Page 64 of Make Them Cry
My mouth moves before my caution does. “I can trust Gage, right?”
He stills.
It’s tiny—a pause sharp enough to cut. Then he straightens without looking at me, calm like stone. “No.”
The word lands heavy. Final. Like a door shutting somewhere else in the building.
I set my palms on the table, steadying the tremor I hate. “But he’s… been kind. And he’s not?—”
“No.” Louder, threaded with something that sounds like it costs him. “Don’t trust him.”
My laugh comes out thinner than I intend. “That’s awkward, considering he’s standing in my kitchen right now.”
The silence after that sentence is a living thing.
Slowly, he turns. “River.”
“Yes?”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying,” I breathe, stepping closer, “that you shouldn’t warn me away from a man who smells like your hoodie and writes in my notebook with your left-handed slant and buys the exact peppermint tea you already stock here.”
He doesn’t move. Just watches me like he’s bracing for impact and praying I hit him straight.
“And when you correct my stance,” I add, another step, “you touch my hipexactlylike he does when he reaches around me at the espresso machine. Same patience. Same heat. Same… everything.”
A muscle jumps in his arms. “Coincidence.”
“Oh?” I tilt my head. “It’s you.”
He flinches. Barely. But I feel it like the room tilts.
“River.”
“Gage,” I say softly, because we’re past pretending and also because my chest is too tight to say anything else.
He shakes his head once, as if he can push denial between us like furniture. “This isn’t safe.”
“You’re right.” I close the last inches of air between us until the hem of his hoodie brushes my stomach. “So stop lying.”
He’s very,verystill. His breathing’s rapid which matches mine.
“Say it,” I whisper.
His throat works. “I can’t.”
“I know.” I lift my hands—slow, careful—and press my fingers to the edge of his mask. “I’ll say it for you.”
He doesn’t stop me.
He doesn’t help, either. He stands there and shakes like restraint is a physical thing and lets me remove the Ghostface mask. There’s a balaclava underneath. He lets me curl the fabric down, past cheekbones I know too well, past the line of a mouth I’ve been dreaming about since the first time he kissed me.
Gage looks back at me.
The room rushes—the sound, the air, my pulse tripping over itself. It’s ridiculous, how fast relief floods in, how right my bones feel. I want to laugh and hit him and kiss him and demand he apologize in every language he knows.
“Hi,” he says, hoarse. No modulator. No mask. Just him.
