Page 72 of Safe Word

Vinnie made some quip about needing a chaperone, but I didn’t hear it.

My hand was already slipping into my coat pocket to pull out my own phone. I opened the Obsidian app. Scarlett’s name was right there, session confirmed via email.

Tonight. 9 p.m.

My fingers hovered over the screen.

I looked up just in time to catch Paula’s hourglass figure slip into the lift – back straight, head held high, walking away as if she wasn’t trembling.

She’d got me curious, now. Maybe I should’ve looked at her past.

Vinnie slid into view with that shit-eating grin of his. Lazy, smug, and far too perceptive.

‘Spill,’ he said. No preamble. Just that.

I glared at him, jaw tensing as I dragged a hand down my face. ‘Spill what?’

His mouth pulled tight, one brow lifting in silent offence as if the answer should have been obvious. ‘Don’t play coy. It doesn’t suit you.’

I exhaled, slowly.

The jazz in the background was too smooth for the critical glance he threw me, but he let the moment marinate in silence anyway.

‘So… you’re seeing Scarlett tonight or not?’

I scoffed and sipped my wine to keep my mouth busy.

Right. Seeing Scarlett. That’s what he meant.

Funny. I thought he’d meant Paula.

As I reclined into the booth, I heard the wood creak under my weight. ‘I am,’ I allowed.

Vinnie gave a low whistle, eyes narrowing – not in judgment, but in that older-brother way of his, as if he could still see the lost thirteen-year-old version of me buried under the layers I’d spent decades building.

‘I’m not one to preach,’ he said, softly but anchored, ‘but I’ll say it anyway – be careful.’

He didn’t need to elaborate. Vinnie had been around long enough to know the patterns. I wasn’t the kind of guy who dabbled. I didn’t toe the edge of a fantasy.

I plunged.

I drowned.

So far it had always been the women that ended it after a second meeting. But Scarlett…

She seemed like the kind of woman that would keep riding that green safe word until the last breath.

My hand tightened around the glass. I spun it slowly to get the feeling back into my fingers, watching the liquid slosh against the crystal.

‘I’m being careful,’ I said.

But the lie floated on my tongue like oil on water, unconvincing and immiscible with the truth.

We’d been testing limits like they couldn’t break – recklessly charging ahead. Rushing never ended well, but knowing that didn’t put the brakes on anything. Not when every second with her felt like borrowed time I couldn’t afford to refuse.

‘I know you,’ Vinnie murmured beneath the saxophone’s lazy bleed. ‘And I know that look. Just remember that she’s a fractured soul behind a painted mask.’

His words weren’t judgment. They were memory. A warning I almost resented.