The silence stretched between us, but it wasn’t empty anymore. It was full—full of his fingers twisted in my shirt, full of his trembling body pressed against mine, full of that single tear that told me everything his voice couldn’t.
I searched his face for anger, for rejection, for fear, but there was only stunned silence, those wide eyes that held too many secrets, that mouth that wouldn’t—couldn’t—form words. Beneath it all, in the way he clung to me, in the way his body curved into mine like it remembered exactly where it belonged—it all felt impossibly like coming home.
“Kaneko?” My voice cracked on his name. “I love you,” I whispered once more, because now that I’d started saying it, I couldn’t stop. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”
Whatever happened next—whatever complications this moment would bring, whatever dangers we faced, whatever impossibilities lay ahead—none of it mattered.
Kaneko was alive.
He was silent and changed, perhaps broken in ways I could not yet understand—but he lived.
And I would never let him go again.
Chapter 29
Kaneko
Kazashita’s body against mine felt wrong.
It wasn’t unpleasant—gods help me, not unpleasant at all—but it feltwrongin the way a perfectly executedkatafelt wrong when performed with the incorrect weapon. Every point of contact between us burned with a heat that wasn’t mine to feel, wasn’t his to claim.
I tried to pull back, but his warmth was gravity, and I couldn’t escape its strength.
He kissed me again.
Then told me he loved me.
Over and over.
I gripped his tunic, unsure how to brace myself or what to do. His eyes flared at the touch.
Damn it, I’m encouraging him.
This time, I pushed back, pulled away, managed to put some small measure of space between us. I did so gently, not violently or cruelly, but with the careful precision I’d learned by scalingrooftops—controlled and deliberate—final. My hands came up between us, pressing gently against his chest once more, keeping him at bay.
“Kazi—”
His eyes searched mine, desperate and wild, still wet with tears. The hope in them nearly shattered me.
“My heart belongs to another.”
His hope broke first, then his joy, then something deeper—something that had been holding him together for longer than I could imagine.
“Kaneko—” His voice cracked on my name.
“I’m sorry, Kazi. I care for you, but I could never be yours.” I kept my voice steady, even as something twisted in my chest at the devastation spreading across his features. “There was someone before. There still is. There always will be.”
He staggered back as if I’d struck him. His mouth opened, closed, opened again.
In another life, perhaps—one wherewakohad not burned my home, where I’d never met a boy with thoughtful eyes who knocked me into the harbor and laughed—in that life, I could have loved Kazashita, could have let myself fall into the fierce devotion he offered, the protection, the desperate need.
But this wasn’t that life. It never would be.
“Who?” The word was barely a whisper.
“That doesn’t matter—”
Shadows moved at the park’s edge, drawing my eye.
