“You hate it,” she says, crossing her arms.
I swallow, wipe my mouth, and meet her eyes. “It’s terrible. Got seconds?”
She blinks. Then laughs. Really laughs, deep and warm, the kind that scrapes the rust off the inside of your chest.
“You’re such a damn liar.”
“Sure. But I’m your liar.”
Next night it’s fried something—roots or noodles or maybe just scraps she smuggled from the vendor down the block. Whatever it is, it’s better. She doesn’t ask if I like it. She just watches the plate when I eat, eyes soft.
We fall into rhythm. Not a routine. Routines are for people with calendars and paychecks. What we have is more like a tide. She wakes early, pads barefoot to the window to sip tea so strong it could melt rust. I wake slower, make noise fixing broken things, taking on side jobs no one else wants. Anything with wiring. Anything with parts that still hum when touched just right.
Sometimes she reads. Sometimes I catch her standing in the middle of the kitchen like she forgot what she came for. Neither of us talks about the cleric. The tribunal. The fire and blood and everything that cracked us open.
It’s not avoidance. It’s survival.
Rain becomes our ritual. When it comes—and it always comes—we climb to the balcony with two mugs of something hot and bitter. We sit, shoulders almost brushing, knees bent,watching the city blur behind sheets of water. No talking. Just the sound of it—soft, endless, honest.
One night, she doesn’t bring tea. Just sits beside me and grabs my hand. Doesn’t look at me. Doesn’t explain. Her fingers thread through mine like she’s latching a lock.
I squeeze back. No words. Just presence.
Inside, life unfolds in pieces. I find one of her earrings in the sink. A book she’s been reading under my pillow. She commandeers the left drawer. I stop putting tools in there. She tapes a photo to the wall—us, backlit, blurry, some street vendor captured us mid-laugh. I don’t remember laughing that day. But the picture proves I did.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she says one night as we lie in the dark, the hum of old power lines pulsing through the walls. “Just so you know.”
“I know,” I say.
She presses her forehead to my shoulder. “Good.”
She never asks for promises. Doesn’t make any either. But every day she stays, every meal she cooks—burnt or not—is a vow. Every hand she touches to my chest before bed. Every joke she mutters when she thinks I’m not listening.
This, whatever it is—it’s real.
CHAPTER 26
KELSEA
Idon’t know why I came back here.
The casino looms in front of me like a carcass picked clean by time and fire. The windows are blank-eyed, dark. Where once there was velvet heat and noise thick enough to drown in, there’s only silence now. I step off the mag-line alone, heat from the tracks fading fast as I walk up the block. My coat flaps in the wind like a loose sail.
This place used to thrum, used to pulse. Now it creaks when the wind moves through it—an old shipwreck swallowed by rust.
Ceera’s already there.
She’s leaned against one of the steel pylons out front, half-lit by the one working streetlamp. Long black coat. Boots that could stomp out a rebellion. Hair tied up like she’s bracing for war. Except her eyes—her eyes are soft.
“I thought you weren’t gonna come,” she says without looking up.
“I wasn’t sure.”
“Then why did you?”
I shrug. “Unfinished business.”
Ceera laughs, quiet. “That’s your answer for everything.”
