Bound By Fire And Fated By Blood

Chapter Nine

Patterns in the Crowd

Emma

I am not a paranoid woman.

I am, however, an observant one. This is a skill I developed in the foster care system where knowing who was angry and who was lying and who had taken the last of the cereal was the difference between a bad day and a black eye. I learned to read rooms and people and patterns because my safety depended on it and even though I am no longer a child in someone else's house, the skill has not left me. It sits in the back of my brain like a sentry, watching, cataloging, noting what fits and what does not.

And something does not fit.

It has been a week and a half since the gallery and the feeling and the dream and the warmth that has taken up permanent residence in my chest like a tenant who refuses to leave. A week and a half since my life developed a fault line that I cannot locate and cannot repair. And in that week and a half, I have noticed a pattern.

Three men.

The first is Max. He has come back to Brewster's three times since that first morning. Three times in eight days. He sits in my booth, and he talks to me, and he is charming and funny and warm, and I enjoy his company in a way that irritates me because I do not enjoy strangers' company. I enjoy my own company. I enjoy Nora's company. I enjoy Kevin's company because Kevin does not try to sit in my booth and make me laugh. But Max does, and I let him and I do not understand why I let him except that the warmth in my chest pulses when he is near and settles when he sits across from me and that is not a reason. That is a biological malfunction.

The second man I have seen twice. The first time was at the bookstore on Madison. The one with the glasses and the suit and the voice that sounded like it had been polished at an expensive university. Silas. He recommended a book and I told him to come back next week and he did. He came back yesterday, and he asked me if I read it and I had read it, and we argued about it for twenty minutes and I won and he smiled, and it was the first time I had seen him smile, and it changed his entire face and I thought about it on the train home and I should not have thought about it.

The third man I have only seen once. I was walking home from the subway last Tuesday, and he was standing on the sidewalk near my building. He was massive. Not just tall but broad and heavy with muscle, he had black hair and dark eyes and a scar along his jaw and he was standing still on the sidewalk the way a statue stands still, like he had been placed there and was waiting to be moved. I walked past him, and he watched me and I felt the warmth in my chest flare so hard that I stumbled and when I looked back he was gone.

Three men. Three separate encounters. Three locations. All within eight days.

I tell myself it is a coincidence. New York is a big city, but it is also a small city and people cross paths constantly and that is the nature of living in a place where eight million humans are stacked on top of each other like books on a shelf. You see the same faces. You ride the same trains. You walk the same streets. It means nothing.

Except.

Except they look alike. Not identical but similar. The same dark coloring, the same height, the same build, the way they carry themselves like the world is something they own rather than something they move through. Max is golden and Silas is sharp, and the third one is dark, and they are different, but they are the same and I see it and I cannot unsee it.

And except for the way they look at me. Not Max's charm or Silas's intellectual curiosity or the third one's silence. Underneath all of that there is something else. A hunger. An intensity. A focus that is too sharp and too deep for strangers passing in coffee shops and bookstores. They look at me like I am something they have been looking for, and I do not know what to do with that.

I am sitting in Brewster's, and it is Wednesday morning and Max is not here today, and I am simultaneously relieved and disappointed, and the disappointment irritates me more than the relief comforts me. I drink my coffee and review my plans and I cannot focus because my brain is doing what it does, which is building a pattern from the available data and the pattern is this: three men who look alike are appearing in my life with a frequency that defies probability and I feel something when they are near, and I do not know what it means.

I pull out my phone and text Nora.

Me: Can I ask you something weird?

Nora: You once asked me if penguins had knees at 3 AM. Weird is your baseline. Go.

Me: If three men who looked similar started showing up in different places in your life over the course of a week, what would you think?

Nora: Are these men hot?

Me: That is not the point.

Nora: It is partially the point. Are they hot?

Me: That is not relevant to the question.

Nora: Emma. Are. They. Hot???

I stare at my phone and I think about Max's dimple and Silas's eyes and the third man's jaw and I hate that the answer is yes and I hate that Nora knows the answer is yes before I type it.

Me: They are not unattractive.

Nora: So three hot men are showing up in your life and you are texting me about it like it is a problem. Most women would consider this a gift from the universe.

Me: Most women have not read enough true crime.

Nora: You are being dramatic. Maybe they just like the same coffee shop and bookstore you do. New York is crowded. People overlap.

Me: Three men. Same coloring. Same build. Different locations. Over eight days.

A pause. Then three dots. Then Nora's response.

Nora: Okay, that is a little weird. Are you scared?

I think about it. Am I scared? The logical answer is yes. Three unknown men appearing in my life with a pattern that suggests intention should scare me. It should trigger every survival instinct I have. But it does not. The warmth in my chest is not fear. It is something else. Something that feels like recognition and anticipation and the pull of a compass needle toward a direction I cannot name.

Me: No. I should be but I am not. That might be the weirdest part.

Nora: Trust your gut. If you are not scared, maybe it is not a threat. Maybe it is just the universe throwing gorgeous men at you for once instead of crypto bros and fedora guys.

Me: You are not helpful.

Nora: I am extremely helpful. I am also taking you to dinner on Friday because you need to get out of your head and I need to hear more about these three mysterious men who may or may not be stalking you but are definitely hot.

I put my phone down and drink my coffee and think about what Nora said. Trust your gut. My gut says these men are not a threat. My gut says the opposite. My gut says go toward them, not away, and that is the part that scares me because I do not understand it and I do not trust things I do not understand.

I leave Brewster's at eight and walk north toward my office. The morning is crisp and the city is moving around me and I am walking and thinking and I feel it. The pull. Stronger than before, a warm insistent tug in my chest, and I stop in the middle of the sidewalk and look around.

There.

Across the street. Standing outside a building with his hands in his pockets. The third one. The big one. The one with the scar and the dark eyes and the stillness.

He is watching me.

He is not hiding it. He is not pretending to look at his phone or read a sign or talk to someone. He is standing on the other side of Fifth Avenue with his hands in his pockets and he is looking at me and the traffic is moving between us and the city is loud and chaotic and in the middle of all of it there is this. His eyes and my eyes and the warmth in my chest blazing like a bonfire.

I should look away. I should keep walking. I should go to work and forget about three men and a pattern and a feeling I cannot explain.

I do not look away.

He does not look away.

We stand there for five seconds or five minutes and then a bus passes between us and when it clears he is gone. The sidewalk where he stood is empty and there is no trace of him and I am standing on Fifth Avenue with my heart pounding and my palms sweating and the warmth in my chest so bright it feels like it is burning through my ribs.

I get to work ten minutes late and Richard gives me a look and I apologize and sit at my desk and open my laptop and stare at the screen and see nothing except dark eyes on a crowded street.

Something is happening to me. Something I cannot explain and cannot control and cannot put in a box and close the lid. Three men are circling my life and I feel the pull towards them like gravity and I do not know what it means and I do not know where it leads and I am not scared and I should be.

I am not scared and that scares me more than anything.