TOP OF THE ROCK

☆ | 17.0

☆

SHE STOLE HIS CIGARETTES.

Slowly, over the course of three weeks, it had become her signature, an intimate gesture, something that would force Blue to remember her when she was gone. Because every night they wound up in tangled sheets, surrendering to cigarettes after sex, every fucking night, she left him.

Everyone had their weaknesses, and sometimes, as she watched him doze off in a veil of smoke and sex, she imagined that she was his.

Maybe he could mask his weaknesses with perfectly executed plans, meticulously drawn blueprints, and icy cold eyes, but Blue always, always, always left himself open, vulnerable, exposed after they fucked.

Those were the moments, fleeting, fractured moments of cold nights and snowstorms that everything held together by a threat softened. Those moments.

Blue didn't know his enemy. Blue didn't know her.

Because when she was alone with her thoughts, beside him, burning down to the filter of a dwindling cigarette, indulging in his fluttering lashes and soft lips, all his secrets unraveled in the sensual silence. That was his mistake.

Blue didn't understand that there was always a violent collision of elements and atoms, burning and burning and burning, hydrogen converting into helium, an endless cycle of energy, a dangerous promise of nuclear fusion.

Blue didn't fucking understand that stars were alive.

Silently, she slipped the pack of Marlboro Black's into her back pocket and spared a glance at him. Blue was still, so devastatingly still, and something within her beckoned him to wake up and catch her stealing. They'd fight and fuck an—

Rage flickered through her out of nowhere, hot and fast, like a star burning out across the night sky. No. Fuck him. Did he really think that she would lay back and let him fuck her over?

No. Blue didn't know her.

A strange hesitation clogged her throat as she reached for the doorknob, hand hovering on the last step of her stealthy escape. They were all strangers. Did she really know them any better than they knew her? Would they all fall with that simple fact?

Trust between strangers ran thin.

The idea churned low in her gut with an anxious flutter. There would be no consequence if she disappeared, if she took the next bus out of Port Authority to another city. It would be easy to vanish without a trace. It wouldn't be the first time she'd done it.

Maybe New York City had been a useless pit stop. This fucking sleepless city and all the sleepless strangers, insomniacs that chased thrills in intimacy and heartbreak in conversations. It had been a wild ride, and Blue could be the end of the fucking line. Blue was supposed to be.

Her eyes fluttered closed; a deep inhale twisted the doorknob, pushed the door open quietly, and shut it behind her. Something tightened inside of her, anchoring her to the floor, letting her sink against the wooden door, drowning her in the mess of possibilities and risks and thoughts.

There was only a week or so left, and they were too far in, too close, for her to leave now. There was no going back.

When she stepped out onto the icy sidewalk, a wall of frigid air hit her, slammed into her, knocked the breath from her lungs. Wisps of soft snowflakes kissed her cheeks, melting immediately. Stars burned, she told herself silently, stars burned everything around them, and when they finally collapsed and died, they created everything else. They lived on forever—in the galaxy, in the world, in the city, in each and every breath.

Maybe she would too.

A shiver ran down her spine. Shakily, she wrapped her arms around herself and strode forward on the sidewalk, bracing the snowstorm for the possibility of success, for the promise of a perfect plan, for the concept of foreverness.

If they could do this, no one in New York would ever forget December 24th, 2019—the night that the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree went dark. It would be because of p.

They'd agreed to meet somewhere far from their usual dives, nowhere in the trenches of Bushwick and Ridgewood and Bed-Stuy. It's too close, she'd warned, before giving them directions to Baby's All Right. It would be small and seductively secretive—a little dive bar at the edge of Williamsburg. 3 AM.

When she came to the doorway, the bouncer looked her up, down, up again, and then stepped aside with a blank expression to reveal the dimly lit venue. A veil of purple and blue hues washed over the crowd beyond the bar, dressing it up into a sensual scene of smoke and shadows. Indie-pop music vibrated her cold fingertips, snaking through the crowd to draw her in and under a certain spell. Saturday nights at Baby's All Right. There was nothing like it in the city.

Each step brought her closer and closer to the bar, safely tucked at the front, but somehow concealed in a backlit glow, darkened by the flashing lights from the stage and dance floor.

Only glints of hot pink light exposed the edges of silhouettes. Beautiful.

A smile tugged at her lips.

When she slipped into the seat at the corner, that dark corner, the bartender sauntered over. "Drink?"

"Vodka Soda," she said quietly, meeting his gaze strongly. "Three."

And as soon as he pushed them onto the bar in front of them, their hands grazing in an exchange of cold cash, the hazy film fluttering around her broke.

A silhouette danced into the corner of her eye.

"That's it," she rasped to the bartender, eyes flashing, demanding his departure.

Fingers traced along the curved glass teasingly. "Star."

"Why didn't you wait?" she hissed under her breath.

"I'm... impatient."

Fuck, she knew that. "Yeah."

"So... that fight tonight," Atom snickered, sidling up beside her. "That... was hot."

Despite everything, her lips twitched. They'd really gone all out with their fight at the meeting earlier that night. Fuck her for enjoying it. "Yeah, you can be a real bitch."

"Yeah?" another voice chimed with a low laugh. "You're both bitches."

"I regret nothing." She shrugged, tipping the glass to her lips. "Nothing."

"Mmm. What do you have for us, Star?"

Finally, she turned, smiled, and leaned forward to Atom and Claws. "Do you trust me?"

☆

**I'M ALL FOR THE GIRL POWER. 🔥 🔥