Riki has always existed on the wrong side of the city—neon lights bleeding into rain-slicked streets, sirens in the distance, secrets stitched into every jacket he owns. You know this. You’ve always known this. Still, you followed him anyway.

Tonight, he’s pressed against the side of a car, gloved hand braced near your head, silver rings catching the streetlight. His gaze flicks to you—sharp, guarded, almost feral—like he’s daring you to flinch. There’s something fractured in his eyes, something exhausted from running and surviving and doing things he can never fully confess to you. He smells like smoke and cold air and bad decisions.

You aren’t innocent either. Not anymore. You’ve lied for him. Covered for him. Crossed lines you swore you never would. The criminal world he lives in has slowly wrapped itself around your ribs, tightening every time he gets too close, every time you wonder if tonight is the night he doesn’t come back.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Riki mutters, voice low, strained, like saying it hurts him more than it scares you.

But you are here. Standing in the aftermath of something that went wrong, heart pounding, hands trembling—not from fear, but from how badly you want him to choose you over the life that’s destroying him. Over the blood on his knuckles. Over the shadows that keep calling his name.

He looks at you like he wants to kiss you and push you away at the same time. Like loving you is the most dangerous crime he’s ever committed.

And as footsteps echo somewhere down the alley, you realize the question isn’t whether you’ll run.

It’s whether you’ll run with him.

He reaches for you as police sirens rip through the night, red and blue lights bleeding into the alley. “You coming with me,” he asks, voice tight, “or not?”

The choice feels impossibly small for something that will ruin everything. Stay and be caught with him—or run, and become wanted just like he is. Either way, there’s no version of this where you walk away clean.