A trace of blood and pine and ruined faith turned into something alive again.
“I don’t know how to be safe,” I admit against his throat.
“I do.”
His voice doesn’t shake.
His hands pull me closer.
“Because I’ll be it.”
Not by force.
By staying.
By choosing.
By bleeding in ways that heal instead of destroy.
My fingers knot into his shirt like letting go might erase me.
He doesn’t loosen.
He holds me like I’m not fragile—
Like I’m fire.
And he’s willing to burn.
And for the first time—
Fear doesn’t speak louder than love.
The Future He Offers
By the time the sun finally rises over the treetops, we’ve moved inside.
The “sanctuary” still isn’t finished. Santino keeps calling it “The Sanctuary” — like he’s daring God to argue. It’s one wide room off a narrow hall: exposed beams overhead, whitewashed walls, no altar, no pews. Just dark floor pillows, a low table he built himself, and a battered lamp in the corner bleeding warm honeyed light across the boards.
It doesn’t feel like a church.
It feels like a place you crawl into after almost dying too many times to count.
I’m half-curled against him on the pillows, his back braced to the wall, my head tucked beneath his chin. I throw my legs over his, and a blanket tangles around us from the waist down, as if we forgot where it began and ended. The window beside us turns the outside world into soft smears of green and gray.
His heartbeat thuds beneath my ear.
Slow.Solid.Unforgiving in its proof that he’s still here.
I track it like a lifeline.
One-two.One-two.Still alive.
My fingers worry the hem of his t-shirt—nervous habit more than flirtation—as the last twenty-four hours strobe behind my eyes. The tunnels. The blood. The look on his face when he finally walked out from under his father’s ghost. Every time my body tries to loosen, memory drags it tight again.
He’s quiet.
Too quiet.
