Ashes & Roses

Chapter 17

Carsin Saint Clair

‘Sin'🖤🩸

I saw her before she saw me. She came out of the performance hall the way some people left churches quiet, careful, like the air outside might break if she took up too much of it. Notebook flat against her chest. Bag on one shoulder, the strap already cutting a thin line into the fabric of her top. The stream of students carried her. She didn't fight it. Head a little down. Curls moving when she walked. A guy on his phone hit her hard enough that her shoulder took the wall. She put her free hand out, fingers spread, caught herself. The notebook slipped an inch. She fixed it.

"Sorry," She said. Soft. Almost under the noise. He never turned around, or even acknowledged her presence as if he walked into a ghost. I stayed by the pillar and watched her put herself back together. One roll of the shoulders. Strap adjusted. No glare. No muttered asshole. Nothing. That was the first thing that sat wrong. Not the apology, people apologized for worse. The absence of heat. Like being knocked into a wall was just weather. I let half a building open between us and went after her.

Afternoon light laid long bars across the walk. She went into the next building. I stayed outside against brick that still held the day's heat, counted minutes by the way the shadow of a tree crept over my boots. When she came out she had a thicker notebook, spiral, and she was already writing with her left hand while she walked. I watched the pen. Quick. Sure. Wrist soft. Thumb pressed to the plastic. A few yards later she stopped at a bulletin board, pinned the notebook to her stomach with her forearm so the paper wouldn't tear, and put the pen in her right hand without looking at it.

Right hand.

She wrote under a flyer. Frowned at the line like the ink had done something personal. Switched back to the left. No pause. No thought. Fluid the way breathing is fluid when you aren't thinking about breathing. I slowed down. She capped the pen with her teeth mouth open, pink lips full, and shoved it behind her ear. One curl had stuck to the damp skin at her temple. Campus thickened with large groups and too much laughter. People calling across corridors like the place had been built for their voices. No one fell in beside her. No one lifted a hand. That was the second thing. All morning she was alone, not the lonely kind that performed itself. The kind that had gotten used to the shape of empty space. At the next door she held it for the people behind her. Handle in her palm. Weight shifted so it wouldn't close on the last girl.

"Thank you," the girl said, already turning.

Wynter's mouth did that soft thing. Almost a dimple.

"Of course." She went in last. I caught the door before it shut and let the air conditioning hit my face. She never looked back, I watched the bounce of her curls, the quiet line of her concentration, the way the thin skirt moved when she walked. Someone came around a corner too fast and nearly took her out.

"Oh—sorry," she said, already angling away and the girl blinked.

"You're fine."

Wynter nodded, still apologizing with her eyes.

"Yeah. Sorry."

Twice. For nearly being walked into.

The muscle in my jaw jumped once. This was not the girl from the pool. Or maybe she was, and the blue dress and the thrown drink had been the exception, not the rule. That night she had still stood in a room full of noise. Still put a cup in Zaelen's face and left without checking if anyone was coming after her. The girl three steps ahead of me looked like she would apologize to furniture. Some rooms I couldn't enter without becoming a problem. I waited outside those. Counted time by light on concrete. Others were big enough that a man in a hoodie in the back row was just another body. I snuck into a lecture hall. Tiered seats. The particular dead smell of old carpet and dry-erase markers. I slid in late enough that the professor had already started and no one cared who I was. Found a seat two-thirds of the way up, far left, where the fluorescent lights turned the front of the room into a soft wash of heads and laptops. She was lower down. Third row from the front. Center-left. From here she was dark hair and the pale edge of a cheek and the small, continuous motion of a hand. I stopped looking at the board and looked at that hand. Left. Notes in a tight script I couldn't read at this distance. Then, without lifting her head, she shifted the pen and the same line continued on the right. A pause when the professor asked something. A few shoulders went up around her. Hers didn't. She wrote anyway, pressure a little harder I could see it in the way her forearm tensed and the pen stayed in her right until the question moved on. Then left again. Like the choice lived somewhere below thought. Someone in her row whispered. She tilted her head toward them, listened,nodded once and went back to the page. When she was still, she wasn't still. The ring on her finger turned. Slow. Around and back. Metal warming under her skin. She only stopped when the professor's voice sharpened and the room had to answer.

I sat through the rest of it with my coffee gone cold in my hand and the reason I was here sitting two dozen seats away, writing in two hands like it was nothing, and giving me nothing I could use. No meeting. No handoff, no indication of the money. Just a girl in a big room who took notes like the words might save her and apologized to strangers in hallways. When class broke I stayed seated until she was in the aisle. Then I stood and let the crowd put distance between us again. By the time she reached the dorm I had half a day on her and almost nothing to show for it. She took the stairs. I waited on the landing below, concrete cold through my jeans, and listened to her steps thin out above me. A door. A quiet close. I went up. Hallway smelled like detergent and something sweet under it vanilla, or whatever she put on her skin. I looked at the number on the door and reached for the handle.

Locked.

I let my hand fall. Five hundred thousand dollars did not vanish because a freshman had a red bag and a last name. Proof needed more than initials on a shoe. I took the wall across from her door, arms folded, and stayed there. The door opened almost an hour later. I straightened with a slight groan, the day started to catch up with me and I had nothing to show for it. She had changed. Pink. Soft top tucked into a short white skirt that hit high on her thighs; under the hallway lights the fabric went nearly sheer where it pulled across her hips. Gold at her ears. Hair brushed out, curls looser, falling around the line of her collarbones. Laptop held to her chest. Two pink notebooks under it. A rose-shaped pen clipped to the top spiral, metal petals catching every flicker of fluorescent. She locked the door. Tested the handle. Locked it again. A small, exact ritual. Something low in my stomach pulled tight and did not let go. She started down the hall. Soft clicks of her shoes on linoleum. I gave her the length of the corridor and followed.

Outside the sun was dropping behind the buildings, sky gone the color of a bruise at the edges. Air cooler. Cut grass. A thin metallic edge that meant evening. She walked towards the cafe on the edge of campus. She kept her head down and avoided contact with anyone on the same path. When she finally arrived at the cafe, I went in after her after a few moments and took a table near the door where I could keep the room without sitting close enough to be a conversation. Espresso. Warm sugar. She didn't scan. Didn't check her phone every thirty seconds. She ordered, thanked the counter with that same soft smile, and carried her study materials to a table she chose that sat in the corner right beside a window.

I had spent hours on the way her throat moved when she swallowed, the set of her mouth when she wrote, the quiet press of her thighs against a chair, and I still did not know if the money was even in her possession. I spent the whole day following a timid ballerina who's scared of her own shadow. My jaw clenched as I stood up from my seat and headed to the front door.

"Order for Wynter."

I stopped, my hand had already gripped the handle but I was frozen in place.

Wynter.

I looked back and the girl at the window table lifted her head, she quietly made her way up to the counter and my eyes followed her as she retrieved her drink and pastries.

Wynter.

The name slid into the space that had been waiting for it since Bennett said Monroe in a hallway and a pair of shoes in my office said W.R.M. The parties. The pool. The drink in Zaelen's face. The bag. The face I had been following all day without the first half of the key. I looked at the rose pen beside her laptop. At the soft shape of her mouth when she reached for the cup. At the strip of skin that showed above the waistband of the skirt when she leaned in.

Well, f**k me.

I went back to the counter without taking my eyes off her.

"Black coffee."

The barista nodded. I paid. Heat climbed into my fingers through the cup. I took the table behind her close enough to see the slow rise and fall of her shoulders, far enough that she still didn't know she had a shadow that wasn't her own. For the first time since morning, I was sure I had the right girl. And for the first time, the week Zaelen had given me had a name attached to it.

Wynter Rose Monroe.