Page 86 of Lethal in Pink

I don't reach for a witty exit strategy. I just lean my head against his shoulder.

My temple finds the curve where his collarbone meets his shoulder, and I settle there. He doesn’t stiffen; he just adjusts, his body accommodating mine with the unconscious ease of someone making space without being asked.

We stay like that until the credits roll in white text against a black screen. Tomorrow, he flies to Seoul, and the distance between us becomes measurable in time zones and flight paths.

Tonight, I am exactly where I am supposed to be.

Chapter thirty

Jae

The terminal at LAX at six in the morning looks like every film set about people fleeing places they’d rather burn down than leave. High ceilings, neutral beige, and that specific fluorescent hum designed to make everyone feel half-feverish. The windows along the perimeter catch the gray edge of dawn, washing the polished tile in flat, pale sheets that do nothing to help the collective hangover of the departure lounge.

My shoulder bag digs into the muscle between my neck and collarbone, heavy with the dead weight of vet pharmacology texts I told myself I’d study over winter break in Seoul. Amiyah rolls my carry-on beside me. The wheels hiss over the grout with that low, rhythmic squeak every piece of airport luggage develops after four days of being dragged across campus. The sound follows us like a metronome.

An overhead announcement crackles, tinny and unintelligible—something about a gate change three concourses away. Nobody reacts. Terminal behavior is its own brand of catatonia: the blank-eyed shuffle, the thousand-yard stare into the middle distance, the posture of people who have surrendered to the fact that they are currently nowhere, heading somewhere that won’t feel real for another fourteen hours.

Amiyah walks beside me in a cream dress that hits just above the knee. The fabric is soft and unstructured, draped with the kind of calculated carelessness that means she spent twenty minutes in front of her mirror this morning debating footwear. Her hair is slicked back into a low, tight ponytail secured with a thin pink headband that catches the overhead glare. She smells incredible—that familiar, dangerous hint of warmth clinging to her skin that she only ever breaks out on days that matter.

She doesn’t think I notice. I notice every breath.

“Your luggage organization is truly something to behold,” she says, tipping the handle of my carry-on sideways to inspect the bulging front pocket. “Three weeks in Los Angeles and you packed what looks like the contents of an entire REI.”

“Combat boots are necessary.”

“Combat boots for a trip to your parents’ house?”

“I have standards.”

“You have hoarding tendencies.” She shakes her head, but the corner of her mouth twitches. “And your packing strategy is a disaster. I found one of my missing cardigans balled up right in the middle of your carry-on.”

“That’s circumstantial.”

“It’s cashmere, Jae. You don't accidentally mistake it for a sock.”

I smile, slow and entirely unapologetic, shifting my weight against the luggage handle. “It smelled like you. Seemed like a waste to leave it in Los Angeles.”

Amiyah freezes, a tiny hitch catching in her breath before she narrows her eyes at me. But the flush creeping up the back of her neck gives her away, bright and sudden against the collar of her dress.

“You’re incorrigible,” she mutters, turning back around. But she doesn't drop her shoulders, and the corner of her mouth gives away the exact opposite of annoyance.

We hit the coffee kiosk near the security checkpoint. The line is six deep, all of them clutching boarding passes and staring at their screens with the glazed intensity of people running on fumes. Amiyah surveys the menu above the counter, her expression sliding through a rapid sequence of disgust that lands somewhere between clinical offense and personal betrayal.

“This is criminal,” she mutters, her voice low and sharp. “Ten-fifty for water that’s looked at a coffee bean and gotten scared. That’s daylight robbery.”

“You don’t have to buy it.”

“I’m buying it because the alternative is watching you drink battery acid from a vending machine and then listening to you whine about your stomach for the next fourteen hours.” She steps into line with the grim determination of someone approaching a root canal. “I’m doing this for selfish reasons. Your gastrointestinal distress is tedious.”

I stand right behind her—close enough that the heat radiating off her back cuts straight through the soft jersey of her dress. Her ponytail is so smooth it looks painted on. I track the tiny, near-invisible freckles along the nape of her neck: three on the left, two clustered on the right.

The barista calls her forward. Amiyah orders a large dark roast, no room, and pays with a crisp twenty pulled straight from the sleek leather clutch hanging off her shoulder, waiting for her change. The barista hands over the paper cup and her coins. Amiyah takes one sip, her face collapsing into a look of profound, personal devastation.

“Unacceptable,” she mutters, shoving the cup into my chest. “That’s a hate crime in a paper sleeve.”

I take a sip. It tastes like someone boiled a pencil and strained it through a gym sock. “It’s fine.”

“You’re lying, and I know it because your left eyebrow just did that thing.”