Hunting by desire, Bound by love

Chapter 3

A man sat alone. Not like the Skittish Ones, who looked lonely. This man looked absent. He was a hole in the shape of a person, a silhouette cut out of the fabric of the world and left empty.

A single glass of whiskey sat untouched on the table in front of him. The ice had long since melted, leaving fat, pale slivers floating in the gold liquid. He wasn’t drinking it. He wasn’t looking at his phone screen. He was just staring. His eyes were fixed on the space where the dark wood of the table met the darker wood of the wall, seeing nothing. His shoulders were broad under a simple, well-made gray t-shirt, but they weren’t set with tension; they were slumped in what looked like absolute, total surrender. One hand rested on the table, fingers curled loosely around nothing, utterly, completely still.

He was beautiful, but in a stark, ruined way. Like a grand house after a fire, just the stone frame left standing against the sky. Sharp jaw darkened with stubble. Dark hair that looked like he’d run his hands through it and then forgotten. But it wasn’t his beauty that hooked into Jade’s chest and pulled.

It was his complete and total separation. The laughter, the clinking glasses, the low thrum of music from the jukebox broke against the silent bubble around him and fell away. He was in a room by himself. He was the still, cold center of the noisy, warm world.

Jade’s breath slowed. The tremble in her hands stilled. The drumbeat of The Hunger changed pitch, becoming a low, interested thrum.

He didn’t fit a type.

He was… Type D: The Empty One.

A completely new category. Her mind tried to analyze. High risk. An empty vessel could be filled with anything. Sadness, which was quiet and deep and endless. Rage, which was hot, sudden, and violent. Madness, which was unpredictable and terrifying. You couldn’t know what was in the silence until you tapped the glass, and by then it might be too late.

But the potential reward was high. An empty man would not want to talk. An empty man would have no room for her story, because he was drowning in his own. An empty man would not cling; he would push away, just as she needed to run. He would take what she offered and let her go. He might forget her face before she left the room. He might be perfect.

The Hunger, always a crude and simple beast, seemed to purr in agreement. It liked the solid, clean lines of him. It liked the latent strength in his still, quiet hands. It wanted to pour itself into that emptiness, because that emptiness was the one thing it truly understood.

A civil war broke out inside Jade.

Her logic, the cool, clinical voice of The System, screamed in red-alarm panic. UNKNOWN VARIABLE. NO DATA. NO PROTOCOLS. RISK UNQUANTIFIABLE. ABORT MISSION. CHOOSE THE KNOWN QUANTITY (TYPE A, POLO SHIRT).

But The Hunger was louder. It was a pounding, physical reality. It was a cramp, a heat, a screaming need that made her bones feel thin and brittle. The Type A man by the jukebox suddenly looked flimsy, insubstantial, like a paper cut-out of a man. He looked like someone who would want to kiss her softly afterwards, who would murmur something meaningless, who would want to cuddle. The thought made her skin crawl with a fresh, icy sweat.

The Empty One in the corner looked like someone who could break her in half and not even remember the sound.

And right now, that raw, dangerous honesty felt like the only thing that could match the storm inside her. It felt like the only thing she deserved.

The decision clicked into place. It was cold, clear, and absolute. It felt less like a choice and more like a sentence.

She stood up.

The movement felt final, like the c*****g of a gun. The noise of the bar seemed to fade, muffled, as if she had plunged her head underwater. All the colors blurred except the darkness of the corner booth. All she could feel was the cold sweat gluing her dress to her back and the hot, liquid ache pulsing in her core.

She smoothed the front of her plain black dress. It was a meaningless gesture, a stupid habit. The dress was already smooth. Her hair was already scraped back in its tight, punishing bun. She was a tool, polished and ready for a dangerous job.

She began to walk.

Each step echoed in the vault of her own skull. Her low heels were silent on the scarred floorboards, but she felt the impact travel up her legs, through her spine. She moved past the Type A by the jukebox. He turned, his pleasant face arranging itself into a welcoming smile, thinking she was finally coming to him. She looked right through him, her eyes locked on the corner. His smile died, confusion flickering in his eyes. She was already past him.

She moved through the bar like a knife cutting through smoke. Men’s eyes flicked to her then quickly away. She gave off a signal they understood on a primal level: Do not approach. Do not speak. This is not for you.

The distance to the corner booth seemed to stretch, a vast desert, and then collapse, all at once. Suddenly, she was there, standing at the edge of his table, on the border of his silent country.

The dim light from a distant sconce didn’t reach here. He was still a statue, still staring at that same empty spot on the table, lost in a world of nothing.

She stood beside his table. Her shadow, cast by the light behind her, stretched long and thin. It slid across the scarred wooden surface. It covered his full, untouched glass of whiskey. It crept over his motionless hand, the one curled loosely on the table. Finally, it fell directly across the exact spot on the empty table his eyes were fixed upon, blotting it into darkness.

His eyes moved.

Slowly.

As if it took a tremendous effort to pull them from the void. They traveled up from the shadowed table, over the simple black fabric of her dress, up past her clasped hands, to her face.

His eyes were a dark, storm cloud blue, the color of the ocean at night under a threatening sky. The emptiness in them was total. It wasn't blankness. It was a deep, frozen sea, miles down, where no light ever reached and strange things moved in the pressure. There was no curiosity in them. No interest. No anger. Just a vast, weary, consuming nothing.

Jade’s mouth was dry as dust. The words were a script she had used a hundred times, but they felt foreign now, too small and brittle to be dropped into this deep, dark water.

She opened her mouth. The air felt thick. She prepared to speak. To offer the transaction. There is a private room. Twenty minutes. Your silence for my discretion.

But in the face of that absolute, wounded emptiness, the practiced lines died on her tongue.

No sound came out.

He just looked at her. Not at her body, but at the emptiness he recognized in her own eyes. And in the silent, screaming space between them, under the weight of his hollowed gaze, Jade felt the last shred of her controlled, clinical world tear apart with a sound she alone could hear.