Chapter 98 JUNIPER

Chapter 98 JUNIPER
Someone in the back seat was talking. Two someones. Katy and Piper. My people. My emergency contacts. My personal security detail.

They sounded serious. Possibly angry. Possibly at Knoxy. I should probably defend him. Or interrogate him. Or both.

I tried to lift my head and immediately regretted it.

The car did a little spin that I was fairly certain was not road-related. I let my cheek stay where it was.

“You make a very good pillow,” I informed him. “Too handsome for a pillow, probably, but I’m willing to overlook it.”

A low voice answered from somewhere above me. "Go back to sleep, Speckles."

"Can't." I squinted at the dashboard lights, deeply offended by their existence. "I have a job now. Did you know that? I'm a professional dancer. With fans. Actual fans, Knoxy, not the ones you buy off the internet."

"That was not dancing," Katy said flatly from the back seat. "I watched the whole thing. That was closer to a medical event."

"That's slander."

I turned to glare at her, which mostly just resulted in glaring at the headrest.

"What would you know about it, anyway? Were you out there? Did you have fans?"

"I had a front-row seat to you nearly concussing yourself on a cocktail table."

"That was choreography."

"That was gravity winning."

"I have fans, Katy. Three of them. Real women. They said the dip was cinematic. Did anybody call your dancing cinematic tonight? No."

"Nobody saw my dancing because I wasn't dancing. I was too busy filming you for blackmail purposes."

I gasped, scandalized, twisting around as far as the seatbelt allowed. "You what?"

"You heard me."

"That's — okay, first of all, that's illegal. Second of all—" I paused, momentarily derailed by trying to figure out what the second thing was.

"Second of all, if you're blackmailin' me, I want a cut. Fifty-fifty. I'm the talent, Katy. You can't just profit off my cinematic dip without compensatin' the artist. I'm a professional now. This changes everything. I might need an agent."

From the back seat, Piper made a noise that might have been a laugh or a groan. Hard to tell. Everything was a little underwater.

“She’s still talking,”  she said.

I frowned. That felt personal. “I’m right here,” I announced, because it seemed important that everyone know my ears were still working. Mostly. “I can hear you.”

“Good,” Piper said. “Then hear this—you’re drunk, and we don’t trust your fake boyfriend.”

I fixed Knox with what I hoped was a stern look.

“They’re being mean to you,” I told him solemnly. “I don’t like it. You’re on probation, not permanent exile."

Knox kept his eyes on the road, but I saw the corner of his mouth twitch.

“Thanks. Appreciate the representation, Speckles,” he said dryly. “I’ll try not to reoffend while the jury’s still out.”

“Your welcome. That’s what girlfriend do. Girlfriend duties.  Even the… fake girlfriend ones. The pretendy ones. The legally-not-real ones. The not-real-but-kinda-real-ish kind...You know what I mean.”

Piper made a noise in the back that sounded like pure suffering.

Katy leaned forward between the seats. I felt the shift in the air. “Juni, honey, maybe stop talking for a minute.”

“See Knoxy? She’s jealous because my vocabulary is better.”

“Juni, you just called your relationship legally-not-real-but-kinda-real-ish.”

"Yes." I nodded proudly, deeply satisfied with myself. "Exactly. It's a very precise scientific classification. I could've said 'complicated,' but that's for amateurs. I went the extra mile. You're welcome."

“Christ,” Piper muttered.

“Oh!” I turned toward the back seat with far more enthusiasm than the situation required,

“did you know my fake pretend boyfriend has a very nice ass? I saw it. Up close. When I was upside down. Premium viewing angle."

There was a long, horrified silence.

“And it's tense,” I added thoughtfully, nodding to myself.

“Very tense. I think he’s carrying a lot of unresolved emotional baggage back there. Possibly childhood trauma. Possibly just tight glutes. Hard to say without further inspection.”

“Juni,” Katy warned.

“Don’t ‘Juni’ me. Stop bullying him. You’re stressing his ass. It’s counterproductive. It’s a medical issue now.” I nodded solemnly, as if I had just delivered an important medical recommendation.

I turned toward Knox, eyes wide and earnest.
“Have you ever had a massage on your ass?”

His head snapped toward me so fast I briefly worried about his neck.

“Because I’m really good at massages. I have magic hands. People say that. Or they would, if I’d ever actually given anyone one. But the potential is there. I’m basically an undiscovered talent.”

“Speckles.”

“What? I’m offering healthcare.

Knox made a noise I’d never heard before. Something between a cough and a dying engine.

“Speckles,” he said, very carefully, like the wrong word might detonate the car. “We are not discussing my ass in front of your friends.”

“Why not?” I asked, genuinely confused. “People should know. Awareness is important.”

I watched his jaw flex. “No massages,” he said firmly. “No assessments. No medical opinions about my… tension.”

“But the tension—”

“Is staying exactly where it is.”

I squinted at him. “You’re shy. That’s cute. Big scary football guy, shy about his tense ass. Unexpected character development. I like it.”

Katy made a sound like she was choking on air. Piper muttered something that sounded a lot like I need a new best friend.

Knox stared straight ahead at the road, ears faintly pink, and refused to look at me again.

Which, honestly, only confirmed my diagnosis.

I turned toward the back seat again.

“Katy. Piper. Be honest. On a scale of one to ‘I would risk a felony,’ how good is his ass? I need peer review. Science demands it.”

“Juni,” Katy said through gritted teeth, “I am begging you.”

“That’s not a number.”

Piper leaned forward, grabbed the back of my seat, and spoke very slowly.

“If you say the word ‘ass’ one more time, I am going to open this door and roll out of a moving vehicle.”

I gasped. “That’s dramatic. And unsafe. And also not an answer.”

Knox made another one of those dying-engine noises.

“Everyone stop talking about my—about anything below the waist. New rule. Effective immediately.”

“You can’t just make rules,” I said.

“This is a democracy. I vote ten. Katy? Piper?”

“We vote you go to sleep,” Katy said.

“Me too,” Piper added. “Democracy has spoken.”

I sulked about this injustice for approximately four seconds before losing interest entirely, mostly because the car had turned into a familiar parking lot — the ugly beige building where Katy and Piper lived, the one with the elevator that only worked on Tuesdays and the laundry room that smelled permanently of fabric softener and mild despair.

Knox parked and cut the engine.
Then he looked down at me. “Can you walk?”

“I can do many things,” I said proudly. “Walking is among them. Probably.”

He didn’t look convinced. He got out, came around to my side, and opened the door like a proper gentleman who had not, thirty minutes earlier, carried me out of a club over his shoulder in front of an audience.

I swung my legs out, misjudged the distance to the ground, and nearly folded like a cheap lawn chair. His hands caught my waist before gravity could finish the job.

“I’ve got you.”

“I know,” I said, and the words came out softer than I meant them to.

Katy and Piper flanked us like extremely judgmental bodyguards as we made our way toward the building.

I leaned into Knox more than strictly necessary, partly because the ground kept moving and partly because he was solid and warm and currently the most reliable vertical surface available.

Inside the apartment, the lights were too bright. I squinted and made a wounded noise.

“Couch,” Piper ordered, pointing.

I obeyed, collapsing onto the familiar cushions with the grace of a sack of laundry. Knox hovered for a second like he wasn’t sure whether he was still allowed to be useful.

“Water,” Katy said, already heading for the kitchen. “And ibuprofen for the morning. She’s going to need it.”

I watched Knox stand there in the middle of their living room looking slightly out of place and somehow still too big for the space.

The red dress I was wearing felt ridiculous. My hair was a disaster. I was pretty sure I had lost one earring somewhere between the cinematic dip and the parking lot speech.

“You can go,” Piper told him, not unkindly but not warmly either. “We’ve got her from here.”

He nodded once. Then he crouched in front of the couch so we were more or less at eye level.

“You okay?” he asked quietly.

“I am… floating,” I admitted. “But in a mostly positive direction.”

His mouth curved. "I'll take it."
I reached out and poked his cheek, because it was right there and I had apparently lost every remaining social filter I owned.

"I'll give your ass a massage when—" I yawned, mid-sentence, entirely derailing my own point. "I'm not tired. OK."

"Looking forward to it," he chuckled.

"Good." I squinted at him, gathering what remained of my seriousness.

"And for the record — even if this is fake — you did good tonight. Just so you know. In case that's useful for your files."
Something flickered behind his eyes. He didn't answer right away.

Katy returned with a glass of water and a pointed look that clearly said time’s up.

Knox stood. “Get some sleep, Speckles.”

“No promises. I have a lot of thoughts to process.”

He almost smiled. Then he glanced at Katy and Piper, gave them a short nod, and headed for the door.

I watched him go, cheek pressed against the couch cushion, and felt the strange, quiet ache of something I wasn’t sober enough to name.

The door clicked shut.

Piper exhaled like she’d been holding her breath for an hour.

“Okay. What the actual hell was that?”

Katy dropped onto the armchair opposite me. “That was Knox Reyes looking at you like you hung the moon and then also slightly ruined his life.”

I closed my eyes.
“He’s complicated,” I mumbled.

“You’re complicated,” Piper corrected. “He’s a walking red flag with abs.”

“Very nice abs,” I agreed sleepily.

Katy groaned. “We’re putting you to bed before you start writing poetry about his shoulders.”

I felt hands guiding me upright, then down the short hallway to the guest room.

Someone helped me out of the heels. Someone else pressed the water glass into my hands and watched until I drank.

The last clear thought I had before the mattress claimed me was that Knox’s shoulder had been warm, and steady, and that I had liked resting against it far more than a fake girlfriend probably should.

Then everything went soft and dark, and the only thing left was the faint echo of his voice saying I’ve got you—