Days passed by.
I couldn’t stop it from happening.
But I spent every one of them with Stone.
He trusted me. Completely.
Sex was powerful in that way, equal parts lust and admiration, its awakening nothing less than emotional scars slashed across our hearts.
Stone and I spent days teasing our lust, watching movie reels from the sunken couch, using each other’s limbs as blankets, sipping vanilla cola from sweating glass bottles, and reading. A lot of reading. For six hours a day, our world became candlelight catching wandering gazes, candlelight painting my silhouette as he drew me, candlelight tilting around his face, and candlelight spilling on the floor as bare feet danced upon it. This candlelight cast our shadows on the wall as we fucked, and this candlelight peeked between a closing door as we tore ourselves away from each other.
Our every moment was fleeting. Here and gone.
But they were moments that existed outside the madness.
The only shadows on Bone Island belonged to us.
In the Cantini Castle, I tiptoed the halls and slipped from rooms, haunting the house like a shackled ghost. I stayed quiet, reluctant to engage, only staying at dinner as long as required, and never showing up for get-togethers if I wasn’t required to attend. I wasjusthere, and it had continued on like this until they treated me like I wasjusthere, too. After a while, conversations flowed right through me, and eyes stopped looking for me. It made sneaking away so much easier.
Though the Shadows hadn’t killed anyone in over a week, the town still fought sleep.
On days I couldn’t get to Stone, I strolled through Town Square, weaving between townies who dragged along sidewalks like zombies. Sleep deprivation led to fights between flatlanders on the grass, in alleys, and on the streets. I dodged bodies and flying fists, continuing onward, a smile adorning my face, caught in the web of his touch, the slight twitch in his smirk, and venom-black eyes that made a slow crawl inside me with just the thought of him.
Stone was tucked away in a lighthouse like a faded photograph tucked in a locket against my chest. He was my secret—a quiet relic kept close to my heart that I could think about and be with whenever I wanted.
And all the times I could slip away to be with him ...
There was a thrill in this secret that, if only for a short time, made me feel alive in a solemn town. There was something between us that, if nothing else, gave me the security and freedom to open up, be vulnerable, and fuck deeper than the shallow. Stone gave me permission to be wild in a world that had told me what I could and couldn’t be, what I should and shouldn’t become.
Stone gave, gave, gave when all I’d known was take, take, take.
And it felt good. I was not addicted, obsessed, or dependent. I could pull myself away at any time. But why on this day? Why on the next? I’d been loyal to a family, a coven, and a town, and look where loyalty had gotten me.
I believe there were many ways to go crazy. At least this way, when I would one day perish, whether by death or marriage, I’d once felt what it was like to be touched with more than half a heart.
“Dance with me,”I begged him.
The same song was playing in the early afternoon, and I would never get sick of it.
Stone looked up at me from behind Mom’s opened book, chewing on the end of the eraser. “There’s something hidden between the lines,” he said, his eyes scanning the sentences. “I can’t tell what it is yet, but something’s there.”
“My mother wasn’t in her right mind. I can promise you she wasn’t sane enough to hide messages.”
“I don’t believe that,” he continued, obsessed with the details. “The things we do and say in life should never be cryptic. A book, however, is entirely different. In writing, nothing is wasted, as the spaces between the words are the most significant,” he said. “Now, if I could just find the other meaning. I may have to go back to the beginning.”
“And what is the first meaning?”
“Well, the love story, of course,” he answered, distracted.
“Isn’t that enough?”
Stone’s eyes lifted to mine. “When has love ever been enough?”
I grabbed the book and pencil from Stone’s hands and set them both at his side. When I pulled him to his feet, he gazed coyly upon my face. I walked backward to the center of the living room, taking him with me.
At first, Stone froze from my forwardness. Statue-like. I held my laughter, raising my arms and wrapping them behind his head. I lifted onto my toes to kiss him softly. Just once to break his icy exterior.
Then his head lowered, his warm hands cupped my elbows, and he pulled me into him, grasping my bottom lip between his. Gentle and sighing. The kiss was sinless, merciful at the beginning. And Stone moved his hand to my lower back and pressed my entire body against him so that I could feel his cock hardening in his pants.
