“Yeah,” I said. “I saw.”
We sat there, foreheads touching, hands knotted together on her lap. The silence felt sacred, as if the walls themselves were holding their breath.
After a while, she looked up at me, her expression raw. “What do you think it means?” she asked.
“I think it means we don’t get to come back once we leave.”
She nodded, the motion slow and measured. “I’m not sure I could, even if I wanted to.”
We were close, closer than we’d ever been without fucking. I let my thumb trace the inside of her wrist, the pulse thumping wild and fast under her skin.
“Tell me the truth,” she said, voice small. “What’s waiting for me on the other side? Not the stories, not the legends. The truth.”
I thought about the world I’d left, the club, the bar, the city that never really shut up. I thought about the good parts—the nights on the bike, the music, the brotherhood—and then about the bad: the fear, the emptiness, the constant knowledge that you could be erased and no one would notice.
“You ever been to a city?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Only stories.”
“It’s loud,” I said. “Not just the noise, but the people. Always moving, always pushing. No one really looks at each other. Everyone’s busy trying not to be seen.”
She smiled, sad. “Sounds lonely.”
“It is,” I said. “But it’s also anonymous. You can lose yourself, if that’s what you want. No one cares what you do, or who you fuck, or what you believe. No one burns you for thinking.”
She considered that, then said, “But they still hurt you.”
I nodded. “Different weapons, but the same fight.”
She looked at our joined hands, then up at my face. “Will I fit?”
I shrugged, honest. “You’ll stand out. But I’ll watch your back. If you want me to.”
She smiled, a real one this time, the weight of the world slipping for a second. “I want you to.”
We sat by the fire, not speaking, just listening to the wind batter the eaves.
Eventually, Scarlette pulled her knees to her chest, arms wrapped tight. She looked so small then, a reminder that even the strongest women are still flesh, still breakable.
“I’m afraid I’ll forget who I am,” she said. “That your world will swallow me.”
I tilted her chin so she had to look at me. “You won’t forget. If anything, it’ll make you sharper.”
She shivered, then leaned into my chest, letting me absorb the fear she wouldn’t show to anyone else.
“What about you?” she asked, voice muffled. “What do you want, really?”
The question surprised me. I’d spent so long moving toward the next fight, the next score, the next patch of blacktop, I’d forgotten what it was to want something that couldn’t be bought or stolen.
“I want a place where I don’t have to fight every second,” I said. “Where the code is simple, and the people are real. Where I can wake up next to you and not have to count the hours until it’s all gone.”
She smiled against my skin. “You sound almost…hopeful.”
I snorted. “Don’t spread it around. I’ve got a reputation.”
The fire shrank to a handful of embers, painting the walls in restless shadows. I found myself tracing patterns on her back, idle circles that left her skin goose-pimpled and taut. She pressed closer, her breath catching in her throat.
I kissed her then, the first time since the night we changed together. This kiss was different—tentative, searching, as if we both knew that any wrong move might shatter what we’d built in the dark. She tasted of ash and herbs and need.
