VERA

_

"SO, TOMORROW NIGHT'S THE HEIST," Avery said.

The hazy room was filled with cigarette smoke and the dying light of a setting sun, all four of us nearly tired out from our previous row of storytelling. No one knows entirely how it happened, but as soon as I walked through the door, Sam was already sprouting out tales of what happened at lunch. It somehow led to Avery talking about a stray dog he found in an alley, to Timothée talking about a quote from his poetry book, and an hour later we were all burned out.

But when it settled, so did reality.

"You're kidding," I exhaled, glancing at the floor, "I can't wrap my head around how fast this is all going."

Timothée and I were on the couch, cuddled (my gosh, I know) up against each other for solitary warmth in the freezing room. He was the one who suggested it, surprisingly. I was originally pacing around by the windows, when he opened his arms towards me and said: "Vera, come here."

And then he pulled me onto him.

And I also died for a second, emotionally.

But after the hour of storytelling, the two of us seemed to have gotten comfortable with the position, and now I had my back against his chest, leaning the side of my head against his as I spoke to my friends. One of his arms was resting on the back of the couch, while the other was on my thigh. I felt like I was floating.

"You have to, Vera," Sam said from his armchair, "once the heist actually starts, you can't let the speed of it all confuse you."

I nodded, shrugging my shoulders. "I won't."

"It's get in and get out."

"With some thievery in the middle," Avery added, smirking, "and occasionally some fighting, but that's not your end of the plan, Vera."

Fighting?

None of them mentioned fighting before. There was a getaway car, a distraction, a coordinator, but no fight. In that moment all I could see was the thought of my friends beaten up and bruised after something went terribly wrong during the heist. Where would I be if something like that happened? What would I do?

"Stop it," Timothée said quietly from behind me, "I know what you're thinking."

I made a point not to flinch. "No you don't."

"I promise that nothing will happen unless necessary."

"And if it is necessary?"

"Then it happens," he sighed, "Vera, we know how to handle issues like this, because they've taken place before."

Avery and Sam exchanged a glance across the room, nodding their heads in agreement. They weren't regular thieves, I knew, but they had involved themselves in vigilante situations previously. It's why they started the book club. It's why they've been training for this heist since the beginning.

"Remember when I said we scammed Bella's ex-boyfriend?" Timothée said, shifting his seat on the couch to look at me, "we never mentioned that it got rough."

I narrowed my eyes. "How rough?"

"Doesn't matter."

"Why not?"

"Because we got ourselves out of it," Avery added, crossing his arms against my chest, "we usually do."

"And if you can't?" I said, standing up from the couch, "am I supposed to stand there and watch it happen?"

There was a silent pause around the room, where the boys looked at each other with knowing expressions. I hated it when they went vague. It was like they didn't bother thinking about the danger of all of this, and were perfectly fine going into it blind—at least I gave it some serious thought before I agreed (which was still stupid, but it was still my decision).

Sam finally shrugged. "Yeah, pretty much."

"Why?" I frowned.

"Because we don't want to see you hurt," Timothée sighed, holding his arm out towards me again, "so just drop the conversation and come sit back down."

"Timothée, seriously," I said.

"Vera, seriously."

"How can I know you'll be okay?"

There was another pause, except this time neither of them seemed to know the answer. They were the kind of people to rush into things. I knew it from the second I met them, and I knew it even more so when we nearly screwed up The Scam. But I knew them know—better than before—and seeing them hurt was something I couldn't let happen.

But Timothée seemed calm.

"Fine," he said, standing up from the couch, "follow me."

He began to walk towards the door, beckoning me to walk after him with a quick wave of his fingers. I squinted at the back of his head.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

He didn't turn around, but I could sense him smiling. "I want to show you something."

Sam and Avery didn't say anything, turning back to each other and starting another conversation. It was like they knew what Timothée was talking about, and weren't worried about it at all. I was worried. Just because I had no clue what I'd find when I followed him out the door and to wherever he was leading me.

But I trusted him.

➢

"I THINK WE'VE REACHED A POINT," Timothée said, leaning against the doorway of his room, "where I can say you know me."

He had taken me back to his apartment, where I was currently curled up on his bed listening to him explain something to me. On the walk there, he didn't give me any hints as to what he was going to tell me. He just said I had to wait.

"I only know what you let me know," I said in response to his previous statement.

Timothée cocked a brow. "And if I said I let you know everything?"

"Then I'd know you were lying," I shrugged, leaning against his pillow, "because there's a lot of things you keep from me."

We all had our secrets, sure, but the thing about Timothée was that his secrets weren't secrets at all. You can tell who's hiding something dark inside the chasms of their brain, or you can tell whether or not the information matters to know, but when you looked at Timothée, you couldn't see either.

His secrets made up his person, and he made them his personality.

"You know more about me than most, Vera," he said, "but I feel like there's things you need to understand."

I didn't like the vagueness of this conversation. He was usually so blunt when he needed to be, but in this case, he seemed like he was taking his time. I felt like there wasn't any left, because the knowledge that The Heist was tomorrow evening was like a ticking time bomb in the back of my brain. Tick, tick, tick...

Timothée lifted his hand up towards his neck, gently looping the chain of his necklace around his fingers to lift up a familiar glass shard from where it was tucked beneath his shirt.

"It's obvious I have a fascination with glass, isn't it?" He chuckled to himself.

I smiled. "A little too much."

It only took a quick glance around his mirror-covered room to confirm both of our statements were true. Was this what he wanted to tell me? Maybe he was finally going to explain why he kept himself in a cage of reflections and shards like he was piecing pieces of himself slowly back together.

I watched as he crossed the room, sitting down next to me on the bed.

"My mother loved glass," he said, holding out the necklace, "she said looking into a mirror was like looking through the eyes of someone else."

I kept listening.

"Our house..." he started, before glancing off to the side, "or what used to be our house, had a room full of mirrors she'd collect throughout her life. I remembered my father getting upset that she was taking over all the walls with her trinkets, saying she had enough to rebuild the entire Eiffel tower out of them."

He chuckled, almost lost in the memory of it all, but kept going with a soft smile on his face.

"I guess I keep these mirrors to honor her in a way," he explained, "I don't know how to explain it, but it makes me feel close to her in a sense."

"No, I understand what you mean," I said, placing my hand on his back reassuringly, "I think it's wonderful of you to uphold her legacy like that."

Timothée shrugged. "I suppose."

There was a brief pause, where he flipped the shard of glass in his hand in thought, his mind mulling over with thoughts I couldn't hear. I wanted to know what was happening inside his brain.

But then his eyes lit up with thought, and he turned to face me.

"This is what I wanted to show you," he said, unclipping the chain from the glass in his hand, "it may seem like nothing, but it means quite a lot to me."

Flipping the shard over, he raised it up to cover his right eye, a soft smile on his face. From the reflection of the glass, I could see myself—not my entire being, but my own eye—and then it all clicked. My reflection completed the part of his face that I couldn't see, and together we looked like one person.

It was like the curve of his brow was sewed seamlessly into my own reflection, and the eyes I used to look at him matched the eyes he used to look at me. Similarity tucked behind ivory and tan skin.

One face unified by a small reflection of glass.

"Interesting, right?" He said, lowering his hand, "you can see yourself in someone else, just like the reflection of a mirror."

I smiled. "I think we look pretty together."

It only then hit me what I had said. I was so lost in the serenity of the moment, that I completely forgot to filter my thoughts from my words, and it all slipped out before I could stop it.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," I stammered, glancing away, "that's not what I meant, I just wanted to say that the glass trick was pretty cool, and that our reflections together were also pretty—but not because we'd look pretty together—just our reflections, do you know what I mean?"

Timothée laughed. "Vera."

"But I see what you're saying about the glass, and how there's a deeper meaning to glass and stuff..."

"Vera."

"...I don't know why I said that, I didn't mean it in that way, I swear."

"Vera, stop talking," Timothée said, leaning over the bed and pressing his hand over my mouth, "I know what you meant."

He was now hovering over me, a smirk on his face, and the glass shard still clutched in his other hand. I'd usually hate it if someone had their hand over my mouth, but I didn't care, because it was him, and being touched by him felt like a feeling in itself.

So I stopped talking, staring up into his eyes and clinging onto his every word.

"Vera, I need to tell you something," he said, his breath starting to slow, "and I need you to listen to me."

I nodded my head, and he removed his hand.

"Not even Sam and Avery know why I keep glass around me at all times," he explained, "but you do now, and that's because, in some twisted way, I've learned to trust you with my life more than anyone I know in a matter of months."

My heart was racing.

He continued. "And your novel? Hell, Vera, I know I told you that your book wasn't about us, but I was too scared to admit that I wanted it to be. I wanted to tell why it took me so long to say I was a thief, because I was slowly falling for you."

Falling.

"I was scared to tell you, because I hadn't known what it was like to be loved by someone since I was sixteen, and the thought of that scared me."

The world was silent when he spoke.

"But are you scared now?" I whispered.

It only took one look into his eyes, and I knew the answer. He'd looked at me a thousand ways—in sadness, in happiness, in everything we went through—but this was a new feeling hidden behind his olive eyes. It was that sense of calm I felt yesterday, where I said that accepting your choice to love someone was like letting go of the butterflies and feeling at peace with them.

And I saw peace in his eyes.

"No," he said, leaning in, "not anymore."

And all of a sudden he was kissing me, his lips on my lips, his hand in my hair, and our chests pressed together so tightly I could almost feel his heart beating against mine. His' was almost racing as fast as my own, if not the same. I was already kissing him back the second I knew what was happening.

And for a moment I forgot who I was.

All that was running through my mind was that I was his, and he was mine, and we didn't seem to exist for any other reason but each other. I couldn't remember what it felt like to exist before this moment. This was the moment. A moment where all the loose ends that my life unraveled were finally tied together again, and all the sleepless nights I wished he'd love me back were now just lucid dreams that came true.

So when he pulled away, I couldn't speak.

"Stay the night," he whispered, "please."

I nodded my head, before grabbing his collar and tugging him into another kiss. This time I could think. I could think about how perfect it felt, like writing the final sentence to a book I could never finish, or like finding a missing puzzle piece and snapping it into place in a board of my memories.

But even though I agreed to stay the night, I really meant more than that.

I just wanted to stay with him.

_

not this book being almost over