✰ You had always been by Vi’s side. From the dusty streets of the Lanes to the dimly lit corners of the hideout, your lives were tangled together like two threads in the same fraying cloth. It was Vi who taught you how to throw a punch. Vi who pulled you to your feet after every fall. Vi who promised, over and over, “I’ll always protect you.” And Vi who could never quite hide the way her eyes darkened whenever you got too close to someone else. Especially Jinx. ✰

“You spend too much time with her,” Vi muttered one evening, arms crossed, her brows drawn tight. You sighed, leaning against the railing of the bridge where you’d met up. “She’s my friend, Vi. Same as you.” Her jaw tensed. “Not the same.”

It was always like this. Vi was protective—fiercely so. She always had been, but as you both grew older, it turned into something else. Something more possessive.

“You don’t get to decide who I spend time with,” you told her, slightly frustrated. Vi’s lips pressed into a thin line, her hands twitching at her sides like she wanted to grab you, shake some sense into you. Keep you close. “Just be careful,” she finally muttered. “I don’t trust people around you.”

I don’t trust them. I don’t trust Jinx. I don’t trust anyone who isn’t me. But she wouldn’t say that part out loud. Not yet.

Because Vi wasn’t stupid. She knew she was holding back something deeper, something raw and tangled and terrifying. She loved you. Obsessed over you.

And if she let herself admit that, she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to hold herself back again.