Chapter 3.3: Alone

Same night – four separate rooms

Cayde

Cayde sat on the roof outside his room, legs dangling over the edge of the shingles. This was where he always climbed out through the upstairs window whenever he wanted to be alone. He wasn’t running away. He just liked watching things from up here. From this height, everything seemed a bit simpler.

He thought of Roxy. Not her face. Not her body. Her reaction. That brief tensing up. The reflex, the way she crossed her legs. The way she fired back a bit too fast, like she was trying to pull herself back from a ledge.

Cayde slowly smirked. – So, that’s how it is… – he said quietly.

He’d always known he had an effect on women (mostly after Vex pointed it out to him). He never really had to try that hard. The accent, the effortless confidence, that natural closeness that people often mistook for courage. He was used to people wanting something from him. But this wasn’t that.

This was when someone doesn’t want to want you. And that’s exactly why they start reacting. This was when you can make someone lose their balance with just a few sentences, because there’s something working between you.

This was new to him, and if he was honest with himself, he fucking loved it.

It wasn’t sex he was thinking about. It was that moment when you feel the other person buzzing on the same frequency. When you’re not just talking anymore, but actually getting under each other’s skin. Cayde leaned back against the cold roof and let the thought wash over him. Maybe he’d play with this for a bit. Not out of spite. Just because he was curious to see how far it could go.

Maybe it would turn into love.

Maybe just better sex.

Right now, he didn’t really care about either. He just cared that something finally happened in that department that wasn’t average.

The half-smile stayed on his face.

Nova

Nova stood naked in front of her bedroom mirror after her shower. She wasn’t in a rush to get dressed. No real reason. She just couldn’t move on yet. Her skin was still warm, her hair clinging damply to her shoulders. The room was quiet. Too quiet, considering how loud everything felt inside her. She tried to replay that moment from the afternoon. Vexley’s face. The way he looked at her. It wasn’t the words that bothered her. It wasn’t how close he got.

It was how he just stepped into her guarded space, knocked her off balance… and all the while, he looked at her like it was perfectly fine. Like nothing out of the ordinary was happening. Like it was just natural for her – Nova Wrenley – to be the center of the universe.

Like he was saying: Relax. I’m here. I’ll catch you if I have to.

Nova clenched her fists against her thighs.

This wasn’t a manageable situation. If the guy was just hitting on her, if his intentions were clear, she’d know exactly what to do. One night. One decision. A closed story. She’d walked away from plenty of those.

But this was different.

This clown just showed up, trashed the stable order she lived in… and then stayed right there by her side, like it was his job to hold her up if her little world tipped over. Without asking for a damn thing.

Nova slowly scanned her body in the mirror. She was waiting for some clear sign. For excitement or lust to give her a logical explanation. For what she felt to be just some heavy sexual tension. But that wasn’t it.

She just stood there, naked, completely exposed… and realized that this was exactly how she felt when he walked through her walls without thinking, without even trying.

And for the first time, it hit her that maybe the scariest part wasn’t him knocking her off her rock-solid life.

It was that something inside her wanted to believe he was actually there.

That he’d catch her if she needed him to.

Nova stepped away from the mirror in silence, lost in thought.

Vexley

Vexley sat on the edge of his bed, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. The room was draped in semi-darkness, with only the dim, sickly orange glow of a streetlamp filtering through the window. He didn’t bother with the light; the noise inside his head was already louder than anything around him. Over and over, the girl’s face flashed in his mind-not what she had said, but that intangible moment when Nova had simply turned her gaze toward him. Vexley exhaled slowly, then smirked-more in disbelief than out of any real joy.

“Holy shit…” he muttered to himself. “This girl…”

There had been girls in his life before: pretty ones, funny ones, wild ones. But this was different. This wasn’t some typical crush, nor was it a hunter’s instinct to make a move. It was more of a realization, one that made everything inside him suddenly go quiet. It was as if a very old, blurry concept he’d never been able to put into words had suddenly stood before him in flesh and blood.

Nova Wrenley wasn’t just a girl.

Through her, Vexley was suddenly confronted with the very existence of Woman with a capital W-even if he didn’t truly understand what that concept meant yet.

He let out a short laugh and collapsed back onto the bed. “Okay. This is bad.”

He didn’t mean “bad” as in a mistake; it was just that nothing had ever hit him with this kind of elemental force. He didn’t want to “win” her; he didn’t feel the need to prove anything to her. He just knew that when she was near, he started functioning differently: more directly, more clearly, with less of that usual tension. It was liberating… and dangerously terrifying at the same time.

“Fine. I guess this is how it’s gonna be from now on.”

It wasn’t a choice. It was more of an acceptance of something he couldn’t change even if he tried.

Roxy

Roxy lay face down on her bed, her headphones clamped so hard against her ears it almost hurt. The music was a wall of sound, a desperate attempt to drown out the restless, electric hum trapped deep in her bones-a rhythm that wasn’t hers, pulsing stubbornly under her skin. She rolled onto her side, the movement making her T-shirt ride up her waist, leaving a strip of bare skin exposed to the cooling air of the room.

The contrast made her shiver. She became hyper-aware of her own body: the unfamiliar tension in her breasts, and that heavy, warm pull in her groin that seemed to anchor her to the mattress.

– This is fucking ridiculous… – she whispered into the dark, her voice sounding thin and strange.

But it wasn’t. For the first time, she was feeling what it was like when she didn’t call the shots. When the rules she’d lived by simply stopped applying. She wasn’t the one setting the pace anymore; she wasn’t the one drawing the lines. Her own body had gone rogue behind her back, turning on her with zero subtlety, showing her exactly what it wanted.

And exactly who it wanted it from.

She replayed his voice in her head, over and over. His proximity. That suffocating moment where every word he spoke made her feel like she needed to crawl out of her own skin-or perhaps, deeper into it. As if that calm, effortless presence and that damn accent were enough to make her completely come undone. Her body gave a slight, involuntary shiver at the memory. It wasn’t a painful feeling, but it was raw. Sharp. Entirely unfamiliar.

Roxy closed her eyes, clutching the edge of the pillow. She didn’t try to claw back control. She just lay there, letting the realization sink into her marrow:

She thought she was a queen playing with bonfires, lighting them however she liked. Then this guy showed up-and she realized she’d just been fucking around with matches the whole time.