His grip is exactly as steady as I thought it would be.
Exactly as warm.
Exactly as dangerous to my remaining sanity.
I follow him out of the beige room toward whatever comes next.
Toward blonde hair and a new name and a life that doesn’t belong to me.
Toward the woman I’ll have to become now that Stevie Reeves is done.
And I’m still thinking about a mobster’s hands and a marshal’s eyes and the way I can’t seem to stop wanting men who represent various flavors of terrible life choices.
The woman I’ll become probably won’t be better at this.
She’ll just have different hair.
Chapter Six
STEVIE
The hallway stretches longer than any hallway has the right to. Kafka-core shit.
Or maybe that’s just me, dragging my feet like a kid on the way to the principal’s office. Except the principal never threatened to bleach my entire identity until I look like a white-collar Barbie trying to enter witness protection from the PTA.
Saul walks beside me. Beside. Not ahead, not behind, not giving me time to spiral alone like a respectful federal agent. No, this sexy beast matches his pace to mine with those long, load-bearing thighs like it’s nothing. Like he’s not a six-foot-tall stress response wrapped in denim and body heat.
I add it to the file I’m building on him. Against my will. For national security reasons. For science.
The room at the end of the hall looks like a government-subsidized kill shelter for self-esteem. One sad chair in front of a mirror. Supplies lined up like scalp-firing squad. No music. No magazines. No sign that joy has ever been allowed to live here.
Just a mirror, a chair, and a woman who looks like she could cut hair, run a black-ops unit, and make the best green bean casserole at your aunt’s funeral.
“You must be Stevie,” she says, voice efficient. Like my name is the box she’s checking before she chemically removes my soul.
I nod because what the fuck else am I gonna do, fight her?
“I’m Patricia. Have a seat.”
The chair is cold and vinyl and vaguely threatening. It squeaks under me like it knows what’s coming. In the mirror, I look like I’ve already been erased in Photoshop. Washed out, colorless, with a face that still thinks maybe we’ll make it out of here with dignity.
Poor thing.
Patricia drapes a cape around my shoulders, black, the same as every salon, at least that’s normal, and snaps it at the back of my neck. Her fingers are quick. Professional. She doesn’t linger.
“We’re going blonde,” she says, more to herself than me, running her hands through my hair to assess it. “Good texture. Healthy. This won’t take as long as some.”
Healthy. Great. My scalp’s thriving while I disassociate.
Saul leans against the wall like a fucking Greek tragedy. Arms folded. Eyes on me. Not ogling, not detached, just... here. Like a promise he made and doesn’t mind keeping. Like he’s built to witness difficult things and not flinch.
I catch his eye in the mirror and forget what my own name is. Which, great. Convenient. Since I’m about to lose it anyway.
Patricia sections my hair like she’s mapping an escape route from my identity. Clips clicking. Fingers deft.
My brain catalogs it all because if I stop thinking about gray hairs on her blouse or her thumb calluses, I’ll start thinking about Saul’s hands on the back of my neck telling me “You’re doing so good” while a woman with bleach in her gloves takes my soul.
She picks up the scissors.
