Chapter 61: Chapter 61: The Contact She Wanted
Chapter 61: The Contact She Wanted
Daphne Whitlock’s mind had gone places no responsible adult’s mind had any right to go.
Cory was sitting right there, close enough to reach.
Small, pale, white-haired, polite, and trusting in a way that made something in her chest ache and something worse in her want to press closer. He looked like a blank page set out on a desk, clean and untouched, the kind of page that tempted the wrong person to leave a mark simply because nobody else had.
Daphne knew exactly how bad that sounded.
Knowing did not stop the thought from circling.
She was not going to do anything outrageous, she told herself. She was not going to scare him. She was not going to grab him, corner him, or make him cry. She only wanted the tiniest proof that he had been here with her. A harmless little smear at the very edge of the page. A sign that, even if no one else knew, she had been close enough to leave color.
That was all.
Unfortunately, Cory had the timing of a leaf in the wind. Every time her fingers drifted near him, every time the distance narrowed to the thinnest breath, he moved. He turned toward a game screen. He reached for food. He asked a question with that clean little face. He slipped past the moment without seeming to understand that Daphne had nearly lost her mind over it.
If she had not known better, she might have thought he was doing it on purpose.
She finished setting up the two-player fighting game and handed the handheld console back to him.
The screen flashed with bright character portraits, health bars, and a timer at the top. It looked innocent enough. Two cartoon fighters on a little digital stage, one controlled by Daphne, one controlled by Cory. The snack bags sat on the coffee table beside them, colorful and crinkly. The box of chocolate biscuit sticks stayed open near Daphne’s knee like evidence from a crime scene.
Daphne softened her voice into something patient and coaxing.
"Cory, if you beat me in this match, you can take all these snacks home with you."
Cyrus’s eyes lit up.
"Really? I can take all of them?"
"All of them," Daphne said. "Every single bag."
"I want to try."
Of course he wanted to try.
Cyrus had no reason to refuse free snacks. The question itself was insulting. These were not stale crackers from a school vending machine either. Daphne had the good stuff. Chocolate, chips, gummies, cookies, little wrapped cakes, the kind of snacks that could make a child-form Frostborn reconsider several moral positions.
Besides, winning sounded easy.
He had already played this kind of game at Faye’s house with Miles. The screen was smaller, and the buttons were arranged differently, but the concept was the same. Move, jump, punch, block, and use the cheap little combo that had annoyed Miles into yelling at the TV.
Cyrus respected any strategy that worked despite looking stupid.
Daphne’s expression clearly carried a separate plan. Her eyes were too focused, her smile too sweet, and the pause before she spoke too practiced.
Cyrus did not panic.
He had come here prepared for this woman’s suspicious hobbies. If she wanted to set a trap through games, snacks, and fake tenderness, then fine. He would walk close enough to study the trap, take what he could, and leave before the teeth closed.
The match began.
Cyrus did not use his best technique right away.
That would be wasteful.
His character, a rabbit-eared fighter Daphne had picked for him because she said it was cute, stepped forward on the small screen. He made her crouch, jab, jump back, and test distance. Daphne’s character moved across from him with much smoother control, though she made an effort to look as if she were still learning.
Cyrus saw through that immediately.
Her inputs were too clean.
A beginner mashed buttons. Daphne waited.
On the sofa, Daphne watched the screen while watching Cory from the corner of her eye. The way he held the console with both hands was too serious for his size. His mouth pressed faintly when he focused. When his character got hit, his shoulders tightened. When he landed a move, his whole face brightened before he remembered to concentrate again.
The character on the screen was wearing rabbit ears and kicking clumsily.
The child beside her was playing with the raw confidence of someone who believed crouching light punch could solve every problem.
Daphne almost laughed from how cute it was.
Almost.
She could not laugh too much. If she laughed, he might notice her attention had drifted away from the game and onto him. That would ruin the pacing.
The first round went exactly the way she allowed it to go.
Cory jabbed and jabbed, using the same little sequence until her character fell.
The second round went the same.
He won again.
Cyrus’s confidence immediately swelled.
His face tried to stay calm and failed in several adorable ways. His lips curved. His fingers tapped the side of the console. His whole posture said that he had already begun mentally packing the snacks into his arms.
Daphne’s character had one fighter left, and that fighter’s health bar was hanging by a thread.
Cyrus still had three.
There was no way to lose.
By every reasonable law of games, math, fairness, and human dignity, victory belonged to him.
Then Daphne stopped pretending.
Her last character moved.
The screen became violence.
Cyrus did not even understand the first hit before the second arrived. His rabbit-eared fighter bounced into the air, hit the ground, got trapped in another combo, and then got carried across the stage by a chain of attacks so clean it looked illegal. His second fighter came in and suffered the same fate. His third lasted long enough for him to press several buttons with mounting disbelief.
The match ended.
Daphne had won with a sliver of health.
Cyrus stared at the screen.
A pixel of health.
A full reverse sweep.
No mercy at all.
Was her heart made of stone? Why would a grown woman hit this hard in a game against a child?
Daphne watched his stunned face and nearly melted.
That blank little shock. That tiny wounded disbelief. The way his fingers stopped moving, the way his eyes widened as though the world had betrayed him through a handheld console.
It was unbearable.
It was also extremely satisfying.
She had not been lying about the snacks. She simply needed a few more rounds to pull him closer. Let him almost win. Let him chase the prize. Let him feel the gap. Then she could offer a new condition, something much smaller than winning, something he would accept because refusing would mean giving up when he had been so close.
Daphne gave him an innocent smile.
"Oh," she said. "It looks like I was a little better."
Cyrus turned his head slowly.
Daphne tilted the console in her hands.
"Do you want to try again?"
Cyrus said nothing.
"The snacks are waiting for you," she added.
Cyrus understood now.
This woman was genuinely good at the game.
He had underestimated her.
That was his mistake. The problem was not only that she had skill. The problem was that she had hidden it until the exact moment it would hurt most. This was the behavior of a villain. A snack-related villain, which made it worse.
He set the handheld console down beside him.
Then he looked up with a small, resigned smile that carried the exact amount of disappointment a child should show.
"I think I can’t beat you even if we play a lot more," he said. "Maybe those snacks are not meant for me."
Daphne’s face changed at once.
The guilt hit her too fast.
He looked so accepting. Too accepting. The kind of acceptance that made a person feel like they had kicked a puppy and then made the puppy apologize for being in the way.
Daphne’s plan had required a few more rounds. She had imagined coaxing him through repeated losses, praising him, letting him get close, and then offering the second path when his desire was strong enough to outweigh his hesitation.
Instead, Cory had surrendered immediately.
His little confidence had been flattened.
Daphne hated herself.
Only for a second, but the second was real.
She moved quickly to fix it.
"It is okay," she said. "There is another way you can take the snacks."
Cyrus kept his head lowered with perfect timing.
"There is another way?"
Daphne swallowed.
The next words came out carefully, almost too carefully.
"You can even take the handheld console too."
Cyrus lifted his face.
That got him.
Daphne saw the exact instant the offer landed. His attention sharpened. His disappointment cracked. His little hands tightened against his knees.
Snacks were attractive.
A handheld console was dangerous.
Cyrus had wanted one the moment he learned humans could carry games around like contraband treasure. Owning one would solve many problems. It would also create new problems, like explaining where he got it, hiding it in his apartment, and not playing until sunrise.
Still, free was free.
He asked in a small voice, "What do I have to do?"
Daphne’s throat moved.
She tried not to look too eager.
"You only need to give me one little kiss on the cheek."
Cyrus blinked at her.
"That is all?"
"That is all," Daphne said quickly.
She waited.
Cyrus looked down, appearing tangled in a child’s simple conflict between shyness and greed.
Daphne leaned slightly closer.
"There are snacks," she reminded him. "And the game too."
Cyrus made a soft, uncertain sound.
Inside, he was staring at Daphne with the exhausted contempt of someone watching a criminal write her own confession in glitter pen.
This woman really did need treatment.
Not hospital treatment, probably. Something louder and more memorable.
But the console was right there.
The snack pile was right there.
The demand was also clear enough to be tested. Daphne had not asked for anything more. A cheek was manageable. A fake contact would do. He could close the distance, block her view, and use the pad of his finger.
He had solved worse things for less food.
Cyrus lifted his head as though he had finally made up his mind.
Daphne’s heart began to hammer.
The small child beside her slowly leaned closer.
He looked exactly like the type she liked most, which was a sentence Daphne knew should never exist inside her head. His size, his face, that white hair, the clean hesitation in his movements, every detail landed where it should not have landed. She sat very still because moving too soon would ruin everything.
This was not her forcing him.
He had agreed.
He was coming closer by himself.
Daphne clung to that thought as though it could absolve her.
It did not, but she clung to it anyway.
The closer Cory came, the clearer his scent became. Clean, cool, faintly sweet from the snacks, with some trace underneath that made the air feel lighter when he breathed near her. Daphne had noticed it before and had tried to blame shampoo, laundry detergent, the weather, or her own overactive imagination.
Now she could barely think past it.
Cory stopped right before contact.
His voice came out shy and small.
"Miss Daphne, when you stare at me like that, I feel embarrassed."
Daphne’s brain nearly shorted.
"I can close my eyes," she said at once.
Her eyelids lowered.
The world went dark.
Without sight, every other sense sharpened. The small shifts of the sofa cushion. The warmth of her own face. The faint scent of fried food still lingering from the delivery bag. Cory’s cool presence near her cheek.
Daphne felt as if she could eat five full dinners with that scent in the room and never get tired of it.
She kept her eyes closed.
Because her eyes were closed, she did not see the look Cyrus gave her.
It was not innocent.
It was not shy.
It was the look of someone silently judging a disaster and wondering whether society had enough laws for people like this.
Cyrus lifted his hand.
His plan was simple. Touch her cheek with his fingertip, make a small sound if necessary, collect snacks, collect the console, and retreat before Daphne could start inventing extra conditions.
His finger had barely begun to rise when someone knocked on the door.
Daphne did not move.
Cyrus lowered his hand.
"Miss Daphne, someone is at the door."
The silence that followed was heavy with Daphne’s suffering.
Then she opened her eyes.
The delivery had arrived at the worst possible time.
Daphne went to the door and accepted the KFC bag with a smile that probably frightened the delivery driver. When she turned back, Cory was sitting on the sofa with his attention fixed on the food bag in her hand.
Not her.
The food.
Daphne looked down at the bag.
This greasy fast food was not better than what she could cook. It could not be. It came in paper packaging. It smelled like oil, salt, and a million bad decisions. It had not been made with care. It had not passed through her hands. It was not warm because she had cooked it for him. It was warm because some stranger had driven it over in a bag.
And yet Cory looked at it with pure anticipation.
Daphne was bitterly jealous of fried chicken.
Cyrus’s face was full of expectation.
Under that face, his stomach had already chosen a side. Whatever Daphne wanted could wait. The food was here. It was hot. It was free.
Free hot food outranked almost everything.
Daphne set everything out on the coffee table. Chicken, fries, biscuits, dipping sauces, a sandwich, and enough napkins to pretend this meal had manners. She wanted to return to the unfinished bargain, but Cory’s attention had already been claimed. If she brought it up now, she would look too impatient.
So she sat there, watching him eat.
Cyrus ate like someone who had discovered a new civilization and intended to respect it through total conquest.
The fried chicken was crisp. The fries were salty. The sandwich had sauce, crunch, heat, and a kind of cheap satisfaction that explained why humans built so many signs for this place. His small hands moved between boxes with steady focus. He tried the sauces. He judged them. He returned to the best one. He drank soda and decided carbonation was still one of humanity’s more suspicious inventions, though not suspicious enough to stop.
Daphne watched with a hollow expression.
Cyrus noticed.
He took another bite and nearly laughed.
Women did not matter more than a chicken sandwich. No reasonable world would allow that.
He had always known the human world contained treasures. KFC had now joined the list.
Every so often, he glanced at Daphne’s face. She looked as if part of her soul had stayed behind at the moment before the door knocked. The sight entertained him far more than it should have.
Still, he gave her some credit.
She had not lunged.
She had not changed the condition.
She had not used the food as an excuse to touch his face, wipe his mouth, or feed him with a napkin in ways that would have required immediate retaliation.
Her self-control was not good, exactly, but it existed.
That deserved acknowledgment.
After Cyrus was comfortably full, he wiped his hands with a napkin, placed it down neatly, and slid off the sofa.
Daphne raised her head.
Cyrus stood before her and looked up with a child’s careful hesitation.
"Miss Daphne," he said softly. "Does what you said still count?"
Daphne’s whole body came alive.
"It counts," she said at once.
Cyrus lowered his lashes.
"Then can you close your eyes?"
Daphne obeyed so quickly it was almost embarrassing.
She lifted her chin a little, trying to look calm, gentle, and trustworthy while failing to hide how badly she wanted the moment to happen.
Cyrus stepped closer.
Daphne felt his nearness first through the pause in the air. Then something cool and light touched her cheek.
The contact lasted barely an instant.
Soft.
Feather-light.
Gone before she could decide whether to breathe.
Daphne opened her eyes.
Cory stood in front of her with his head lowered, his lashes hiding his expression. His face carried the exact kind of shy embarrassment that struck her straight through the chest.
Daphne’s mind went warm and useless.
That counted.
It absolutely counted.
