Page 49 of Ruin Me Gently

But it was the thing that sat underneath it that got to me the most.

Her number.

I already knew it. Had it stored away in the quiet depths of my mind, along with every other detail I’d unearthed in my searches. But she didn’t know that.

Was it a joke? A dig? A test? Was she trying to trap me in my own silence, just to see if I’d break it. Or was it something else entirely—an invitation?

I pressed my thumb against the ink, dragging it slow over the imprint of her writing, like I might be able to feel the answer there.

No instruction. No ‘text me.’ No ‘call me.’

What did she want from me? And more importantly, what did I want from—oh, fuck.

I quickly pulled up the doorbell feed on my phone. And sure enough, there she was, dropping it on her doorstep. I scrubbed forward. No more movement. No more Lilith.

Even in my blackout drunk state, I’d had the sense to cut the feed before doing something even stupider.

Miracles can happen, I guess.

I paced the penthouse from one end to the other, the city glowing beneath me through the floor-to-ceiling windows.

I had no right to call her. No right to be in her life after the way I’d hovered, watching, lingering, inserting myself where I didn’t belong.

And yet, she’d left it for me. That meant something. Didn’t it?

The couch groaned as I dropped onto it, limbs sprawling. I needed a distraction. Something mindless.

The remote clicked under my restless hand, flicking through an endless carousel of nothing—reality TV, breaking news, some slow-moving documentary on coral reefs.

Half a day of keeping myself occupied passed. But the paper sat in my pocket like a live wire, too hot and loud.

I had two choices.

One—pretend it didn’t exist. Forget it, forget her, move on like I should’ve done the second she caught me.

Two—do the thing that I absolutely, definitely, one hundred percent should not do.

The phone was already in my hand.

Stupid. Reckless. A mistake I could still unmake if I just put it down.

Swallowing against the tightness clawing up my throat, I messed with the settings on my phone, then typed out a message that just sat there for ten minutes, staring at me, taunting me.

One last chance to be smart. One last chance to back the hell off.

Before I could think better of it, I hit send.

Me

‘Allow me to introduce myself’ - Goethe, Faust.

I threw the phone onto the coffee table like it was about to blow up, and leaned back into the couch, arms crossed, jaw locked. That wasthe worstthing I could have sent her. Why the hell did I do that?

Idiot. Idiot. Idiot.

I tried to focus on the ceiling, the city lights bleeding through the windows, the way the hum of the fridge filled the silence. None of it helped.

The minutes stretched.

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