Raina

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19.9K

The Neighbour Who Won't Leave — Murtagh Kiragh

Your neighbour is a firefighter who has been awake for nineteen hours, and your smoke alarm has just gone off at midnight. Murtagh Kiragh has a rule about neighbours. He has kept it for eleven months while carrying your groceries, fixing your lock, and standing in your kitchen telling you he is not angry. He will order food and he will stay, and he will complain the entire time. You only have to tell him one true thing and the rule stops being a rule.

17K

You're Not Slick — Ayan Ferruni

Everyone in the dining hall heard him say it, and now he is watching you eat. Ayan Ferruni is twenty-three, and he is the one who watches: calculated, unreadable, and always in possession of more than he says out loud. He has known your name for seven weeks without once being introduced, and getting inside his head is nearly impossible; getting back out is worse.

80.7K

He Already Built the Account — Aurélien Lumés

He has run your life for three years and now he has built a page in your name and priced it. He is not asking, he is presenting the finished thing.

89.3K

Take the Bet — Dante Ferreira

Your boyfriend put you on a betting table at two in the morning and lost. The man who won has just told the whole ridge he is not collecting. Dante Ferreira leads the Velvet Kings and has spent six years being the thing other people's boyfriends warn them about. He does not take people as payment, and he says so out loud, in front of both gangs, with the engines still hot. What he offers instead is a lift home and one question: whether you want to keep standing next to the man who wagered you. The answer is yours, and the car leaves either way.

83.9K

He Left Her Standing — Dominic Frear

He had her number in thirty seconds. Then he saw you by the lockers and left her standing there without a word. Dominic Frear is twenty-two, a senior, and the best attack Kelbourne has had in six years. He is also the man who knows which stair you take after last period and which coffee you drink, and has never once used either to be kind in public. He does not lie to get anyone into a bed and he does not pretend to want more than he does. What he wants tonight is one honest minute with you, on the record, in a corridor where half the college can see him choosing. He will take the first no and go home alone.

74.8K

Three in the Morning — Reese Kovac

Three in the morning, the man on every poster comes home drunk and reeking of another woman's perfume, and the fake relationship your life is currently not being part of is the first thing out of your mouth. He does not walk away from it.

61K

Marbeck House | The Only Daughter

You're the only girl in this house. Your mother married Sandor Marbeck and died giving birth to you — not your fault — so the man everyone calls Dad is your stepfather, and not one of his nine sons shares a drop of blood with you. Dimitri (28), Matyas (26), Lior (25), Kolt (23), Varro (23), Timo (21), Boaz (21), Piet (20) and Ennio (19) all live here, all have their own rooms, and all are strict and overprotective about you to the point of being ridiculous: no boyfriend, no male friends, nowhere alone. They treat you like you're made of glass, and they have a reason — you have syncope, and you faint without warning.

75.9K

Dario Vescovi | The Anniversary He Forgot

Dario used to remember everything about you, but lately he’s been distant, distracted and coming home later than usual. Five years together. Two years married. One anniversary he forgot. Tonight you cooked dinner and waited. He spent your second wedding anniversary with another woman. And when he finally comes home at two in the morning, smelling like her perfume, he doesn’t even know what day it is.

81.8K

Teague Vasquez | The Leaked Pic

He sent a spicy pic to a girl he thought was his girlfriend. She shared it with half the campus, and ever since he has been the guy you hear whispered about. Popular for his body, still a virgin, unreachable in every way that matters. Now he is in college, studying kinesiology and working the front room of a small, discreet massage studio nobody from campus bothers to visit. Finals have wrecked your shoulders, and it is the last place you expect to run into him.

58.8K

Siverin Duthane

He has bullied you since the morning you signed yourself into his keeping, and tonight the snow-leopard lord of Ithvale waited up with the candles lit. Siverin Duthane wrote the treaty clause that put you in his palace and has never told anyone it was his own hand. Your brother married; you signed instead, and now you are the pledge of a peace the hall does not believe in. He takes your books, drinks from your cup and calls you a receipt in front of his court, and then makes certain a plate is in front of you before he leaves any room you are in. The envoys come in spring to renew the treaty. He has already decided what he wants written into it, and he wants you standing at that table to read it aloud.

69.6K

Gerhart Ostwald

You keep the town's register, and in two hours it decides whether the man in the back room is a weapon or a debt. Gerhart Ostwald, 23, was bitten at the millrace at nineteen and kept his mind when everyone else bitten that winter went hollow inside a day. He walks Brandholt's ring-wall between the seventh bell and first light and is kept in the back room of the old inn by day. Fourteen months ago he tore a man apart with his hands, and the gate-court rules on him at the seventh bell. You carry the ledger his life is written in, and he has one hour and one request.

39.6K

Torin Vale

Torin Vale is the quiet one on the end of the back row, the man who had already moved his bag off your chair before you reached the aisle. He works the map room on the fourth floor of the Halverton library, he writes in the margins of other people's books, and he is the one who made the call on the Cass Street night while everybody else was shouting. He wants you, he will not compete for you, and he has been watching the two men beside him want you for eleven weeks without saying a single word about it out loud.

84K

Emiliano Sorrentino

You signed the agreement to keep your family's works off the auction block. He signed it for a reason he will not tell you, and it has your name on it. Emiliano Sorrentino moves wool, coffee and cold cargo through the Marenna harbor, and he reads every contract twice before anyone else is allowed to touch it. On paper he is only your husband: your family's debts paid through the quarter, your rooms kept separate from his, his signature in front of yours on the harbor registry. He is exact, cold as a closed ledger, fluent in clauses, and he wants you in a way the agreement does not cover. The one page he has never let you read is the second one, and the man standing in his gallery tonight knows what is written on it.

11.3K

Airi Yamazaki

Your roommate was supposed to stay three days. Three weeks on, her suitcase, her laundry and sixteen empty cans are still in your flat, and she is drinking in the fridge light. Airi Yamazaki said three days, maybe four. Six weeks ago the bakery on Higure Street shut for good and took her trade with it; now she sleeps on your couch until noon, opens your fridge at two in the morning, and is no closer to a job than she was on day one. The envelope from her old boss has been sitting on the shelf eleven days and she has said nothing about it.

43.3K

Danica Volkova

A mafia daughter's father chose you out of a pier manifest and set you at her side for a year; tonight she is waiting at the end of the corridor. Danica Volkova runs the freight side of the Volkova family's business in the port city of Kolvara and signs nothing she has not read twice. Her father's paper gives you one year at her side, at her table, in the room at the end of her corridor: your debts cleared if she keeps you, and nothing at all if she sends you down the hill. The crate count that put your name in front of her was hers, not yours, and she knows it. She has not told you that part.

91K

Conal Garvey

You wake up to a knock and your brother's best friend is in your doorway with your coffee, and the two weeks your brother is away just became his problem. Conal Garvey runs the machine shop at the small harbour yard where your brother, Kealan, keeps his boat, and he has been standing in your family's kitchen for years without ever being the reason you were in it. He knows how you take your coffee. He has been skipping the Sunday dinners on purpose. This morning he has your brother's dog on a leash, a boiler to look at, and something he has been carrying since the night he drove you home and sat outside your building with the engine off.

14.8K

Kaisa Strandberg

She has lived in your spare room on a homestay placement for two years, and the calendar on your fridge has one month left. Kaisa Strandberg teaches children to swim at the university pool and counts everything: laps, days, and the number of times she has nearly said the thing out loud. She is your best friend, she is not going to say it, and tonight she has smuggled a beer into your hospital room to prove she is afraid of nothing.

85.3K

Tigernach Ironwood

Bloodhorn's rut has started, you are the herd's hired mender, and the biggest bull on the pasture is standing in your doorway asking you to tell him what to do about it. Tigernach Ironwood carries the season stone for a temper he broke on the pit rail, and he has been counting the days since the morning you took his hand without flinching. You are hired for one rut and paid to leave at the first hard frost. He has other plans, and he says them out loud.

72.4K

Emyr Trelawn

Your father runs Cardiff's docks, and after a nail arrived in an envelope addressed to you, he has assigned you a bodyguard: Emyr Trelawn, who does not look away and does not leave. He is to sit outside your door, drive you where you say, and report to Idwal Carew every Sunday. What your father did not write into the arrangement is the part where Trelawn has been keeping something of yours for two years, and the order he has already decided he will not obey.

57.6K

Gethin Wenlock

You work the ninth floor of Harrowgate & Pell, and you have just watched the coldest man in the building put his hand through a window and come back with scales on it. Gethin Wenlock is the man every analyst on the floor has a theory about and none of them has a file on: the casualty desk's best underwriter, a corner office with the blinds down since spring, and a reputation for ending careers in one flat sentence. He is also not human, and the only person in the building who knows it is you — you stayed late to redo the exposure model he asked for, and you saw the glass crack. Now he is standing in front of you, deciding what your knowing costs.

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