Page 71 of Lethal in Pink

“I’m actually excited to see him tomorrow,” I say into the quiet cabin.

No legal jargon.

No damage control.

Just the plain truth.

Penelope doesn't tease me. She doesn't grab her phone to record it. She just leans over, hooks her arm through mine, and rests her head heavily against my shoulder.

“I know you are,” she murmurs into my sweater. “And for the record? If he doesn't realize how lucky he is to have your attention, I’ll personally ruin his life.”

I snort, resting my cheek against her hair and wrapping my fingers around her forearm. The quiet between us is solid and easy—built over a lifetime of growing up together, cold takeout, and late-night study marathons.

The Tahoe swings into the circular drive of The Obsidian, the black glass tower reflecting the city lights like a dark mirror. We grab our heavy tote bag, step into the quiet lobby, and head for the elevators.

Penelope gets off first at the fourteenth floor, stubbornly slinging the bulging bag of takeout over her shoulder. At door 1402, she turns, leaning her back against the doorframe with a tired, crooked grin.

“I’m keeping the entire bag of leftovers, by the way,” she says, clutching it to her chest like a newborn. “Consider it my finder’s fee for listening to you admit feelings for a man. If you want any of this mapo tofu tomorrow, you’re going to have to bribe me.”

“That birria taco was mine,” I laugh, shaking my head as I pull her into a quick, hard hug. “Goodnight, Pen.”

“Goodnight, loser. Text me when you’re inside.”

She unlocks her door and slips inside, throwing me a quick peace sign before the lock clicks shut.

I take the elevator up to the fifteenth floor, standing in the carpeted hallway for a second, listening to the soft hum of the building’s climate control. Then I swipe my key, step into the pink-hued quiet of my apartment, and look out at the grid of LA lights spreading to the horizon. For the first time all summer, my chest doesn't feel quite so tight.

Chapter twenty-four

Jae

Twenty minutes ago, the extra shot of espresso in my large dark roast from Beaned & Brew’d hit my bloodstream. I can still feel the caffeine climb—warm and sharp, stripping the jet lag out of my head until every single face on this quad stands out in hyper-sharp detail. The sub-bass from a nearby Bluetooth speaker vibrates right through the soles of my shoes. Near the east entrance, a freshman orientation leader smiles through a look of pure, unadulterated despair. The textbook heavy against my hip— Property Law, unopened, smelling like chemical glue—cuts into my side with every step.

I landed at LAX late last night, dragging my bags into the same high-rise apartment my family secured for me last spring. Everything inside was frozen in place: the single coffee mug upside down on the rack, the faint smell of eucalyptus cleaner, a stillness that made it feel like I’d only stepped out for five minutes instead of three months.

My internal clock is still dragging sixteen hours of jet lag behind it, but my final year in vet med doesn't care about time zones. Between forty-plus hours of clinical rotations at the teaching hospital, I somehow talked myself into two extra lecture electives. Property Law was the main one. When Amiyah mentioned her fall schedule during a late-night call two weeks ago, picking it as an elective felt like a no-brainer. It makes genuine sense for the veterinary practice I want to open after graduation—commercial leases, land use, zoning—but if I’m being completely honest, sitting in the same lecture hall on Tuesdays and Thursdays was the real selling point.

Then I clear the limestone archway and look across the grass.

She’s there.

She’s halfway across the quad, slicing through the dense crowd like she owns the pavement. Bubblegum pink tie-front camisole. White wide-leg pants that catch the light and hold it. Sunglasses—aviators, gold frame, pushed up into her blonde hair which is loose today, falling around her shoulders in soft waves that the morning sun turns almost honey at the crown. She’s carrying a leather tote bag in one hand and something in the other I can’t quite make out from this distance.

My feet lock up.

My arm drops to my side, the paper coffee cup dangling from my fingers. The roar of nine hundred people drops out entirely, compressed into a low, meaningless hum.

I spent the whole summer trying to rebuild her from memory. Late-night gaming sessions on Discord, headset calls stretching past two in the morning, random FaceTimes with our phones propped up on stacks of textbooks, her voice floating through my earpiece with that warm, dry clarity—sounding like she was sitting three feet away instead of eight thousand miles across the Pacific. I memorized the cadence of her speech. The sharp, disbelieving way she says get fucked when I do something reckless in-game or send an unhinged text. The quiet laugh that stays trapped in her chest until she’s too genuinely amused to keep it in.

But a headset and a front-facing camera flatten a person. They compress them into sound and pixels—a blue-light ghost in a dark room.

Watching her walk through actual sunlight in three dimensions knocks the breath right out of me. She has weight. She takes up space. The aviators pushed up into her hair are sitting crooked—the left frame noticeably higher than the right.

It’s such a small, human flaw. The version I built over the summer was calibrated to the millimeter—polished, precise, a closed system I could examine from a safe distance without getting burned.

The real Amiyah is walking across a crowded quad with one strap of her tote bag slipping off her shoulder, her sunglasses sitting crooked in her hair—a rare, accidental flaw in an otherwise weaponized defense system. Holy shit, she is stunning, and the sight lands in my chest with a warmth that borders on dangerous.

I am smiling. I can feel how wide it is—completely out of my control. If anyone looks at me right now, they’ll see a guy losing his mind at nine-thirty on a Tuesday morning. I try to pull it back, but my face refuses to cooperate.