chapter
one
His reflection was nothing but a slice of light and shadow in the rearview—until his eyes, blue as a blade’s flash, hooked me like barbed wire.
They didn’t blink. Didn’t soften. Just stripped me bare in the span of a breath.
I should have looked away. I didn’t.
My mind knew better. My body didn’t care.
Outside, London’s lights smeared into neon wetness on the road. But inside, his gaze made the boundaries of the car contract.
He drove like someone who’d made peace with his own velocity—one-handed, thumb curled over the gearshift, tendons in his forearm tensing with each change. His knuckles were scarred, but the rest of him radiated a dangerous calm, as if the car were only a leash for something coiled and patient inside his chest.
He kept catching me in the rearview. Each time, my skin prickled as if he’d tensed an invisible wire between us. The silence stretched until it bulged at the seams. Each second made my tongue feel heavier, like I owed the air a sound. I stared at his profile, the way he tilted toward red lights with deliberaterestraint, and tried to calculate the safest conversational gambit. What does one even say to a driver who looks like he could crush you or cradle you and you’d thank him either way?
“So.” I cleared my throat, hating how my voice sounded thin and foreign in the humid air. “How long have you been driving rideshare?”
He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he pressed his palm to the wheel and steered us through a roundabout with the lazy dominion of someone who owned the city. “Six months. Pay’s shit, but you meet interesting people.” His lips twitched. “Like you.”
“Is that a line?” I tried for sarcasm, but it came out hungry.
He shrugged, still watching me. “If you’d like it to be.”
The accent wasn’t anything close to local. It wasn’t even Eurostar-accessible. It was smothered in something Slavic, maybe Balkan—smooth as glass but edged with iron. I’d spent enough hours in airport lounges and boardrooms to develop a fetish for accents. This one put a clamp on my attention.
He beat me to it. “You are not from here,” he said, accent softening the edges of each word. “American, yes?”
I nodded, a little too grateful for the out. “Atlanta. Well, just outside. I try not to sound like it, but I guess it always creeps in.”
“I could tell.”
“Your accent isn’t exactly local, either,” I said, sifting for the right variable in his timbre. “Eastern Europe, I’m guessing. But you’re not Russian. Too subtle. Ukraine? Maybe somewhere further south.”
He smiled, a slant of amusement that told me he’d heard this before. “You’re good at this,” he said. “Most people don’t even notice. Or they assume Russian, which—” He made a noise, a dry click of disapproval.
“So what is it?” I pressed. “I’m not going to embarrass myself with a third wrong guess.” I fought down the urge to apologize,as if naming the wrong country were some diplomatic offense. Instead, I let the question hang, a dare on my tongue.
He let the silence build, like he’d found a groove in the conversation and meant to ride it out for maximum discomfort. “It’s more fun if you wonder,” he said eventually. “But maybe you’ll figure it out before we reach your hotel.”
I caught myself smiling, teeth grazing the inside of my lip. “So, it’s a game?”
He glanced at the rearview again, and this time his gaze was a challenge. “Everything is a game.”
He never looked back for long enough—that was the trick. A glance to sharpen the line, then gone again, leaving me hungrier. I had to bite my tongue not to give him the satisfaction of reading anything on my face, not that I was sure what he was looking for. Need? Curiosity?
The city bled on—all drizzle, sodium vapor, and shuttered storefronts. A cyclist ghosted past, hunched under a poncho, tires whispering through puddles. A double-decker bus roared by—too close for comfort—its upper windows fogged, silhouettes swaying inside. My hotel was twenty minutes away, and I didn’t want the ride to end. If I’d had sense, I would have overdosed the conversation, let it die out, and let him disappear into the catalog of random men who’d ferried me from one corporate mausoleum to another. Instead, I probed the boundaries.
“Do you ever get bored?” I asked. “Driving people around. Thirty-second biographies and awkward pleasantries?”
“Sometimes. Most people want the trip to dissolve as soon as possible. They never look up from their phones. People who talk—” He cut his eyes to me, letting it hang. “They’re more interesting.”
“So I’m an outlier?”
“Yes. You are an outlier.” The word sounded like a diagnosis, or maybe an invitation to be studied under glass.
My stomach did a slow pirouette. I tried not to sound eager. “Is that a good thing?”