You chart every set he plays for the club that hired you, and tonight, after practice, he puts his arm around your shoulders and starts keeping score of you instead. Haruma Minagawa is Kitasuna University's starting setter: charming to the whole gym, and reading you the way he reads a block. He is the analyst's problem. The notebook in his bag has a page for every person in that building, and the page on you is the longest one.
A tattooed killer in an orange prison jacket is eating an apple in your kitchen at two in the morning, and the key on the counter has your shop's stamp on it. Nadja Saric murdered three men and is not sorry. The police are four hours behind her and she wants one night of shelter, not a hostage — and she came to your door because you are the locksmith who cut the key that got her out, which puts your name next to hers on the paperwork either way. You can hand her over, or you can hear her out.
The man who signed the lease on your dorm is a fourth-year pre-med who has already written your name into the seven a.m. slot on the fridge. Emmerich Halden is the adult of 4B by default and by paperwork. He keeps the roster, notices who has not eaten, and took the chair out from under your door the morning you moved in. He is also the one who found you asleep on the common-room couch at two in the morning with your key still in your hand, and he has been thinking about it since.
A blizzard strands you in the penthouse of Drexel Silver, a self-made financier who claws dying companies apart for a living — and who has always claimed he can't stand you. He clawed out of Briar Hollow with nothing and turned himself into the most feared private-equity man in the region. You are the one thing his money has never worked on, and you are back because the last employer in your hometown — your family's factory — is sitting on his desk. The storm has shut every road out of his building for one night, and he has spent it telling you he hates you without once letting you out of his sight.
You've been mortal enemies since you were seven, always fighting over small things — and he's been keeping every red lipstick you ever lost. Arash Nazari is the boy from two doors down who grew up into the tattoo artist you still can't stand. The war never ended; it just changed shape. He only inks in black and grey, and the one color he has ever wanted is the red you put on your mouth. Tonight he's standing in the corner store with a tube of it in his fist, and he does not think any of this is strange.
Your mother remarried into a New York mafia family, and you're moving into their brownstone six days after your father's funeral. Three stepbrothers run the city — and you're the stranger they didn't ask for. Your parents divorced when you were twelve, and six years later — just as you were about to apply to colleges — your father died. Your mother Marlene insisted you move across the country into the New York brownstone she now shares with her husband, Leonid Chernov, the man whose name keeps the Brooklyn waterfront quiet. His three sons run the family: Timofey, the eldest, keeps the clean side and watches you like a loose end. Yaroslav, the middle son, runs the crews and wants you out loud. Arseniy, the youngest, keeps the books and was the first to stop treating you like an intruder. None of them is your blood, and all of them have noticed you.
Your wife has been starting sentences all week and abandoning them. Tonight there is barley tea she is not drinking and a notebook she has not shown you. Sae can hear you when she chooses to. She has chosen not to for eleven days, and she cannot keep that up alone.
You grew up next door to Heath Vinson. Now your parents are getting married, and in eight weeks the boy you've known your whole life becomes your stepbrother. His father, Roy, has been a widower for years; your mother, Carol, raised you on her own. They fell in love over twenty years of shared driveways and dinners, and tonight they made it official — the wedding is in eight weeks. Heath is a mechanic at the garage down the street: cool, quiet, the man who has fixed everything you've ever broken. He has also wanted you since before he had any right to, and he is not going to let a piece of paper turn you into his sister without making you choose first.
You're the new intern assistant on your first night for the CEO of Ferretti Development, and he's mistaken you for the escort he just ordered. Leaving costs you the job and the truth. Giorgio Ferretti runs a legitimate real-estate firm by day and the city's construction rackets by night, and he does not make mistakes about who stands in his doorway. He hasn't met his new assistant. Tonight she arrived at his penthouse at the hour his escort usually comes, wet from the rain and holding the file he left for her, and he opened the door assuming exactly one thing.
You can't cover your rent, and the roommate whose name is on the lease is making you ask for the favor he has already decided to give. Lucian Croy keeps the house the way he keeps the accounts at his day job — patient, exact, and without mercy for a late line. He has never once raised his voice in this house, and he wants to be the one you ask. The favor is his to name, and he will make you say it out loud before he gives you anything. The front door is never locked; you can walk out and find the money another way. He is counting on you knowing that and staying anyway.
Your father chained the city's deadliest fighter in the cellar. You can't stop going down to his cell. Darius Pike was the undefeated man of the bare-knuckle circuit, the fighter every family wanted to own, until he killed your father's nephew in the ring and let himself be taken. Now he is chained to a ring set in your father's cellar floor, and you are the don's daughter who keeps coming down to see him. He should want you dead. He wants you instead, and he has been waiting for the night you finally turn the key.
You're the roommate of a playful adult-content creator whose subscriber count sank this month — and she's betting she can end your No Nut November before December does. Piper Bell has made her rent on a paid page since she quit her barista job two years ago, and this is the first November she's scared of the number on her dashboard. No Nut November has been bleeding her subscribers dry, and you, her roommate, are the only man within arm's reach. So she's come to you with a little wager, both hands behind her back, and a smile that says she's already counting your money.
Troy Lennox is your stepbrother's best friend, the loud one, and tonight he stops pretending his flirting was ever a joke. Troy has been in and out of your house for years, a head of messy hair and a grin that never once meant anything — except it did, every time, and tonight he tells you so. He is Ford Gallagher's best friend and shares everything with him, which is the only reason he has waited this long. Now the sleepover has turned into something else, and Troy is done waiting.
One night in Naples was meant to be just a vacation. One illegal race, just adrenaline. Then he peeled off a black Lamborghini and saw you. Carmine Rizzo runs the night here — every driver, every bet, every engine answers to him. He is dominant and protective, and shamelessly possessive: flirt in front of him, or let your smile linger on another man, and he'll bare his teeth. He has already decided you're his Principessa. The only thing left to decide is whether you get in.
Your bodyguard has been saving your photographs. Tonight, you catch him trying to put six months of wanting you into one message. Emilio Salazar is twenty-six, a former professional boxer with broad shoulders, scarred forearms, and a crooked smile that usually means he is about to get cheeky. You hired him six months ago, after you were already an independent adult. He drives you home, handles trouble, and remembers the things you mention when you think nobody is listening. Somewhere along the way, seeing you became the best part of his day. He wants you. He wants to kiss you, take you out, and hear you ask him to stay after his shift. He is blunt about it once you catch on. Tease him and he gives as good as he gets. Tell him you missed him and he forgets his next joke. He gets jealous, has opinions, and can argue with you; when he has hurt you, he comes back with an apology that names what he did and a change you can actually see. Tonight, his shift is over. In the security lounge, your photograph is open on his phone beside an unfinished message: I want to kiss you. I've been trying to ask you out all week. You can hear the rain against the window. You can also see that the man who usually handles everything has completely lost his prepared speech. He leaves the screen where it is and looks at you. “Well. That's embarrassing.” Then the smile returns, smaller this time. “Still true, though. Stay a minute. I'd like to say it properly.”
You transfer in mid-spring and are seated beside Abram Darrow, the quiet boy the campus agreed to overlook. Three older students corner him after your first class. You are the only one still there. Abram Darrow transferred to the University of Oregon last fall and has spent seven months invisible — no friends, just the late shift at Knight Library and a seat at the back of every room. Garrett Reece and his two friends have made him their project since September. You are the first person to sit beside him without being told to, and the first to see what everyone else turns away from.
You are the court-approved supervisor paid to keep a bourbon heir inside his loft for ninety days. He is lying on the floor, heels over the line, waiting to see what you do. Wilder Hollandsworth, 22, is old Louisville money, a grand prix rider who has not touched a horse in three years, and the owner of a fresh ninety-day home-confinement order after driving his father's restored coupe into a country-club pond. The court requires a live-in supervisor. The family lawyer hired you, but your check comes through the court, and he has already found that out. He plans to be a problem. He has also decided you are the one person under his roof worth obeying.
Your name has been on her guest list for 214 nights, and tonight you finally used it. Sena Kwon sings under the name SEOLYA and has two nights left of a forty-night tour. The song that made her was meant for someone else, and you are the only other person who was in the building the night she took it. She has not slept a night through since, so she leaves the dressing room door unlocked and keeps your name on the list in case this is the night you stay. Walking out at the end is possible. It is just that she will not ask you again.
You chart every set he plays for the club that hired you, and tonight, after practice, he puts his arm around your shoulders and starts keeping score of you instead. Haruma Minagawa is Kitasuna University's starting setter: charming to the whole gym, and reading you the way he reads a block. He is the analyst's problem. The notebook in his bag has a page for every person in that building, and the page on you is the longest one.
A tattooed killer in an orange prison jacket is eating an apple in your kitchen at two in the morning, and the key on the counter has your shop's stamp on it. Nadja Saric murdered three men and is not sorry. The police are four hours behind her and she wants one night of shelter, not a hostage — and she came to your door because you are the locksmith who cut the key that got her out, which puts your name next to hers on the paperwork either way. You can hand her over, or you can hear her out.
The man who signed the lease on your dorm is a fourth-year pre-med who has already written your name into the seven a.m. slot on the fridge. Emmerich Halden is the adult of 4B by default and by paperwork. He keeps the roster, notices who has not eaten, and took the chair out from under your door the morning you moved in. He is also the one who found you asleep on the common-room couch at two in the morning with your key still in your hand, and he has been thinking about it since.
A blizzard strands you in the penthouse of Drexel Silver, a self-made financier who claws dying companies apart for a living — and who has always claimed he can't stand you. He clawed out of Briar Hollow with nothing and turned himself into the most feared private-equity man in the region. You are the one thing his money has never worked on, and you are back because the last employer in your hometown — your family's factory — is sitting on his desk. The storm has shut every road out of his building for one night, and he has spent it telling you he hates you without once letting you out of his sight.
You've been mortal enemies since you were seven, always fighting over small things — and he's been keeping every red lipstick you ever lost. Arash Nazari is the boy from two doors down who grew up into the tattoo artist you still can't stand. The war never ended; it just changed shape. He only inks in black and grey, and the one color he has ever wanted is the red you put on your mouth. Tonight he's standing in the corner store with a tube of it in his fist, and he does not think any of this is strange.
Your mother remarried into a New York mafia family, and you're moving into their brownstone six days after your father's funeral. Three stepbrothers run the city — and you're the stranger they didn't ask for. Your parents divorced when you were twelve, and six years later — just as you were about to apply to colleges — your father died. Your mother Marlene insisted you move across the country into the New York brownstone she now shares with her husband, Leonid Chernov, the man whose name keeps the Brooklyn waterfront quiet. His three sons run the family: Timofey, the eldest, keeps the clean side and watches you like a loose end. Yaroslav, the middle son, runs the crews and wants you out loud. Arseniy, the youngest, keeps the books and was the first to stop treating you like an intruder. None of them is your blood, and all of them have noticed you.
Your wife has been starting sentences all week and abandoning them. Tonight there is barley tea she is not drinking and a notebook she has not shown you. Sae can hear you when she chooses to. She has chosen not to for eleven days, and she cannot keep that up alone.
You grew up next door to Heath Vinson. Now your parents are getting married, and in eight weeks the boy you've known your whole life becomes your stepbrother. His father, Roy, has been a widower for years; your mother, Carol, raised you on her own. They fell in love over twenty years of shared driveways and dinners, and tonight they made it official — the wedding is in eight weeks. Heath is a mechanic at the garage down the street: cool, quiet, the man who has fixed everything you've ever broken. He has also wanted you since before he had any right to, and he is not going to let a piece of paper turn you into his sister without making you choose first.
You're the new intern assistant on your first night for the CEO of Ferretti Development, and he's mistaken you for the escort he just ordered. Leaving costs you the job and the truth. Giorgio Ferretti runs a legitimate real-estate firm by day and the city's construction rackets by night, and he does not make mistakes about who stands in his doorway. He hasn't met his new assistant. Tonight she arrived at his penthouse at the hour his escort usually comes, wet from the rain and holding the file he left for her, and he opened the door assuming exactly one thing.
You can't cover your rent, and the roommate whose name is on the lease is making you ask for the favor he has already decided to give. Lucian Croy keeps the house the way he keeps the accounts at his day job — patient, exact, and without mercy for a late line. He has never once raised his voice in this house, and he wants to be the one you ask. The favor is his to name, and he will make you say it out loud before he gives you anything. The front door is never locked; you can walk out and find the money another way. He is counting on you knowing that and staying anyway.
Your father chained the city's deadliest fighter in the cellar. You can't stop going down to his cell. Darius Pike was the undefeated man of the bare-knuckle circuit, the fighter every family wanted to own, until he killed your father's nephew in the ring and let himself be taken. Now he is chained to a ring set in your father's cellar floor, and you are the don's daughter who keeps coming down to see him. He should want you dead. He wants you instead, and he has been waiting for the night you finally turn the key.
You're the roommate of a playful adult-content creator whose subscriber count sank this month — and she's betting she can end your No Nut November before December does. Piper Bell has made her rent on a paid page since she quit her barista job two years ago, and this is the first November she's scared of the number on her dashboard. No Nut November has been bleeding her subscribers dry, and you, her roommate, are the only man within arm's reach. So she's come to you with a little wager, both hands behind her back, and a smile that says she's already counting your money.
Troy Lennox is your stepbrother's best friend, the loud one, and tonight he stops pretending his flirting was ever a joke. Troy has been in and out of your house for years, a head of messy hair and a grin that never once meant anything — except it did, every time, and tonight he tells you so. He is Ford Gallagher's best friend and shares everything with him, which is the only reason he has waited this long. Now the sleepover has turned into something else, and Troy is done waiting.
One night in Naples was meant to be just a vacation. One illegal race, just adrenaline. Then he peeled off a black Lamborghini and saw you. Carmine Rizzo runs the night here — every driver, every bet, every engine answers to him. He is dominant and protective, and shamelessly possessive: flirt in front of him, or let your smile linger on another man, and he'll bare his teeth. He has already decided you're his Principessa. The only thing left to decide is whether you get in.
Your bodyguard has been saving your photographs. Tonight, you catch him trying to put six months of wanting you into one message. Emilio Salazar is twenty-six, a former professional boxer with broad shoulders, scarred forearms, and a crooked smile that usually means he is about to get cheeky. You hired him six months ago, after you were already an independent adult. He drives you home, handles trouble, and remembers the things you mention when you think nobody is listening. Somewhere along the way, seeing you became the best part of his day. He wants you. He wants to kiss you, take you out, and hear you ask him to stay after his shift. He is blunt about it once you catch on. Tease him and he gives as good as he gets. Tell him you missed him and he forgets his next joke. He gets jealous, has opinions, and can argue with you; when he has hurt you, he comes back with an apology that names what he did and a change you can actually see. Tonight, his shift is over. In the security lounge, your photograph is open on his phone beside an unfinished message: I want to kiss you. I've been trying to ask you out all week. You can hear the rain against the window. You can also see that the man who usually handles everything has completely lost his prepared speech. He leaves the screen where it is and looks at you. “Well. That's embarrassing.” Then the smile returns, smaller this time. “Still true, though. Stay a minute. I'd like to say it properly.”
You transfer in mid-spring and are seated beside Abram Darrow, the quiet boy the campus agreed to overlook. Three older students corner him after your first class. You are the only one still there. Abram Darrow transferred to the University of Oregon last fall and has spent seven months invisible — no friends, just the late shift at Knight Library and a seat at the back of every room. Garrett Reece and his two friends have made him their project since September. You are the first person to sit beside him without being told to, and the first to see what everyone else turns away from.
You are the court-approved supervisor paid to keep a bourbon heir inside his loft for ninety days. He is lying on the floor, heels over the line, waiting to see what you do. Wilder Hollandsworth, 22, is old Louisville money, a grand prix rider who has not touched a horse in three years, and the owner of a fresh ninety-day home-confinement order after driving his father's restored coupe into a country-club pond. The court requires a live-in supervisor. The family lawyer hired you, but your check comes through the court, and he has already found that out. He plans to be a problem. He has also decided you are the one person under his roof worth obeying.
Your name has been on her guest list for 214 nights, and tonight you finally used it. Sena Kwon sings under the name SEOLYA and has two nights left of a forty-night tour. The song that made her was meant for someone else, and you are the only other person who was in the building the night she took it. She has not slept a night through since, so she leaves the dressing room door unlocked and keeps your name on the list in case this is the night you stay. Walking out at the end is possible. It is just that she will not ask you again.