I knew I belonged in New York from the moment I moved into my dorm room at NYU. I found a coffee shop south of Washington Square Park called Bad Beans that I could walk to, and I slept with my window open and learned how to hear the idle sounds of the city as white noise. I adapted, and I ingrained myself here like a tree (if they actually grew here). I loved it so much I went back to school as an excuse to just stay, because for once in my life I had a sense of true belonging.

I know the city is not for everyone, and while I didn't miss my small, one-stoplight town in rural North Dakota, sometimes I did think about a life outside of the city. I thought about a house with a yard, and a dog, and someone I would have coffee with in the morning on our porch.

"Devon?" I tried to recapture his attention as I sat back down at our table in Bad Beans with my iced latte. His gaze had been turned out the window and to the street, where a young dad was consoling his toddler, who'd fallen on the sidewalk.

There was almost something wistful about the way Devon watched them. Maybe it was just the way the light of the quickly setting sun hit him, but he glowed.

But then again, kissing someone made you look at them differently, whether you wanted to admit it or not. You hyper focus on the places you've touched them, and your name in their mouth suddenly sounds like some Pagan incantation, like you may as well have sacrificed yourself to them. How fitting for Devon McCall.

As Devon brought his gaze back to me, steam curling out of the lid of his coffee up and clouding his dark eyes, I wondered if he was looking at me differently too.

Needless to say, Halloween night did not end the way we expected it to. We all had one birthday shot too many, and we spent the remainder of the night on the floor of the bathroom in our hotel room, while Devon alternated between vomiting and apologizing. I poured every ounce of borderline blackout energy I had left into taking care of him, mostly so I didn't suffer the same fate.

We left for New York the next day, dragging ourselves onto the bus one last time - an exhausted, hungover, fitting end to our whirlwind month on the road. We got back to the city late afternoon and went our separate ways at Port Authority without almost a single word to each other - but it didn't feel weird. It was very much a see you later kind of goodbye. At least, that's what I thought. That was Saturday.

It was now Sunday afternoon, and now it felt weird after Devon asked me to meet for coffee. When he averted his gaze again down to his coffee cup, storms of doubt began churning my stomach. I took a long sip of my latte to put something else in my gut besides bad feelings.

"Look, about what happened Halloween..." he began, rubbing the side of his face. I hated that I noticed the faint stubble that had collected on his jaw in just a few days. "We were drunk. I mean, I was drunk, and I..."

I felt myself scooting to the edge of the plastic chair in anticipation.

"I'm sorry. It won't happen again."

I wasn't sure what exactly he was sorry about. Being drunk? Being a sloppy drunk and making me take care of him? Kissing me? Or maybe just all of it.

I thought about saying all of that, but something in me (the people-pleasing gremlin you can never truly kill) grabbed the words out of my throat and yanked them back down. What came out instead was, "Me too."

Evie might have described Devon as an emotional masochist, but I was starting to realize we were more alike than I thought. Only I could hurt myself like this.

He nodded in response, cool and collected in a way I'd come to expect from him. In fact, I didn't know why I expected anything different from him. This was Devon, and no matter how I looked at him didn't change what he was. I knew coming back to New York would be a reality check, but this was a reality slap in the face.

"I mean, you're still technically employed by us, and...we just shouldn't make it complicated. I'm sorry."

There it was again. Sorry. Because once again, he was still Devon.

There was a sour unfortunate truth to his words, but they still sank like an anchor inside my stomach. I didn't know why I'd tricked myself into thinking something might have come of the other night, but the way my heart thumped against my chest when he looked at me told me enough. In hindsight, I should have gotten intimately involved with an axe murder or something, because at least when he killed me he would have made it quick.

I held up my hand to stop him, swallowing the thick lump in my throat before speaking. "It's fine. Really. I understand, and...it's fine."

The only person I was trying to convince was myself. As he ran his tongue along his bottom lip, intrusive thoughts about kissing him again invaded my brain. His glance fluttered between my eyes and my mouth, and I wondered if he was thinking the same.

But then he looked away, and I knew that this was a slow, agonizing death - slow enough that I could have maybe escaped.

"I have to go," I blurted out, scraping my chair back away from the table. I continued before he could respond, "I have a few meetings with Raf this week about a few things, so I'm sure he'll be in touch."

I made sure to put a pointed emphasis on he'll be in touch. As in, you wouldn't hear from me unless necessary. After all, Raf was the one who hired me in the first place. Contractually, I didn't belong to the band - I belonged to him. I was back in reality now, and I had to remind myself of that.

⋆ ★

"What an asshole. I'm disappointed in him."

Lyanna's voice was muffled as she ducked her head down to rummage through one of her desk drawers. I had been back at the office after a month away for roughly 12 minutes before being assailed for details by Lyanna, and needless to say my story's ending caught her off guard. I wish I could have said the same.

"No, this is my fault," I groaned, propping my elbows up on my desk and cupping my cheeks with my hands.

"Only you would think that this emotional feeding frenzy is somehow your fault." When she popped her head back up, she reached over and dropped a few tubes of silver-capped lip gloss on my desk. "Here. Dior lip oil heals all."

I managed a smirk as I uncapped one and swiped the clear gloss over my lips. I couldn't argue with her about that.

"Don't think I didn't pick up on that cannibalism metaphor," I chuckled and shook my head.

"Well that's what he is. He's an emotional cannibal."

I groaned and flopped back into my chair, and the momentum of it rolled me backwards away from my desk. "And yet I fear he'd still look good with me all over his mouth."

I'd rolled backwards just enough so Margaret, who sat behind me, overheard my off-handed cannibal comment.

"Okay, you've clearly spent too much time with the weird metal people. That's gross." She gave me an aggressive sideways glance as I rolled myself back to my desk.

She wasn't wrong. I had spent too much time with them, and look at what it had done to me. I had in fact been emotionally cannibalized.

I heaved out a frustrated sigh. "I think...maybe we were both just tricked into feeling some type of way because we were literally on top of each other for a month and starved for touch."

And sometimes you didn't even know you were starving until you consumed the thing that made you feel whole again. But I didn't say that. Still too cannibal-sounding.

Lyanna barked out an unamused scoff as she clacked away at an email response. "I don't think that's what it is, but what do I know?"

Thankfully, a Webex from Martina pinged on my computer.

HUDSON, MARTINA: Got 10 minutes?

"Martina clearly wants a debrief," I told Lyanna after I responded with a thumbs up.

"Good luck," she smirked at me. "Maybe leave out the whole part about making out with the hot tattooed metal singer though."

I shot her an unamused glare as I pushed away from my desk and walked over to Martina's glass walled office. Butter was snoozing in the bed beside her desk. I was so jealous.

"So, how was it?" She asked with a knowing grin.

Oh god. Did she know? She looked like she knew. No, play it cool.

"Great," I forced a smile. "Really, it was. I learned a lot."

That wasn't a lie. I also learned to not fall for singers because they could put you under spells like sirens and draw you to your death.

"Well that is great, because I heard the same from Raf." Martina leaned back in her cushy desk chair. "And you're understanding of your continued commitment to the role you have with them?"

I gulped before forcing myself to nod. "I am. I'm already helping Raf field several interested parties for appearances. Maddox Madsen wants them as early as next week."

If Martina was at all surprised or impressed, she didn't show it, and I was envious of that level of togetherness. I felt like one more jerk in the wrong direction would unravel me entirely.

"I knew you'd be perfect for this." She offered me a more genuine smile, but for some reason that only made me feel worse.

I wasn't at all perfect for this, because I let things change in a way they shouldn't have, and if she found out, I think she would have been disappointed. I know I was.

⋆ ★

nah come on i wasn't going to make it that easy 😅

sorry she's a shorty but last chapter was obscenely long so i'm still trying to replenish my word stores. alas, now that we are back in new york what are your thoughts and predictions for the rest of the story?