“Promise you’ll keep me this time?”
“Promise you won’t leave.” The plea is a ragged whisper, and when she looks up at me with tears spilling from her eyes, I lean in and taste the salt of her tears as I kiss her.
This time, I don’t just take—don’t just devour her anger and confusion and pain—I give back everything I’ve held inside for too long: how much it gutted me not to see her, how much every single day without her was like some slow, methodical unspooling of the world. How there’s nothing else, no one else, not for me, not in this lifetime.
She’s kissing me back, frantic and hungry—nails scraping through my hair and then down my back—her whole body pressed up against me like she’s trying to crawl under my skin and make a home there. And fuck if I wouldn’t let her.
I scoop her up and half-carry, half-drag her to the bed, not even trying for graceful. The urgency is back—the need to melt the space between us until I can’t remember a life where my hands didn’t know every inch of her, until there’s not a cell in my body that remembers being alone.
Emma’s on the bed, hands in my hair, pulling me down. I’m half afraid she’s going to bite, half hoping she will. There’s no grace in the way we move—only need, pure and animal. I dig my hands into her hair, angle her head the way I want it, and kiss her so hard I feel her teeth against mine.
“Tell me, swan. Promise. Promise you’re mine this time.”
11
EMMA
The last time I really let myself believe in Hollywood endings, I was nine years old and Dad had just surprised Mom with the house on Iron Way—the one he still lives in now. I remember her face in the gaudy light of the kitchen, how she twirled from the oven to the fridge like every step was choreography. She lined up our TV dinners on the counter and said,“This is just the start, Em.”She said it with a smile that didn’t quite match the shadows under her eyes, but back then I didn’t know how to tell real hope from the imitation. I just believed her. I stuck my fork in the cardboard Salisbury steak and pictured a family that would live in that house always, happy and together.
It wasn’t the last time I believed in things that didn’t end up lasting, just the first one that really stuck. The one I mentally circle back to every time reality lines up with the predictable script: parent leaves, friend betrays, love interest ghosts, body fails. Everything that’s good, ends. So when Bones lays me on his bed and holds himself over me, I want to believe that this time it’s real and lasting and not just a fever dream that will end assoon as the clock ticks over or someone calls to say there’s been a mistake. I want it with every fiber of my being.
Bones kisses me with a careful hunger. Like he’s afraid I’ll shatter, but also like he’s starving for me. His palms cup my face, thumbs stroking my cheekbones, then his hands settle on either side of my shoulders and the world compresses down to the radius of his body crowding mine on the mattress. He smells like sweat and whiskey, and his skin is so warm it almost buzzes against mine. I feel every cell in my body wake up and align toward him. He kisses me like we might not have any tomorrow, but the longer it goes on, the less it feels like desperation and more like him realizing he can finally, finally take his time with me.
“Tell me, swan. Promise. Promise you’re mine this time.”
Promise.
I’ve never been good at promises. Never been good at staying put. Ballet taught me that—you’re only as good as your last performance, only as permanent as your current contract. Everything is conditional. Everything expires.
But his hands on my face feel like an anchor. His body covering mine feels like safety. And the way he’s looking at me—like I’m not a risk he’s taking but a certainty he’s claiming—makes me want to believe thatwedon’t have an expiration date.
And maybe I can have that. Keep it, even.
I pull back just enough to meet his eyes. “I promise.”
His breath catches. “Fuck, Em. Tell me again.”
“I’m here,” I whisper against his mouth. “I’m not leaving. I’m yours.”
Something in his expression cracks open—relief and possession and triumph all at once. His forehead presses to mine and we’re both shaking.
“Again,” he demands, voice rough.
“I’m yours, Bones. I promise.”
He kisses me then, like he’s sealing a vow. Like he’s branding me. Like he’ll never let me take it back.
And I don’t want to.
I want to stay.
I want to stay.
I want to stay.
His mouth moves to my neck, teeth grazing the sensitive skin. My hips jerk up against his, and the motion pulls at the healing cut on my back, a sharp sting that cuts through the haze of want. I gasp, fingers tightening in his hair.
“Still hurts?” His lips brush the shell of my ear.
