The hotel lobby smelled like lemon disinfectant, sadness, and divorce.
Not a fresh divorce.
Old divorce.
The kind that still shared Netflix passwords.
I stood in the middle of the lobby, clutching my complimentary insurance toiletry bag while staring at the geometric carpet pattern like it personally offended me.
"Oh my God," I whispered.
The receptionist looked up nervously.
"This place has horrible energy."
She blinked at me.
I lowered my sunglasses dramatically.
"No, like, spiritually."
"...Okay."
I sighed and dragged my suitcase toward the elevator.
Honestly, I felt bad for whoever had to cleanse this building.
It must have taken hours.
The entire hotel radiated the emotional frequency of a man named Craig lying about being "separated."
By the time I got to my room, I was already spiraling.
Not because my apartment had exploded.
According to the insurance adjuster, apparently "small-scale structural detonations" happened more often than people thought.
Which honestly felt fake, but what did I know about urban infrastructure?
No.
I was spiraling because my boyfriend of two years had apparently vanished into an international goat-related cult.
And somewhere deep in my soul, I knew there was more to the story.
I kicked off my shoes, threw myself face-first onto the hotel bed, and screamed into a decorative pillow for a solid thirty seconds.
Then I sat up suddenly.
"Oh my God."
The fake passports.
I lunged for my tote bag and dumped the contents across the comforter.
Crystals.
Lip balm.
A half-eaten protein bar.
The note.
One passport.
I stared at it.
VEGA BLACKWELL.
The photo was definitely Aries.
Unfortunately, so was the expression.
Even under a fake identity, he still looked vaguely irritated to be alive.
I narrowed my eyes.
"Who the fuck are you?"
The passport did not answer.
Which I personally felt was emotionally avoidant.
I opened my laptop.
Eight hours later, I had consumed:
- two iced coffees,
- one Caesar salad,
- an alarming amount of hummus,
- and approximately every publicly available conspiracy theory on the internet.
The deeper I dug, the worse it got.
Or, depending on your perspective, the hotter it got.
"Okay," I muttered to myself, pacing the hotel room in fuzzy socks. "Okay. So either Aries is—"
I held up one finger.
"—a spy."
Second finger.
"—in witness protection."
Third finger.
"—a billionaire criminal."
Fourth finger.
"—or involved in international goat trafficking."
Honestly, the goat trafficking still felt the most plausible.
I clicked on another article.
A blurry photo appeared on the screen.
I froze.
The man in the photo was definitely Aries.
Well.
Vaguely.
He was wearing all black tactical gear while jumping off what appeared to be a moving train in Prague.
The caption underneath read:
UNIDENTIFIED OPERATIVE LINKED TO EMBASSY INCIDENT
"Oh my God," I whispered.
Then I squinted closer.
"Huh."
Honestly, he looked amazing.
I zoomed in further.
"Wait. Is that my jacket?"
It was my jacket.
The cream cashmere one I'd thought I lost in Denver.
"Oh my God," I gasped.
"He steals from me."
I immediately burst into tears.
Not because he was potentially an internationally wanted covert operative.
Because cashmere is expensive.
I kept digging.
At some point around hour six, I discovered at least four additional names linked to Aries:
- Orion Vale
- Leo Mercer
- Cassian Frost
- and something in Cyrillic that Google Translate claimed meant "large horse."
"Jesus Christ," I whispered.
Was Aries even his real name?
Was anything real?
Had the relationship itself been fake?
No.
No, that couldn't be true.
Because there was no way someone could fake the way Aries looked at me when I talked too much during movies.
Or how he always moved me to the inside of the sidewalk without thinking.
Or the fact that he once flew from Argentina to Tokyo in twenty hours because I texted:
bad day :(
At the time, he'd claimed he was "already nearby."
Which, in retrospect, was a completely psychotic thing to say.
I grabbed the hotel phone dramatically.
"I need answers," I told myself.
Then I immediately called the only person I trusted.
"Hello?" said Taurus sleepily.
"Taurus," I whispered.
A long pause.
"Why are you whispering?"
"I think Aries might be in the CIA."
Another pause.
Then:
"Pisces. Baby. It is three in the morning."
"I found six passports."
"...Okay that's actually concerning."
"And there was an explosion."
"Oh my God."
"And I think he may have stolen my cashmere."
"YOU SAID HE WORKED IN GOAT LOGISTICS."
"THAT'S WHAT HE TOLD ME."
Taurus inhaled sharply.
"Okay. Okay. Listen to me very carefully."
"Okay."
"Have you considered..."
A pause.
"...that he might simply be emotionally unavailable?"
I stared at the wall in silence.
Then slowly sat down on the edge of the bed.
"Oh my God," I whispered.
"That makes so much sense."