Page 7 of Holiday Interference
My mouth doesn’t.
“Lead the way, Reid.”
Thick, wet flakes swirl sideways across the courtyard, soaking through the air, slicking the pavement, and numbing my bare skin in seconds. The wind cuts hard enough to make my eyes water. I tighten my coat and follow Cal without speaking, heels clicking for two steps before I give up and hiss, “Hold on.”
I duck behind a snow-dusted SUV, unzip my tote, and yank out my emergency flats—plain black, low to the ground, not remotely cute but blessedly practical.
When I straighten, Cal’s standing still, waiting.
“You pack backup shoes?” he asks, voice dry enough to qualify as satire.
“I plan events. And apparently weather crises.”
He lifts one brow. “Anything else in there? Flares? A thermal blanket?”
“Protein bar and pepper spray.”
His mouth twitches. Not a smile. Just enough to feel like warmth under all this cold.
We walk in silence for a few moments. He’s a solid presence beside me—tall, broad-shouldered, hands jammed in his coat pockets.
His strides are long, but he slows for me without making it obvious. Snow crunches underfoot. A light above us flickers, casting gold across his face for a second, then going dark again.
The storm muffles everything. No traffic. No voices. Just the sound of us moving through the middle of a city that feels abandoned.
“I thought rookies all lived in midtown,” I say finally, if only to cut the quiet.
“I wanted to be close to the arena. Quiet building. Good windows.”
“You care about windows?”
He shrugs. “Sunlight helps.”
It’s not what I expected. Not from a guy who showed up at a holiday gala like it was a court summons and looked at the Christmas tree like it had personally wronged him.
“You really don’t like the holidays, huh?”
He’s quiet for a beat.
“I don’t do them,” he says finally. “Never really did.”
I want to ask why. But I don’t.
Because his voice dips on the wordnever, and there’s something too raw there to press into without warning.
I glance at him again—hair damp from snow, jaw tight, eyes forward. He’s a quiet one. A still water kind of guy.
But there’s something underneath. Something heavy.
“You don’t have to fake it for me,” I say softly.
He looks over, eyes catching mine in the dark.
“I wasn’t.”
My breath hitches.
I look away first as the Venom Lofts come into view.
