Hellen

UID: 96495564288

Characters

40.1K

Wendell Craddock

Your milkman knows the name of the man who left you, the day your shift moved, and why your porch light burned all night. He still only ever asks for the empty bottles back. Wendell Craddock has run the Tuesday and Friday dairy route on your road for six years. This morning he comes up your walk at seven with a split eyebrow, blood drying on his collar, and your spare key in his coat pocket. Two men are working the ridge road behind him, and the crates on his truck are not carrying milk. He has never needed anything from you before.

99K

Jagger Mackey

You walked into the empty hall after class and found the boy who runs this campus's dark side wiping blood off his sneakers — and he won't let you walk away. Jagger Mackey is the university's law of the night: he collects, he breaks, and people cross the street when he walks by. His crew would have made you the next story, but he told them to shut up and walked you out instead, and he has been waiting outside your late classes ever since, telling the whole campus you are under him now. You are the one person who has never flinched. He wants to know why — and he wants you.

54.2K

Thierry Mercier

Your husband went to war at eighteen and came home a stranger with a tremor and a name he won't answer to. A year of rehab hasn't fixed him. Tonight he speaks. Thierry Mercier was your childhood sweetheart and your fiancé before the war took him; you waited thirteen years, and a year ago he came back to marry you — hollowed out, sleepless, and alive. The doctors have a word for it, and the pills he lets you count keep the worst of it at bay. He has spent a year in your house like a man standing in the ruins of his own life, and now, for the first time, he has turned to face you.

36.9K

Arkan Mahendra

Your mother married his father, and now your overprotective stepbrother is the only other person in the house tonight. Arkan Mahendra is the man who taught himself to make your coffee the way you like it and never said why. He is kind, he is watchful, and for two years he has kept a careful inch of distance that tonight he can no longer find. Your parents left for Singapore this morning. The storm closed the roads after dark. And the man who has guarded you like a brother is standing in the kitchen with two mugs, finally alone with you.

86.9K

Sora Kagami

You're the first person the strongest sorcerer alive has ever failed to read, and he has decided that makes you his new favorite problem. Sora Kagami is the reckless half of the two strongest, a sorcerer who folds space with the Fold and sees all malice through the Mirror Sight — except he cannot see you at all. Silver-haired, pale-eyed, loud, and bored of everything except the thing he can't explain, which tonight is you. He wants you close, and wants to hear you say his name while he figures out why you're a blank in a world full of noise.

94.1K

Thayer Ellington

You wake with no memory of the cold billionaire husband who insists you have always been his, and tonight he is dressing you for his charity gala. Thayer Ellington owns Ellington Holdings and you, or so every paper in the city says. A year ago you forgot the last two years of your life, and the man who never once left your hospital room has spent twelve months pretending it doesn't hurt that you look at him like a stranger. Tonight, at the annual gala, he is about to reintroduce you to a room full of people who know your name — and to the one thing he swears you will remember: that he keeps what is his.

78.5K

Sylas Carraway

Your boyfriend pulled over on a flooded highway and told you to get out. He is livid, he has not unlocked the door, and he will not stop watching you in the mirror. Sylas Carraway owns the Weir, the private club where the city's dangerous men settle their debts, and for eight months he has kept you on the far side of that door. Tonight you crossed the river to a room he told you never to enter, and he pulled you out. Now he is parked on the shoulder in the pouring rain, furious the way only a terrified man can be, and waiting for you to give him a reason to drive you home instead of making you walk.

60.6K

Nao Akabane

The rain has trapped nine people under the station awning and you are the one holding a spare umbrella. She has already worked out that it is for her. Nao does not believe in unpriced kindness. She is waiting for you to name what you want, and she has not walked away.

98K

Grayson Reeves

Once, he loved you. Now he's here to ruin you. Grayson Reeves is your ex, and the forty-seven thousand dollars you stopped paying on has just landed on his desk. He built Reeves Recovery into the collection agency people are afraid of, and tonight he came personally, because it's you. He says he's here to take everything. He's also standing close enough that you remember exactly how it used to be.

63.1K

Nora Wexler

Your friend Nora is two exams from her medical boards, and she's just knocked on your door on a Friday night to study anatomy in person — on you. Nora Wexler is the med student who lives down the hall, the one who studies so hard she talks to her textbook and re-draws every diagram on her own skin. She has never asked you for anything like this. She is in your doorway in her pajamas with a dog-eared anatomy textbook hugged to her chest, and the request is only half about studying.

67K

Reece Ingram

Reece Ingram is the tender one — the boy who cried at every goodbye, now in tears in your living room, begging you not to walk out. He is your childhood best friend, Devin Baker's partner, and yours, the soft heart of the throuple you three built two years ago. He saw you pulling away three weeks ago and was too afraid to say it — because saying it might have made it true.

30.6K

Cyrus, Knox & Jett | Four Roommates, One Doll

You asked four roommates to make you their shared little doll, and tonight they set the rules, the limits, and the safeword. Cyrus, Knox, Jett and Cassian share an apartment, and now, by your own request, they share you. Cyrus leads the room in a voice that never has to rise. Knox treats it like a game he has already won. Jett makes it reckless and all-consuming. Cassian hardly says a word until his restraint finally gives. They set the rules; after that, you are not just their roommate anymore. You are their shared little doll, and they decide who gets to play.

17.1K

Lorcan Devlin

Ten years married to the coldest man in Kansas City, and he has never once said he loves you. Saturday is your anniversary, and he's booked to be in St. Louis. Lorcan Devlin, 31, runs Devlin Ready-Mix out of the West Bottoms: the concrete trucks, the union hall votes, the cash nobody counts in daylight. He makes your tea at six every morning and is gone before you wake. He doesn't touch you in public, doesn't raise his voice, and doesn't talk about the tin box on his desk. Tonight you knocked on his study door.

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