My hands are still shaking, not from fear but from the residue of too much adrenaline, too much muscle memory firing at once and refusing to stand down.
I want to pour a drink, so I take the flask from the nightstand and shake two fingers into a glass.
She watches me in the reflection.
"You're bleeding," she says, but her voice is even, as if it's just another observation about the weather or the price of cigarettes.
I check.
There is a stripe on my wrist, a red thread soaking into the shirt cuff.
I press it with a tissue, then pour a glass of cool water and hold it out to her.
She turns, crosses the room, and takes it.
Our fingers touch, just for a moment.
Her hand is cold.
We drink in silence.
She paces, then stands with her back to the window, the city haloing her in sodium and silver.
The light from outside makes her eyes look almost gold.
"What do you want?" I ask, and the words surprise us both.
She laughs softly.
"Now?"
I nod.
She sets her glass on the sill.
"I want to raise our children in a city that fears us," she says, no hesitation, no irony.
Her hand goes to her belly, unconscious at first, then with a small smile on her lips that makes my heart skip a beat as I look at her, really look at her, and see the future mapped out in the lines of her face.
The exhaustion, the hunger, the refusal to ever let anyone else write her story again.
She waits for me to argue, to soften it, to offer somethingsmaller and safer.
But I have nothing left in me for that.
Instead, I say, "The estate is being rebuilt. With your name on the deed."
She blinks.
Once.
"You mean it?"
I nod.
"It's the only way."
She steps closer, standing so near that I can smell the sweat and the smoke in her hair.
