His breath's warm against my lips. Coffee and sugar. His hand still cupping my face like I'm something precious, something that might break if held too tight.
I could close the distance. Should close it. Want to close it.
The door chimes.
We spring apart like teenagers caught by parents.
Nora stands, eyes wide, takeout bag in hand.
"Uh," she says. "Bad time?"
CHAPTER 4
GRATH
The air in the café feels thick. Wrong.
Nora's staring. Maris won't look at me. The kitten stretches on the windowsill, oblivious.
"I'll go," I say.
Maris's head snaps up. "What? No, I?—"
"You have friend business." I gesture vaguely at Nora. At the takeout bag. At the space I'm suddenly too big to fit inside without making everything complicated.
I head for the back door before either of them can argue.
Outside, the alley smells like garbage and salt water. Better. Cleaner somehow than the tangle inside my chest.
Almost kissed her.
Stupid. Reckless. She cried and I touched her face like I had that right, like putting my hands on her wouldn't mark her as mine to everyone watching.
And someone's always watching.
I walk. Don't know where. Just need to move, burn off whatever this feeling is that's crawling under my skin.
End up at my apartment. The rowhouse. Still calling it that in my head even though the deed has my name on it now.Ownership's a strange thing. Heavy. Like chains except nobody's holding the other end.
Inside, the place is too quiet. I put the cigar tin on the counter. Haven't looked at it in days.
I lift the lid. Let it fall open slow.
The smell crawls out first, coiling around me like something alive. Metal gone dull with age. Old sweat ground into fabric that's never coming clean. The particular stink of memory, sharp and sour, the kind that lives in your throat before it settles anywhere else.
My chest tightens. I know what's inside, have known since I put the tin down, but looking is different. Looking makes it real all over again.
Tokens. Scraps. Bits of nothing most people would sweep into the trash without a second thought.
To me, they're everything. The only proof I have that any of it happened. That I survived it.
I stare down at the collection. My hands rest on either side of the tin, knuckles white against the counter's edge. The weight in my gut settles lower, colder, familiar as an old wound in winter.
This is what's left when you claw your way out of hell. Not triumph. Not glory.
Just a handful of broken things you can't throw away.
A button. Brass. Torn from Korvak's shirt the night we planned the escape. He's dead now. Caught three days after we ran. Made an example of.
