Caius reappears, childless now but no less changed. His clothes are ruined, and he looks like he’s aged a decade in an hour. But his eyes—those cold, depthless pits—spark with something dangerously close to happiness. He says something to Slade, claps Julian on the shoulder, then glances our way.
“We decided to name her Daisy. Our little flower. Because they’re O’s favorite, but also because Dahlia kept this from becoming a bloodbath.”
I’m speechless, but tears gather in the corner of my eyes.
Bam’s arm tightens, squeezing the air from my lungs. I look up to make a joke about possessive boys, but the words catch on the edge of my tongue.
His face is inches from mine, every muscle set. His gray eyes burn, but not with anger—he’s focused, stripped raw. The violence is gone, replaced by something even more dangerous.
He studies me like he’s memorizing the angles of my jaw, the way my mouth trembles when I try to act tough. He brushes a knuckle down my cheek, slow, and when his thumb catches under my eye, I realize I’m crying again.
He doesn’t say anything, just wipes the tears and waits for me to breathe.
It hurts, the tenderness. It hurts worse than any knife.
I want to run, but I don’t. I lean into the comfort, a little girl with bruised knees and a hunger for absolution.
So, I do the only thing I know to calm my bombarded nervous system.
I grab the front of his shirt, yank him down, and kiss him so hard my lips bruise. He kisses back, rough and claiming, until I forget the world exists outside the circle of his arms. The others howl, and someone whistles, but Bam doesn’t even blink. He pushes me back against the wall, pressing every inch of his body to mine, like he can fuse us together and never let go.
Somewhere, someone yells for us to get a room, but we don’t stop.
I taste blood, and I know it’s his, but I don’t care. I want it in my mouth, on my skin. I want to be marked so deep that nobody, not even the ghosts of my family, can ever scrape him out of me.
He breaks the kiss first, lips swollen, and leans his forehead to mine.
“We’re doing this, yeah?” he asks, as if I haven’t already surrendered every part of me that matters.
I nod, too breathless to fake a quip. “Yeah. We are.”
He chuckles, smoothing my hair. “Good.”
We stand there, tangled together, until the nurses shoo us away and Julian threatens to hurl himself out a window if we don’t stop “making out like a soap opera drama.” Even then, I refuse to let go.
When we finally walk down the corridor, we do it hand in hand. I feel the eyes on us, the whispers, but I don’t care. Let them talk. Let the world see. I chose him, and he chose me. It’s as simple and as savage as that.
Outside, the sun is a dull bruise behind the clouds. The parking lot is a mess of melting snow and cigarette butts. Bam lights up, offers me the first drag, and I take it, letting the smoke scorch my throat and settle my nerves.
He watches me, head tilted, like he’s still waiting for me to bolt.
“You’re really not scared?” I ask.
“Truth is, Lia, everyone is scared. The only difference is that I don’t let fear rule my life.” He shrugs. “So yeah, I’m scared. Just not of you. Not of us.”
I smile and inhale, loving the light-headed feeling it gives me.
We just stay like that, leaned against the hood of the truck, passing the cigarette back and forth, and I tell him about my mother—how she used to sing me to sleep, how she vanished one day and left me with a cold house and a colder father. I tell him about Ciro, about the last words he ever said to me. I tell him the truth about who I am and what I want, even the parts that make me ashamed.
He listens, never flinching, never judging.
When I finish, he kisses my knuckles, then each fingertip, and says, “I’m proud of you, Dahlia.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re insane. I literally just told you I had to kill a man as part of my training and you say you’re proud of me?.”
He grins, bites the tip of my finger. “Death is just another life, in another space. Hell yeah, little girl, I’m proud of you.”
I look at him, and I know it’s true.
