Chapter Text
Inej
The campus cafe Inej was having lunch in was quiet when Kaz walked in, limping deeply with a black leather messenger bag slung across his body. He looked like he’d been in a hurry, with his usual black tie loosened and askew and his white shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows. His small, controlled steps were a sure sign he’d spent too much time on his feet. Admittedly, Inej hadn’t known him long, but that much was obvious.
Anticipating his need to sit, Inej began clearing her things off the only other chair at the table. Picking a spot with limited seating and then obstructing that limited seating was her go-to strategy to prevent anyone from approaching her, sitting with her. These days, she found herself making more and more exceptions for Kaz.
Despite all this, he said, “I’m not staying,” as soon as he was within earshot.
Inej looked up at him from her sandwich, blinking. “Oh.”
“I have a—” Kaz’s hesitation was notable for its rarity. “A question for you.”
“Okay,” she said, slowly.
“The psychology department is conducting a new study, and they’re paying participants $200. Jes and I need a new microwave because he left a fork in our old one and it exploded and the landlord would rather die than do his job so—”
This all came out in a big rush. Inej wasn’t even sure she caught all the details. Something about a study and a fork and an explosion.
“I think I missed the question?” she probed. Kaz swallowed. This was odd. Was he nervous? Now Inej was nervous.
“The study requires sets of two people,” Kaz explained, still not looking her in the eye, “and Jes doesn’t have the time—he’s been spending all his free time tutoring that Hendriks kid. I guess it pays well.”
“Just not well enough to afford a new microwave?” Inej slitted her eyes, suspicious. Kaz just shrugged, which did nothing to quell her misgivings. Kaz Brekker was not the “shrug it off” kind of guy, especially when it came to how well jobs paid.
“What’s the catch?” she asked. “What’s in it for me?”
Kaz let out a heavy sigh, dragging a hand along the back of his neck. He was nervous—and it was freaking her out.
“Would you please sit down?” she huffed. “You’re looming, and it’s weird.”
Kaz mumbled something that sounded a lot like “Am not looming,” but obliged her anyway and sank into the chair opposite of her, shifting his messenger bag off his shoulders and letting it drop to the floor.
“The study is,” he spoke delicately once he was settled, with a gloved hand resting on the table’s shiny surface. The other twisted tighter around the top of his cane. “...a romantic couples’ study.”
It was her stomach’s turn to do something weird. For a moment, Inej didn’t know what to say.
“And it pays $200.” Kaz seemed to notice her discomfort immediately and reminded her of the money. Inej wasn’t sure it was actually helpful. “We can split it. And what better way to get that CompSci major off your back.”
“I don’t follow,” Inej said.
Was he blushing? No, that must have been her imagination because Kaz Brekker didn’t blush. And besides, his expression hadn’t changed. His coffee-black eyes were cold and focused as ever.
“If we can fool these busy-body postdocs in the psych department,” he said, “I’ll give you a cut of the $200 and what’s-his-face will hear that you’re taken and leave you alone. Win-win.”
At that, Inej rocked back in her seat a little, hands spread on the table. She’d confided in him about Sawyer the CompSci Major only recently, because they were friends now, she guessed. These last two months, she spent most evenings with Kaz, crafting a catfishing scheme to fool a senior over in the business school into thinking he was dating a swimsuit model who needed money for new headshots. They’d taken his money and broken his heart in less than eight weeks—though she’d felt like he’d deserved a lot worse. He’d been the one to hold the camera while those frat boys had—had—
But Sawyer was a different story. He hadn’t been there the night of The Incident. He’d only heard about what had happened to Inej at that frat party through the news stories, the Twitter arguments. And he seemed to have taken that as an invitation. And then when Inej had asked for space, Sawyer the CompSci Major could only offer the opposite. Lately, he’d taken to flooding her inboxes with reasons why she should date him, why he was the one who could save her. And when she hadn’t responded to him, well. Then he’d gotten rude.
Inej hadn’t said it outloud yet, but lately she thought a lot about how she could make Sawyer the CompSci Major cry. None of those plans had looked like this, though. This was…elaborate. And, Inej couldn’t help but emphasize, it required her to date Kaz Brekker.
“Are you…” she hesitated, but then tried again because she had a right to know, “are you asking me out?”
Now, Kaz did blush and adjusted his grip on his cane.
“Saints, no—” That came out with more vehemence than Inej thought strictly necessary “—I’m saying we should pretend to date. For money. And to bother What’s-His-Face.”
“Sawyer,” Inej reminded him, which—weird—Kaz usually remembered everything. Kaz just made a face like even the sound of the name left a gross taste in his mouth. It made Inej chuckle a little, despite the flips her gut was doing.
“If I do this,” she said, and Kaz lifted his dark brows, “if. What does it entail?”
Kaz gestured to her to wait a moment as he bent to pull something out of the messenger bag on the floor. Then he slid a piece of paper across the table toward her. It was a flier with the words Paid Research Opportunity emblazoned across the top.
“Kaz,” Inej said, skimming its contents, “this says they’re looking for couples that have been together for at least six months and are living together.”
“And how are they going to prove that?” Kaz shrugged. “It’s not like someone from the psych department is going to follow us home or bug our phones. We just have to be convincing enough in their interviews and questionnaires. Have to get our stories straight.”
“How are we going to do that?” Inej fretted, looking over the bulleted list before her that detailed what the study involved. “I don’t know anything about this. I’ve never been in a committed relationship for more than six months, let alone lived with someone.” And a thought dawned on her as she slid a glance toward Kaz over the flier. “Have you?”
Frankly, she knew next to nothing about his past, exes or anything else. And the idea that he might have intimate knowledge of how to appear in love made her feel…weird. Again. She didn’t like it. And she didn’t like that she didn’t like it. This was complicated.
But Kaz’s frown only deepened, defensively, as he held out a hand to take the flier back.
“If you don’t want to do it, I can ask someone else,” he said, roughly. “You were just my first stop.”
Inej didn’t hand the flier back.
“Like who?” As far as she knew from these last two months, Kaz spent all his time with Jesper and with her, and occasionally her roommate, Nina, if properly coerced.
“I’m sure Anika from chem lab would take me up on it,” Kaz said, still holding out a hand for the flier. And Inej liked that even less. Because while she wasn’t entirely sure that Anika was straight, she was sure that, with her side-shaved hair and her flawless cat-eyeliner, Anika was much, much cooler than she was. Kaz Brekker-levels of cool.
“No.” She held the flier tighter and shot him a stubborn glare. “I’ll do it.”
“Are you sure? If it makes you uncomfortable—”
“No, I need the money,” she snapped. She was vaguely aware that $100 did not warrant this level of defensiveness, but here they were.
Kaz nodded and pushed a lock of crow-black hair out of his eyes.
“Cool,” he said, casually. His shoulders seemed less tense. “Are you free tonight? We can fill out the paperwork and make a plan.”
“Sounds good.” Inej was determined to match his casual attitude. This didn’t have to be weird as long as she didn’t make it weird.
Kaz
Fuck, he’d made that so weird.
It required all of Kaz’s self-control to stifle the full-body cringing his limbs wanted to do as he limped away from Inej’s little table and out of the campus cafe.
No doubt she was watching him leave, willing him far, far away from her. No doubt she was cringing, too, as soon as he was out of her sight.
Fuuuuuck. Why had that felt so weird?
Well, if he was being honest with himself, probably because it was a little weird. He hadn’t meant anything by it, Kaz kept telling himself. (Hadn’t he?)
The microwave really had blown up, and they really did need a replacement. As soon as possible. Neither he nor Jesper were at all equipped to actually cook. A diet consisting entirely of reheated takeaways and microwave meals needed a microwave. Kaz wasn’t sure how much longer they could subsist off of beef jerky and cereal.
It was also true that Kaz wouldn’t have looked twice at the flier before Inej. (More and more, he found himself thinking of his life in these terms: before and after Inej). Not that he couldn’t have run the scam with Jesper—the absolute madlad would probably have jumped at the chance—but—Kaz hadn’t thought to. It hadn’t even crossed his mind until he was explaining the study to Inej and suddenly, it’d seemed bizarre to ask her. Of all people. They barely knew each other. He already lived with Jesper.
Fuck.
Guaranteed this was all he’d be able to think about for the rest of the day.
She’d thought he was asking her out… As if she didn’t know his reputation, as if she thought he would ask her out knowing what he knew of what she’d been through. Which, granted, wasn’t a lot—he hadn’t probed for details. It wasn’t his place. Did she really think he’d put her in that kind of position? That he’d violate her trust like that?
He was realizing now he hadn’t fully thought through the implications of asking her or how it would sound. This was why he kept to himself, why he had one—Jesper. Kaz was made for hurting people, not whatever this was. (What had he been thinking?!)
The awkwardness was almost enough to make him want to call her and cancel, but…the microwave. And the thought of choking down endless beef jerky suppers…
And he thought of her face as he’d walked over. The way she’d cleared the chair next to her.
This two pm economics class was promising to be unbearably long if he was going to spend the whole time thinking about the little furrow between her brows.
There was a whole host of things he should have been thinking about. That mid-term paper Caitlyn Evers, a sophomore failing out of her history class, had paid him to write that would cover his gas money for the next two weeks; the Intro to Macroeconomics quiz for his own class in three days; the job Jesper was trying to tell him about on Monday; the background check he needed to run on Wylan Hendriks—which Kaz had discovered after a cursory search was not his real name.
Instead, all Kaz could think of was this job with Inej. This was going to be a problem.
When he got home, Jesper was already there, pacing a hole into the living room rug with one pencil in his mouth and another sticking out of the tight coils of his hair. What looked to be the notes from their sociology class were scattered all over the coffee table, bright coloured post-its marking dates and key words.
Add that to the list: sociology midterm. He was starting to wonder why he’d suggested this plan to Inej in the first place. Of all the ways to make $200—
“You look like shit,” was Jesper’s greeting.
He’d stopped pacing and now stood in the middle of the room, watching Kaz put his bag down by the coat rack. Shrugging out of his jacket and propping his cane up too, Kaz elected to ignore his roommate’s discerning gaze.
Unrelenting, Jesper followed him into the kitchen.
“I spoke to Clayton again, and he’s willing to up the price to $150 dollars for that lab report. Guess he must’ve gotten a bump from his daddy.”
Reaching into the fridge for a beer, Kaz deadpanned, “I believe his father died in a car accident several years ago.”
“His mommy, then.”
“Cold, Jesper. That’s cold.”
Jesper snorted and shrugged. They’d always been flippant about parental death, both of them reinforcing each other’s bad habits. Although Kaz had never told Jesper what happened to his own family, they shared an implicit understanding. They didn’t need to speak the words.
That was probably the kind of thing couples talked about. Family history, traumatic childhood memories, formative years.
Kaz cracked open the beer and leaned back against the counter, trying his best to appear nonchalant.
“Inej’ll be here in like an hour,” he said, before swallowing a few gulps and avoiding Jesper’s quirked eyebrow.
“Do you want me to clear out or…?” Jesper loved filling in the blanks even when there were none to fill. Kaz glared at his insinuating smirk.
“No—we’re prepping for a new job, that’s all,” he said. “I figured out a solution to this situation,” he gestured to the singed remains of the old microwave on their cluttered countertop. “And Inej agreed to help in exchange for a cut of the earnings.”
“Dude, I said I’d pay for that,” Jesper asserted. Kaz only sighed and shot him a look that made Jesper bunch up his lean shoulders. “Eventually,” he added, sheepishly. Jesper did not have the best track record for saving money.
“This will speed things along,” Kaz maintained.
“What’s the job?” Jesper asked. “Maybe I can help?”
Suddenly, the words were stuck in the back of Kaz’s throat. He took a few more gulps of beer, like that would help them along.
“There’s a paid research opportunity through the psych department,” he managed to croak after he finished swallowing. “Some surveys or something. Two hundred dollars.”
Jesper narrowed his eyes, suspiciously. Why was everyone doing that?
“What kind of research?” he wanted to know.
“It’s a study of ah—” Kaz coughed into a gloved hand—he suddenly felt like the beer had tried to go down the wrong pipe, “—romantic couples,” he finished, once he could breathe again.
Now Jesper’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline.
“You asked her out?!”
“No.” Jesus. Why was this happening again? “It’s a con, Jes. It’s eight weeks, an hour once a week, and then we get $200 at the end of it. And then you and I both get to enjoy hot food again. Stop making that face. Jesus Christ.”
“I’ll stop making this face when you stop making that face.”
“What face? This is just my face, Jes—this is what my face does.”
“You look like I just caught you with your mitts in a cookie jar.”
Kaz needed to nip this in the bud. Right fucking now. He set his beer can down on the counter, rather emphatically.
“This ends now. I mean it,” he said. Jesper immediately put his hands up in surrender, but Kaz went on—just for good measure. “She has been through enough. She just needs the money and a decent cover story to get some gross senior to leave her alone. You will fuck this up for all of us if you make her uncomfortable. This is no different than if I’d asked you to run this con with me, so stop. Now.”
“Ok. Chill, man,” Jesper grumbled. “You should have asked me, you know—I feel a little jilted.”
“You and I have enough to worry about with the history mid-term job.” Kaz scrubbed a hand over his face. “And I’m counting on you to make rent this month from the Hendriks tutoring gig.”
“Right.” It was Jesper’s turn to not meet Kaz’s eyes. “Tutoring. Yeah. Definitely doing lots of that.”
That was not at all convincing. Interesting. But as long as the checks kept clearing, Kaz wasn’t going to push the issue on whatever it was Jesper was doing with Wylan Van Eck when they were alone.
Alone. He was going to be spending a lot more time with Inej Ghafa alone—without all the distractions of revenge this time. Kaz picked up the half-empty beer can from the counter and slammed back the rest.
“I should shower before she gets here,” he mumbled, crushing up the can for the recycling. “Don’t say it.” He could practically feel Jesper’s weighted glance at the words.
“I said nothing!” Jesper argued. “Go shower for your super platonic friend. I’ll just be over here being very normal.”
“Oh, my God.” Maybe it was a good time to reconsider this whole human companionship schtick. It was starting to feel like more hassle than it was worth.
Not that Kaz could afford to live alone, even if the thought of it didn’t make him feel brittle inside. Jesper was often too keen to stick his nose where it didn’t belong, but Kaz honestly would miss that walking-talking ADHD case study if he was gone.
He was just going to have to power through this mess he’d created and keep his eyes on the prize. The prize here, of course, being a new microwave. Not spending more time with Inej. Microwave. For leftovers. And ramen. And popcorn, which Inej also liked—she could do that cute thing where she’d toss one in the air and catch it on her tongue. She’d get this huge grin when she did it and—
Fuuuuuuck. He really needed his brain to stop doing that.
The shower would clear his head and hopefully rinse off the day’s cringe worthiness along with it.
One of the few redeemable aspects of the apartment was the water pressure. Water blasted from the shower head at pulverizing speeds, and if Kaz cranked the heat to near-scalding temperatures, it was almost as good as a massage chair. Especially at the end of a day that had required a lot of walking, he could easily lose thirty minutes or more to just standing beneath the searing hot waterfall.
Here again, he switched on the shocking blast of hot water and let the bathroom steam up. Once he’d pulled his shirt over his head and kicked off his pants, he steadied himself and his bad leg with a towel rack he knew he was putting too much trust in and stepped inside the shower stall.
Eyes on the prize. Microwave. For instant oatmeal. And baked potatoes. And those chocolate mug cakes Inej showed them how to make.
Goddamnit.
Look, Kaz wasn’t blind—or at least he wasn’t when he wasn’t accidentally getting soap in his eyes. Inej was gorgeous. And funny. And damn clever. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t noticed her long before that day he finally first spoke to her. If Kaz was the sort to have dating standards (or standards, period), Inej Ghafa ticked all the right boxes. But there were a thousand reasons why it should never be more than admiration from afar.
For one, Kaz could count on one hand the number of people he had ever trusted. Not one of them was alive today. But that’s what relationships were usually built on—right? Trust. From what he could remember, his parents trusted each other, confided in one another.
The thing was, whatever it was in other humans that fueled their trust engines, created that basis for loving, fulfilling relationships with each other—Kaz was all out of it. The events of the last decade had beat it right out of him, trained him to function without it. And from what he could tell, that kind of damage wasn’t reversible nor was it fixable. No matter how gorgeous and funny and damn clever she was, Kaz would never be able to trust Inej—not really, not fully. And she deserved more than that.
She deserved to be with the kind of person who had something real to offer her—someone with a family and friends to introduce her to, that she could share that sunshine smile with. Someone who had real prospects, not a random conglomeration of gigs and jobs of questionable legality. Someone who didn’t need to lie just to buy a new microwave.
At the very least, Inej deserved someone who could hold her hand without suffering an onslaught of waking nightmares at something as simple as a brush of skin. She deserved someone who could hold her when she was sad and kiss away her tears until she smiled again. Kaz couldn’t even if he wanted to. Maybe the boy he’d once been could have—but not who he was now. Not the broken creature he’d become.
This was quickly becoming one of his more self-loathing hot showers. Maybe he needed to quit while he was ahead.
He swiped the water from his eyes with his thumbs, dark lashes sticking together. Despite his best efforts, his head did not feel any clearer. He’d come here to stop thinking about Inej, and it was backfiring horribly.
A blur of images he’d spent the better part of two months deliberately pushing into the far recesses of his mind rose stubbornly to the surface: her long braid and the way little wisps curled around the edges of her forehead; the way she’d softly bite her lower lip when she was thinking; that tantalizing strip of brown skin just below the hem of her shirt that would peak out when she lifted her arms to reach something high…
This was a new and unique kind of agony, being unable to think of anything but her and knowing that, if she knew the truth of him, she would be justifiably horrified. She’d inevitably see reason and get as far away from him as possible. Well, no, first she’d try to fix him—they all did. And when she couldn’t, because no one ever could, she’d be frustrated. And she’d have every right to be–Kaz was nothing if not disappointing. And then, once they’d both suffered enough failure and disappointment and subsequent rage, then she’d get as far away from him as possible–leaving him feeling like a piece of shit, thoroughly and utterly devastated. Again.
And yet, here he was—his thoughts of her self-flagellation of the cruelest kind. With water beading on his skin and running in rivulets down his back, head bowed under the spray, Kaz couldn’t stop thinking of her. That bright, devilish light she’d get in her eyes when she had a new idea, and that laugh of hers. Oh God, her laugh. The real one, not that courtesy chuckle she reserved for keeping people happy. Her real laugh—head thrown back, eyes squished tight—was pure magic. That laugh made him want to…
No. It didn’t matter what he wanted. He couldn’t be what she deserved. He wasn’t fixable. Someday, she would see that. Someday, the right guy would come along, and she’d realize just how much time she was wasting on him, and everything would change. But…
But today was not that day. That wasn’t happening yet. Today, they had this job, and while he would never have her in the true romantic sense, at least for now, they had this. Kaz could make the most of these crumbs—he’d been doing that for as long as he could remember. This could be enough.
The shower faucet gave a sharp squeak when he switched it off. Again, he carefully held the towel rack for balance, stepped onto the bathmat, and reached for a towel. Toweled off his hair, then the rest of him, then wrapped the towel around his waist before switching off the light.
Head still full of her, Kaz padded out into the hall—
And into Inej.
Inej
Whatever Inej had imagined Kaz was hiding beneath all those layers, his usual shirt and jacket and loosened black tie—like a punk rock farce of a businessman—it wasn’t this. Not that she imagined anything, ever.
She was vaguely aware of all her breath leaving her in a rush and Kaz freezing, one hand halfway through his hair. It was damp and freshly mussed and hanging in his eyes. Damp as if he—because he’d just been—Inej took in the scene, eyes flicking from the swell of his bicep to his shoulders to the jet black of his lashes to his bare feet on the linoleum.
Kaz Brekker was standing before her in a towel. In nothing but a towel. A towel slung treacherously low on his narrow hips. By the looks of it, only wishful thinking and some strategic tucking was keeping the thing in place. Above that—above the crisp line of this white towel, Inej’s eyes traced the toned plane of his stomach with its narrow trail of dark hair to his navel, the smattering of hair on his chest and the freckles on his shoulders and the tattoos on his arms (goddamn, he was cool in ways she’d never be cool) and—Sankta Lizabeta, Inej was staring. How long had she been staring?!
Shaking her head, she coughed and looked away, cheeks and ears aflame.
“I’m sorry—I—class got out early and Jesper let me in. I thought—” Her voice sounded suddenly high and breathy. Smooth, Inej. Real smooth. So much for not making this weird. “I’ll wait in the—I’ll be in the kitchen.”
Beating a hasty retreat, Inej heard what might’ve been an okay or an I’ll be—saw what might have been a flush creeping up his neck. It didn’t matter. She was going to wait in the kitchen like a normal person, like a normal person at someone else's house. Rather than skulking around the corridors, bumping into half-naked acquaintances—friends—revenge scheme partners.
Back in the kitchen, Jesper was wearing a shit-eating grin that told her he’d heard everything.
“You!” Inej circled the kitchen counter and swatted his arm. “You knew he was in the shower?”
Unrepentant, he shrugged. “I thought he’d be finished by now.”
“You’re incorrigible.”
That earned her a grin and a wink. “You say that like it’s a bad thing. But, I should have known, Kaz always has taken the most luxurious showers. Maybe this’ll incentivise him to leave some hot water for me in future.”
Inej rolled her eyes, though it was only a token act of annoyance. Jesper was, in the end, one of the best things to come out of this thing—whatever it was—she had with Kaz. A too-sweet tonic, the perfect counterbalance to Kaz’s acerbic wit and candor.
Perhaps as intended, the light in his eyes brought her heart rate back to normal. This didn’t have to get any weirder. Maybe it’d be good to have Jesper there, as a buffer. To keep her from saying or doing anything strange. They were all just friends, hanging out, planning a job. That’s all it was, all it needed to be. Ignoring for the moment the flutter in her belly caused by Kaz in nothing but his towel.
“Can I get you a drink?”
Looking up from the edge of her sleeve, unraveling beneath her nervous fingers, Inej realized Jesper had been trying to get her attention for a while. He was ducked down and watching her, eyes creased with laughter.
“Oh—No, no, I’m okay. Really.”
“There’s no need for all that, Inej. We’ve got tea, coffee, beer, and—in the event you’re feeling really boring—water.”
She huffed a self-deprecating laugh and smiled. “Alright, I’ll take black tea if you’ve got any.”
“Coming right up!”
While Jesper filled the stove-top kettle, Inej hopped up on one of the bar stools across from him. She was a little surprised to see him pull out a container of aromatic, loose leaf tea before spooning some into two mugs. Even across the space, she could smell it: rich spices mingled with an earthiness that was unfamiliar, but comforting nonetheless.
“What kind of tea is that?”
“It’s one we drink at home. Da sends me a box every few months, ‘so I don’t forget where I come from’. As if I could.”
There was something both bitter and wistful about his tone but before Inej could probe any further, Kaz walked in.
Gone were any traces of the dishevelment she’d caught him in mere minutes ago. His hair was still wet but slicked back from his forehead and he was dressed comfortably, effortlessly. In dark chinos and a long-sleeve thermal, he looked as if he was actually quite used to people walking in on him half-naked. Maybe he was, she didn’t know his life. He’d even put on shoes and his customary black gloves, which he was adjusting as he walked. Cool, calm, and collected. All business.
This was actually something she’d appreciated about Kaz from the very beginning. He’d gone to extreme lengths to prove to her, without ever saying it, that they were just friends. That she could trust his intentions, even if those intentions were kind of cold and unfeeling.
Crucially, she believed him. Many men talked a good game, playing the long game to lower her guard, but it felt different with him. Maybe because Inej was kind of cold and unfeeling these days, too. Since The Incident. There was something comforting, safe even, about how standoffish Kaz was.
He’d never touched her—never even tried to. He truly seemed only interested in settling scores. And that was fine, so was she. Really. Truly. It was fine.
To that end, she wasn’t going to think about the tattoo on his bicep as he sat across from her at his kitchen table, nor was she going to think about the way it had moved and flexed with his taut muscles. It had looked like a stylized capital R—why R? What did that stand for? It had to mean a lot to him, to have had it poked into his flesh. A special someone’s initials, perhaps?
Her stomach had no business dropping the way it did at the thought. That was really uncalled for.
It wasn’t like she could ask, either. From the look on Kaz’s face, Inej could already tell they were going to pretend like the run-in outside the bathroom had never happened. Or maybe he really wasn’t bothered at all. Maybe she was the only one still fighting the blush. Which also made little sense—she’d been the fully clothed one. What did she have to feel embarrassed about?
Next to her, someone cleared their throat, and Inej nearly flinched. She felt like she was emerging from a trance as she slid her gaze away from where Kaz had been adjusting his gloves and pushing up his sleeves (she’d never noticed the shape of his forearms before and now was not the time).
Between her and Kaz, Jesper was tableside and holding out a mug of tea to her, pressing back the slyest of smirks, his gray eyes sparkling.
“Thanks,” she managed to say, accepting the tea.
“My pleasure,” Jesper grinned, as he pulled up a chair between them.
When Inej shot a glance in Kaz’s direction, the glare he was leveling at Jesper could have sliced the man in two. She liked that look. No one would dare mess with that look. With that look on her side, she almost felt safe.
Inej, you idiot, nothing about this is safe.
Pretending to be Kaz Brekker’s girlfriend for money was bad enough. Pretending to be Kaz Brekker’s girlfriend for money while harboring genuine feelings for him—danger. Idiot. Stupidest move imaginable.
She couldn’t help recalling the way he’d shut down any suggestion that he was asking her out just that afternoon. Kaz clearly had no interest in her like that. She needed to put the kibosh on these unwelcome feelings, like, yesterday, and do what she needed to do to kick Sawyer the CompSci Major out of her life for good.
She straightened her spine, sitting tall in her chair, and wrapped both hands around the mug in front of her. She was also capable of giving looks no one would mess with.
“Right,” she said, trying to channel Brekker’s businessman’s demeanor. “Let’s get our stories straight.”