Chapter 135: Contradictory Wishes

Chapter 135: Chapter 135: Contradictory Wishes

Chapter 135: Contradictory Wishes

"That woman said... when she told me you had been taken away, she looked really happy. Was that true?"

Cyrus Calder lowered his attention to Rhea Maddox.

Even through the dim stairwell lighting, the resentment hanging over her was impossible to miss. She had been trying to sell the image of a woman too drunk to sit straight, yet somehow she had held onto this particular grievance all the way to his apartment building.

Cyrus did not answer immediately.

He studied her for a few breaths before speaking in the same level tone he used at the lounge.

"I was not happy about being taken anywhere. Helena needed me to help with something related to work."

Rhea went still for a beat.

Then, with her cheek resting against her folded arms, she mumbled, "But I am one of your customers too, aren’t I?"

"Yes, you are one of my customers."

Rhea lowered her face again.

Behind the drunken act, a small burst of satisfaction slipped through her.

If Helena had only created an opportunity by paying Cyrus for his time, then Rhea could do the same thing.

Money was hardly the obstacle.

Cyrus, meanwhile, understood the performance very differently.

So she liked pretending to be drunk.

That was fine.

If Rhea wanted to play vulnerable, then Cyrus could be a little more considerate than usual. In his imagination, some invisible friendship meter appeared over her head and began climbing with every decent thing he did.

Whether such a meter existed did not matter.

He needed as many reliable people around him as he could get.

Rhea’s attention toward him had never looked particularly friendly, but unless she actually succeeded in turning whatever this was into something else, Cyrus was perfectly willing to file her under friend.

That category was safer.

The rideshare should have been arriving soon.

Cyrus checked the time, then stepped closer and held out one hand.

"Come on. Your car is here."

Rhea lifted her head.

Her unfocused attention settled on the hand in front of her, and she stared at it long enough to make the hesitation look authentic. Eventually, she placed her hand in his.

Cyrus pulled her upright.

Rhea rose smoothly enough.

Then, as though her balance had failed at the exact worst time, she tipped forward and collided with him.

Cyrus caught her automatically.

Their heights were close enough that her face ended near his shoulder. The smell of alcohol reached him first, followed by the faint perfume beneath it.

He recognized another trace under that.

Possession.

So that was what she had been drinking tonight.

Cyrus let her lean against him.

When Rhea showed no intention of standing properly on her own, he adjusted his grip and began guiding her down the stairs one step at a time.

Her weight stayed pressed against his side. With every step, their shoulders and arms brushed, and Cyrus had to compensate for the way she kept drifting toward him.

A sudden wave of heat rolled across his skin.

His brows tightened.

For an instant, it felt as though he had walked past the exhaust of an outdoor heating unit.

Then the warmth disappeared.

Rhea, still leaning against him, opened one eye a fraction.

She had lost control for barely an instant.

He had not noticed, had he?

Relief passed through her, and she closed her eye again.

Being this close made another problem obvious.

He smelled good.

Not the artificial scent of cologne or soap alone. There was something distinctly Cyrus beneath it, clean and faintly cool, the same thing she had noticed every time she stood too close at the lounge.

Cyrus paid no attention to the brief heat.

He had already decided it was probably a stray pocket of warm air in the building.

The softer pressure against his side did not disturb him either.

If anything, it confirmed his suspicion.

Rhea was absolutely pretending.

If she were genuinely drunk enough to collapse this badly, there was no way she would have made it into the building, sat neatly on the stairs, recognized him at once, and remembered exactly what she wanted to ask.

Cyrus kept helping her anyway.

He wanted to see how far she intended to carry the act.

And if his invisible friendship score failed to increase after all this effort, he would consider secretly watering down her next drink.

They reached the entrance as the rideshare pulled up.

Cyrus tried calling her name several times.

"Rhea, your car is waiting. Can you stand on your own?"

No response came.

Her head remained against his shoulder, and her breathing had settled into something that could have passed for sleep.

Cyrus looked at the car.

Then he looked at Rhea.

He could not exactly hand an apparently unconscious woman to a stranger and walk away.

With a quiet sigh, he helped her into the back seat and climbed in after her.

This was all for the friendship score.

His social circle remained heavily tilted toward women, which was not ideal, but at least he had developed practical experience in dealing with them.

Cyrus settled beside the window.

As the car pulled away, he watched his apartment building disappear behind them.

Rhea immediately leaned against him again.

He was not especially concerned.

Only yesterday, he had handled seven people with almost no real injury. If Rhea suddenly decided to stop pretending and attack him, one woman should be manageable.

Unless she had the same absurd physical strength Daphne sometimes displayed.

That would be annoying.

Still, people like that were unusual for a reason. Cyrus refused to believe Grayhaven could somehow place every abnormal woman in the city directly in his path.

Besides, he had more options now.

Even if Rhea turned out to be another rare-blood or something equally troublesome, he was no longer completely helpless.

The thought pulled a small curve from the corner of his mouth.

It appeared and vanished quickly enough that neither Rhea nor the driver noticed.

Cyrus shifted his attention toward the woman resting against him.

Then he lowered his voice.

"Detective Maddox, should I trust you?"

Rhea’s body remained limp.

Cyrus continued, almost as if he were speaking only to himself.

"Although I doubt you trust me very much either."

A faint sigh followed.

The words drifted through the quiet car beneath the steady noise of tires against pavement.

Rhea heard every one of them.

Her thoughts stalled.

There had been something fractured in Cyrus’s voice, something restrained beneath the practical calm he usually carried. It sounded as though there were things he could not explain, burdens he had already decided no one would understand.

Rhea wanted to sit upright immediately.

She wanted to tell him that he really could trust her.

Her desire to protect him had long since stopped being a passing impulse.

At first, his appearance had caught her attention. She could admit that much. There had been thoughts she was not especially proud of, impulses made easier to excuse because she met him through work and could tell herself she was only curious.

That excuse had not lasted.

She truly wanted to protect him now.

She wanted to know who followed him, who frightened him, what he was hiding, why his address needed watching, why a boy his age spoke about memory loss as though losing pieces of himself were an inconvenience he had already accepted.

She wanted to stand between him and whatever had taught him to expect cages.

At the same time, another desire existed beside that one.

Rhea wanted him to stop treating her gently.

The thought was difficult to reconcile with everything else.

She wanted to protect him, yet some private part of her wanted him to be rough with her, to strip away the professional control she wore every day and turn that strength toward her instead.

The two wishes should have contradicted each other badly enough that one disappeared.

Neither did.

Both existed only when the person involved was Cyrus.

That was what made the desire impossible to dismiss.

Rhea stayed against his shoulder, caught between the urge to confess and the need to preserve the drunken performance.

The car continued through Grayhaven.

After a while, Cyrus leaned forward toward the driver.

"When I take her upstairs, could you wait for me? I will need a ride back."

The driver checked him through the mirror.

"That is fine, but try not to take too long."

"I will come back down as soon as I can."

The car stopped outside a high-rise apartment building.

Cyrus helped Rhea out and guided her through the entrance.

He had never brought her home before, but the address had already been entered in her rideshare account. Once inside, the directory and elevator made the rest simple enough.

Her apartment was on the seventeenth floor.

Cyrus supported her while the elevator climbed.

Rhea continued leaning against him without speaking, though by now he was increasingly certain she was awake enough to walk if she wanted.

When the doors opened, he followed the unit numbers until they reached hers.

The door used a fingerprint lock.

Cyrus looked down at Rhea’s hand.

Human technology really was convenient.

He lifted her fingers, pressed the correct one against the scanner, and waited for the lock to release.

A soft click followed.

The door opened.

Cyrus guided her inside.

The apartment was larger than his own and clearly arranged for one person. There were two bedrooms, though one door appeared locked. The other room was obviously hers.

He brought Rhea into the bedroom and helped her onto the bed.

Once she was settled, he pulled the blanket over her.

Rhea kept her eyes closed.

Cyrus stood beside the bed for a few seconds.

Then he left the room.

Rhea heard him moving elsewhere in the apartment but did not open her eyes.

A minute later, footsteps returned.

Cyrus came back carrying a glass of water.

He placed it carefully on the nightstand where she could reach it after waking.

The glass made almost no sound against the surface.

He did not try to wake her again.

He did not search the room.

He did not touch anything unnecessary.

After making sure the blanket stayed in place, Cyrus turned toward the door.

A faint sigh escaped him before he left.

The sound was small enough that most people would have missed it.

Rhea did not.

The bedroom door closed behind him.

Darkness settled over the room.

Several seconds passed.

Then Rhea opened her eyes.

The drunken haze had vanished completely.

She stared toward the closed door, no longer hesitating between the two contradictory things she wanted.

Something in her had finally settled.