We do.
A delicate, beautiful circle of cursive begins on my wrist — one line from a lyric he wrote for me in Paris — and the same line finishes on his wrist.
Connected.
Marked.
Forever.
23
THE FRACTURE POINT
RUBY
The flight back to LA is quiet.
Humming with harmony, quiet in that way people grow quiet when they’re full of something they can’t say aloud yet. For me, it’s the too-heavy weight of the love I have for this man. The weight I’ve accepted as inevitable.
I love Zane Draven.
Zane keeps my hand in his, thumb stroking absently along the inside of my wrist where our tattoos meet, but his mind is somewhere far away.
I can see it in the way his jaw works, slow and relentless. In how he keeps pulling me closer, as if the altitude is trying to steal me and he refuses to let go.
Europe is behind us in a whirlwind of filming, sex, late-night confessions, and dizzying closeness.
London already feels like a dream I’m terrified of waking from.
And yet…
LA looms like a beautiful reckoning, filled with terrifying, life-changing possibilities.
We land far too soon.
His driver is waiting. Security flanks us like dark shadows as we’re escorted into the back of a black SUV.
Again Zane pulls me onto his lap without asking, arms caging me against him. He kisses the side of my neck, slow and deliberate, a silent claiming he doesn’t bother to disguise.
“You okay?” I whisper.
“Perfect,” he says into my skin.
But he’s too still. Too controlled.
And when Zane is controlled, something inside me goes tight because that’s when he’s hiding something.
We get back to the place that’s beginning to feel way too much like home even though I’ve technically never moved in. The house lights warm around us as if welcoming us back, and I feel that old, familiar tug of missing myself.
My space. My routine. My life.
But Zane is kissing me before I can dwell on it.
He carries me to bed.
We make love slowly at first, like we’re trying to postpone the next breath. Then harder, because he needs something he won’t name. And when it’s over, he peers deep into my eyes.
“How do you feel, baby?”
