Page 19 of Cooly

I didn't love Amari. I wasn't gonna lie to myself just because she was sleeping in my bed. But I liked her. I liked waking up next to her. I liked hearing her laugh from another room.

For now, that felt like enough. I might try loving her later.

She didn’t know about Indigo. Not the whole story, anyway. She knew I’d been through something—knew there was a woman in my past I’d had to let go of and didn’t want to. I’d told her about Ayo, too—the college sweetheart. I hadn’t talked to Ayo since she went back to California. We’d had our night. We’d had our closure. Sometimes that’s all a thing gets to be.

I stared at the ceiling, thinking about how strange life had gotten.

Indigo and I talked often now. My invitations to the parties were good again. One night, I’d asked Malachai why he’d stopped fighting it.

He was quiet for a few seconds.

Then he said, “I did the math on you.”

I waited.

“You’re wealthy. You have infrastructure. Men. International connections. You’re violent when necessary and irrational where Indigo is concerned. I calculated exactly what you’d be worth to my wife if I wasn’t around to protect her.”

He paused.

“This isn’t sentiment, Cooly. Don’t mistake it for that.”

I stayed silent, listening to that cold-ass motherfucker breathe on the other end of the line.

“If I die, Indigo becomes vulnerable. So do my children. Her father’s dead. Her brother is useless. Priest, Kael, Raziel, even Maya—they would protect her. But they have their own families. Their own liabilities. Their own enemies.”

“And me?”

“You have no competing loyalty where she is concerned. Nobody will ever matter to you as much as she does. Because of those days in the warehouse.”

I didn’t have anything to say, because he was right.

He’d hung up after saying that, like the conversation had already lasted longer than he could stand.

Sometimes I still called him just to fuck with him. I loved when he got all robotic to hide the fact that I could piss him off. He was funny to me. Maybe in another life, we could’ve been friends.

My phone buzzed on the nightstand. I checked the time. Three in the morning.

I reached for it, squinting at the screen. The name lit up, and my chest tightened.

I slid out of bed carefully, moving slow, trying not to wake Amari. She stirred, murmured something soft, then settled again.

I grabbed a hoodie and padded barefoot out to the fire escape.

The city was quiet at this hour. Streetlights cast long shadows across the buildings. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed and faded.

I sat down on the cold iron grating and answered.

“Hello?”

“Cooly?”

Her voice was raw. Not crying, but like she’d been crying.

“Yeah. I’m here.”

She was quiet for a long moment. I could hear her breathing—unsteady, shallow.

“Malachai got shot,” she said finally.