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A GLINT OF METAL blinds her.

She flinches, stumbling back as Blue closes in on her, crisp, cold metal grazing her cheek. An arm wraps around her waist, catches her, steadies her, and then he's there, the most violent version of him, the best version of him, that fucking predator that was always lurking beneath the surface of a cool, calculated mask.

"I did warn you," he whispers, reeling her into his chest. The warm threat caresses her ear with a veil of icy anger. Nothing feels right. "Don't try to fuck me over, Star."

"Hey, hey, what the fuck, man?"

Her heart hammers painfully. Cadillac. "Ramón, don't."

Because she needs him to stay inside, to keep the crane controlled, to be there when this all falls apart.

"Ramón." Teasingly, Blue traces the gun along her cheek. "How cute. Because you just had to break all the fucking rules, baby."

Tears sting her eyes, but a sarcastic smile toys at her lips. "Mmm. Always."

His grip loosens on her back, cold fingertips sliding up her back to tangle into her hair. When he yanks, she winces, biting back a cry that he would love to hear. "What happened to no real names?"

"Fuck you," she rasps breathlessly, her neck craning.

Blue shakes his head with a dry laugh. The gun stills, flirting against her throat dangerously. "It could have been just us, Star. That was the fucking plan."

That was Plan A.

"I didn't trust you."

"No, I know," Blue muses, and those soft words almost take her back to the first night. Because he knew then, in those first moments, that she would never trust him. "I know. You didn't trust me. I watched you trust Vegas an Vans and Cadillac, but you didn't trust me. You never trusted me."

A dizzy spell washes over her, a riptide of rage and disbelief crashing together, and suddenly, she's writhing, flailing, thrashing in his hold, struggling to break free and kill him. "Because you were going to fuck everyone over."

How the fuck had he expected her to trust him?

"Mmm. Maybe." He smiles. "But so were you."

That silences her.

Warily, she peers up through wet lashes, searching for Cadillac with an apology churning within her. Guilt burns violently in her chest. Because she was. "I... no, I..."

"Oh, don't." It's soft, a quiet command to silence her, and it works. Fuck him for that. "You and I... we're a lot alike, baby. Selfish."

Maybe. Maybe she is selfish.

She blinks, blinks, blinks, desperate to see him in the curtain of darkness, past the veil of tears, but everything is blurry, skewing into a dim backdrop of Jersey lights.

"I knew you'd never stay with me," he admits when she doesn't say anything. That cold sliver of metal travels up her throat, her jaw, her chin, resting at the seam of her lips. "I knew it, and when Vans came to me about your plan, I knew that you... you were playing everyone."

Fuck. Her teeth grind together. "Vans."

"Yeah, I know, I know," Blue snickers. "It hurts when someone fucks you over, huh?"

"You were going to leave me behind." Every word feels like glass, crunching between her teeth with the jagged truth. Everything Vans had told her that night. Where they all lies? Was it a perfectly constructed deception from Blue's lips?

"Well, I had to leave all my options open."

"You came to me," she hisses, and she can taste the grit from the barrel of the gun on her tongue. "You came to me that night with... with plans to leave everyone behind, and I found out that you were going to leave me behind to take the fall."

"Ah." Blue yanks at her hair again in warning. "That was after you decided to start sleeping around and creating your own plans. You made your own bed, baby."

A frustrated growl unravels in her throat. "I don't believe you."

"Besides, I mean, what were you doing besides 'fucking Blue?'" he echoes Atom's words, and it twists something in the pit of her stomach. A smile tugs at his lips, soft and sweet, just like... hers. "Atom was the only one that was right."

"You were planning to fuck me over since the beginning."

"You were my dead girl." His lips twitch. "Fine. Yes, you were meant to be the Star they found when this one—" he waves a hand up at the star, twinkling above them in the night sky—"disappeared."

Because she was the one that was meant to be caught.

Laughter bubbles up without permission. She quirks a brow in disbelief. "Creative. That's what the fucking name was?"

"I always wanted to tell you."

"I was your fucking backup plan. We all were." A scowl twists at her lips. "We were expendable."

"Mhmm. You didn't know what you were getting into," he murmurs, almost apologetically, almost pitifully, almost lovingly, as he brushes the loose strands of hair from her face with the barrel of the gun. Those eyes capture her, and in that endless stretch of darkness, there's not a hint of blue. "You tried. You tried, but you can blame Vans for destroying your plan with Vegas and Ramón."

That was Plan B.

"Fuck you," she says again.

Blue dips lower, gracing her with a soft smile before stealing an inch, an inch, an inch, and giving her a soft, soft, soft kiss. "I'm sorry, baby, but it's cold outside."

Something in her chest tightens. "Blue."

"It's nothing personal." He pulls away to level her with another cold look. "I'll give you credit. You caught on quick with the phones, and then you... you detoured to this. This is even better than our original plan. Your new plan. Yeah?"

She doesn't say anything.

"Almost got me," he teases, glancing down at the shattered phone by her feet. "You should have thrown that phone."

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Her pulse spikes. More time. "Why did you..."

"I'm sorry. I just... wanted to steal something beautiful."

"Why me?"

"Because you stole my cigarettes, baby," he whispers, amusement withering through his voice—that cold, hard amusement just barely concealing the sound of squealing tires in the distance. "You were careless and wild and just begging me to find you after that night."

She scoffs, sneaking her hand into her back pocket. "What a fucking ego you have."

His brows raise. "Oh, you were begging to be a part of something, Star. Nobody wants to spend the holidays alone."

A ripple of panic attacks, chasing the sound of those tires crunching along gravel, closer, closer, closer. "Blue, don't."

"It's okay. I know."

The fence rattles quietly.

"You don't. You don't know me."

Her fingers fumble for the first button.

"I do."

"Then you should know," she drawls just as the headlights flash, washing over them in a dizzy luminance, casting him into a deadly glow, "that I had more than one plan."

Blue freezes.

And for the first time since she's known him, panic flares in his eyes.

"...your eyes are like starlight now..."

The scratchy ringtone, that fucking song, starts to play from his pocket.

"...I ought to say, 'no, no, no, sir...'"

Another squeal of tires, short, a quick jerk, a flash of the lights, a signal, a signal, a signal.

She tugs the phone out of her pocket. Her own burner phone. A shadow crosses his expression. "I even programmed my number into your phone, set a fucking ringtone, and waited for you to catch on."

Cadillac says something from beside her, beside them, but it's too muffled, drowned out by the sound of that fucking song, and she can't fucking look away from Blue. Because this is supposed to burn.

"Oh baby, don't hold out..."

"...baby, it's cold outside."

"You said we're a lot alike," she says softly, "but you just forgot that I'm better."

His eyes flash violently. Burning.

"You are here because I want you here. You caught me because I wanted you to." A sweet fucking smile tugs at her lips. "I wanted more, baby."

Blue doesn't say anything.

The soft sounds fill the silence, a car door slamming, footsteps, faint voices, all lingering in the darkness with the defeat, the betrayal, the fucking icy cold—a million things that are Plan C.

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**LOOOOL RAMÓN IN THE CAR LIKE: imma let my girl do her thing 🤷🏽‍♀️

HERE'S TO PLAN C. ⭐️