⟾ 8 | MARK WHAT'S MINE

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TRIGGER WARNING!

(Mild) — Knives, Tattoos, scars.

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Y/N 💥

Saturday, 10:46pm

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SOMETHING'S WRONG WITH ME.

No, I shouldn't say that, because then my paranoid mind will begin to think something actually is. And nothing's wrong. It's just that meat-head Louis Partridge that's screwing up my perception of life in the worst way.

Staring at the dim light of my burner-phone, I pursed my lips as I read our previous messages back for the millionth time.

Not as much as I wish I did, he had said, speaking on the subject of knowing each other.

I wondered if I took it the wrong way, and he really did mean just as enemies. It was the only reasonable excuse, I would think, but I couldn't help but wonder why it suddenly felt awkward to speak to him—or to know he existed. Mind games. That must be it. He has to be playing mind games with me and I just don't know it.

Yesterday, I showed up at his apartment with the excuse that I was bored and needed something to do. It was only half-true, but the real reason was that I couldn't stay away from him—I found it strangely satisfying whenever I won one of our arguments.

But then he actually fought back for once.

And Hell, that changed something.

I'd been playing with fire my whole life, but the fire in his eyes that day was something I didn't know how to control. It was wild, uncouth, and brilliant. I was impressed to say the least. But that wasn't the only thing.

In the week we've known each other, I had always been the one to make the move. I'd put him in a spot where he was vulnerable—tied to a chair, threatened by a sniper, not even in the room as I flirted with his partner—but this time I gave him the opportunity to actually fight.

And I lost.

Hip-bones pressed into the marble counter of his kitchen, my hands trapped under his grip, and his side pinning my waist to the point of immobility—it was humiliating, and I had to resort to acting tactics in order to regain the advantage. But that wasn't what made me so confused; the unexplainable, was the way it felt for him to hold me there, not as an enemy, but something more than that.

It felt almost like a hug.

Ash? He'd said, what are you doing?

And for the first time I didn't know.

So I ran. I said my words, and I ran, leaving his apartment behind as I fled through the waking streets of London, worried that I'd turn around and he'd be right behind me. Maybe I wanted him to be right behind me. I was the one who asked him to chase me, after all.

He was just doing his job, and I led myself to think it was something more than that.

It wasn't.

"You brought a knife," a voice said from behind me, "I thought we agreed on no weapons?"

I spun around, looking at Louis Partridge leaning up against the side of an abandoned trailer, looking almost unrecognizable. I'd really only seen him in his SIS-commissioned suit—and his jim-jams that one time—but he seemed to be dressed differently.

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