “Then come watch the firstband hit with me. If it stalls, we’ll move cars. If it pools, we’ll call Public Works. If anyone gets stuck?—”
“Not a hero move,” he finished quietly.
We walked back toward The Rise, the alley expanding into street again, people and sound rushing in around us. I snagged a handful of napkins from the counter and pressed them into his scraped knuckles. He took them, and because I wasn’t done being reckless, I wrapped his hand myself. The sight of those big fingers in my palm did something chemical to me. He watched me the way men watch bombing runs—awe and intent, the quiet that comes before and after a strike.
At the corner, two teenagers huddled under a shared umbrella, phones up, whispering. One looked at me, then at Ethan, then at the alley. I could already feel the algorithm chewing on us—the outrage, the oohs. I was used to being someone in this city—Butch’s granddaughter, the planner with the maps. I wasn’t used to being half of a story I hadn’t approved for release.
“They’re going to talk,” I said, more to myself than him.
“About what?” he asked, not naive, just unconcerned.
“About me,” I said. “About you. About ‘what kind of woman’ … when the rain’s coming and I should be …” I trailed off, anger and wanting tangling in a knot.
He lifted our wrapped hands, just enough to make me look. “Let ’em talk,” he said, and the ferocity in it was quiet and devastating. “Do your job. I’ll do mine.”
“What’s your job?” I asked, because if he was going to say something like that in that voice, I needed the shape of it.
His mouth edged toward that not-smile again. “Right now? Keep up.”
Thunder shuffled its feet somewhere offshore. The wind changed, a breath taken in.
“I owe you dry clothes,” I said. “Or a towel.”
“Start with showing me where the water lies,” he said. “Then we can hunt a towel.”
We stepped out together, rain dotting our shoulders, the city tightening its jaw for what was on the horizon. I felt the pull of two tides—the one in the sky and the one under my skin—and for once, I didn’t tell either one no.
10
ETHAN
The rain came down steady as we stepped out onto the street, the world softening into a muted gray around us.
Natalie took the lead, her voice rising above the patter as she began the tour she’d promised, her tone carrying a mix of focus and care. She pointed out the particulars—the way the clouds hung low and heavy, their edges fraying into darker patches that hinted at the storm’s intent. She traced the rain’s rhythm with a glance, noting how it fell in sheets that promised to linger, and spoke of the tide’s shift, how it pushed the water table higher, seeping into the streets with a quiet insistence. I caught bits and pieces of it—enough to nod along, to understand the mechanics of her work—but my mind kept drifting, pulled toward her instead.
