Page 47 of Make Them Cry
My heart goes off like a dropped tray.
“River—”
“Not your voice. Not your rules.You.” Her gaze flickers to my mouth like she knows where I’m weakest. “I want to know theman who teaches me to fight and buys my stupid peppermint tea and knows how I type when I’m excited.”
I close my eyes. The room tilts. The mask is a weight and a mercy. One tug and everything I’ve built comes down.
“If I show you too soon,” I say, each word a careful placement, “I make you a bigger target. Anyone who can name me can hurt you.”
She sits with that. She doesn’t pout. She doesn’t push. She just nods once like she’s adding a variable to a long equation and deciding to carry it.
“Okay,” she says. “Then promise me something else.”
“Name it.”
“When this is over—whenthey’reover—no more masks.”
The room goes quiet except for the fans and the part of my chest that just decided to be a drum.
“Deal,” I say, because even if it kills me, I want the right to keep that promise.
She exhales, a warm sound that feels like the future.
And then she ruins me: she leans over, slow as sunrise, and presses her mouth to the edge of black fabric where it drapes across my jaw. Not a kiss. Not quite.
Ahello.
“Good night, Mask,” she whispers. “Don’t make me dream alone.”
She stands, tucks her hair behind her ear, and disappears into the small room we call a bedroom.
I sit there, hands limp, mask intact, soul in open revolt.
Arrow’s text breaks my concentration.
ARROW: Cathedral banned Kyle’s account. Nice work, team.
I type back with steady fingers I do not feel.
ME: She did most of it.
I look at the closed door, at the strip of light under it, at the laptop she touched.
No more masks,she said.
Soon, I promise a God I don’t believe in and a woman I absolutely do.
Soon.
FIFTEEN
RIVER
Work feels… better today. Even my morning cupcake tasted yummier. Everything feels… different.
Not in a bad way. In a victorious, strut-down-the-halls kind of way.
For the first time in what feels like forever, no one’s whispering behind my back. No one’s snickering at my desk or tagging me in meme chains online. Mason’s gone. The Cathedral forum is quiet. My inbox doesn’t feel like a loaded weapon anymore. I’m fighting back.
