“I’m here,” he says into my hair like a vow. “I’m right here.”
I nod against his chest.
I believe him.
For now.
For as long as this heartbeat holds.
The Aftermath That Breathes Like a Wound
They don’t move toward each other.
They collide.
Not slow.Not careful.Not like people who expect tomorrow.
Santino’s mouth crashes into mine like he’s trying to haul my soul back into my body by force. My hands fist his shirt, nails biting through soot and blood, sweat—because if I don’t hold him, he’ll dissolve. He’ll turn into smoke again, the way he almost did.
I press my forehead to his throat and breathe him in like the world is running out of air.
He wedges a knee between mine and pins me to the wall in the dark—brick cold against my spine, his heat the only thing keeping me from splintering.
“Don’t disappear,” I whisper into his skin.
He groans like the words tear open something that never healed.
His hands climb my sides, unsteady when they reach my ribs. He cups my face—thumbs dirty, touch reverent, eyes wrecked—as if he can memorize me through ruin alone.
He drops his forehead to mine.
“You’re mine,” he says.
Not possession.
Protection.
Grief trying to anchor itself before it drifts away and drowns.
“You’re mine,” he repeats, broken this time. “I almost lost—”
I steal the rest of the sentence with my mouth. If he finishes it, it will kill him.
My body fits his like it knew him before my mind ever got the chance. My breath stutters. My knees soften. The world shrinks until there’s only heat and heartbeats and the way his hands are everywhere at once—like he’s trying to convince himself I exist by touch alone.
He kisses every place I know I’m bleeding.
Every place I tried not to feel.
Every place that doesn’t belong to fear anymore.
He buries his face in my neck. His breath shakes like a confession he’s waited his whole life to give.
“I thought you were gone.”
“I’m here,” I whisper, fierce enough to mean it. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He slips one arm under my knees, the other behind my back like he might carry me through hell if it opens again—
