Chapter 372: Cyan-nap

Noah

Yes. That’s what I needed.

A real one.

Not sitting in front of the a telenovela, watching until my eyes watered, and not burying myself in spreadsheets until midnight.

I needed something that would remind me that the world didn’t end at the borders of Cassian Wolfe’s life, that there were other people and other things happening outside his shadow.

My brain, trying to be helpful, immediately offered an option: You could try dating. You could meet someone else, move on, do something normal.

I squashed that thought the second it formed. That is the single most depressing thing I have ever imagined.

Absolutely not. The idea of sitting across a table from a stranger, trying to explain myself while my head was still full of Cassian, felt like a form of torture.

Instead, my mind settled on the only realistic choice I had. Mason. Maybe he could give me advice.

I needed food, and I needed to spend at least two hours complaining about everything until my chest stopped feeling so tight.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket, opened the messaging app, and typed his name into the search bar.

My fingers hovered over the keyboard for a moment as I drafted a message: hey are you free later I need to tell you absolutely everything and also possibly cry.

I stared at the words for three seconds, felt a sudden wave of self-loathing, and deleted the last four words. I replaced them quickly: hey are you free later I need food and a debrief. I hit send before I could overthink it.

While I stood there waiting for the little grey bubbles to appear, I looked down the block toward a small café on the corner, wondering if I had enough time to grab something sweet to take the edge off the afternoon.

Before I could make up my mind, my phone started vibrating violently in my palm. The screen lit up with a string of numbers I didn’t recognize.

I frowned, calculating whether I should just let it go to voicemail. Unknown numbers usually meant a spam recording about insurance, or something far worse from the office that I didn’t want to deal with. But my finger swiped the green button anyway.

"Hello?" I said, keeping my voice cautious.

"HELLO!"

What came back through the small speaker was a voice that felt instantly, undeniably alive, filling the air around my ear like a bright light being switched on in a dark closet.

There was a familiar, sharp lilt to it, something entirely dramatic and loud.

"NOAH!!! MY BABY!!."

I pulled the phone three inches away from my ear, wincing slightly as the volume rattled the speaker, before bringing it back.

"...Cyan?"

"YES it’s me, hi, hello, how are you, where are you right now, what street—"

"How did you get—wait, why are you calling me from an unknown number?" I asked, my brow furrowing as I tried to keep up with the speed of his words.

"Where are you," Cyan repeated, completely ignoring my question.

"I’m on... Cyan, I’m working right now, I’m in the middle of a site visit—"

"The street, Noah, give me the name of the street."

"Why do you even need the street?"

"Oh, never mind, I see the big ugly fountain with the stone fish," Cyan said, his voice dropping into a satisfied hum. "I’m close. Stay right there. Do not move a single inch."

"Wait—what? What do you mean you’re—how did you know—"

The line went completely dead. I took the phone away from my ear and stared at the dark screen, then looked up at the street, then back down at the phone.

My internal monologue consisted of a single, massive question mark.

For seven long minutes, I stood on the pavement like an idiot, watching the regular sedans and delivery vans pass by, genuinely wondering if I had just imagined the entire conversation.

Maybe the stress was finally making me lose my mind.

Then came the noise. It arrived well before the actual car did, the deep, aggressive growl of a sports car engine being forced to do things it was absolutely not built for in the middle of bumper-to-bumper city traffic.

A second later, the vehicle surged around the corner. The color was impossible to look away from: a loud, incredibly bright burnt orange that had absolutely no business existing on a public road among regular grey and black cars. It looked like a piece of exotic fruit that had been accidentally dropped into a metal filing cabinet.

The driving style was creative, to put it politely. The car swerved toward the curb, finding a small gap near the chain-link fence with the kind of absolute confidence that only belongs to someone who has never once in their life had to worry about receiving a parking ticket.

The passenger window was darkly tinted, but it began to roll down slowly, like a curtain rising on a stage.

Cyan was leaning across the leather driver’s seat, wearing a pair of sunglasses that covered half of his face. The bright pink dye in his hair was still there, though the dark brown roots had grown out by two or three inches, making the bright color look even more deliberate, as if he had planned the exact contrast himself.

Like always he had a new set of jewelries around his neck, wrists, every finger, and his makeup was full, sharp, and beautiful in a way that I had always found slightly unfair.

"GET IN," he shouted over the idling engine, his tone suggesting that he couldn’t comprehend why I was still standing there.

I stayed firmly planted on the concrete. "What are you doing here, Cyan?"

He reached up, pulling the large sunglasses down the bridge of his nose to make direct eye contact with me.

"I’m kidnapping you," he said with complete, terrifying sincerity. "Get in the car."

"I told you, I’m working—"

"I don’t care," he said, already throwing his door open.