And that part is the problem.
We break apart. She’s flushed and almost dazed, eyes rimmed with red. Then she glances to the clock on the dash.
“I should go,” she says, and this time she sounds like she’s leaving a part of herself behind.
“You sure?”
She nods, but doesn’t budge right away. For a long minute, she just runs her finger up and down my arm, tracing the burn scar on my wrist. She presses her lips to my cheek, then my jaw, then the corner of my mouth, stealing the last word and the last kiss.
“I’m sure.”
She slips off of me and into the passenger seat, grabbing her clothes and putting them back on with the kind of moves that would make a contortionist jealous. Then she climbs out, boots crunching on gravel. Cold air rushes into the car. I watch her walk to her truck, the taillights washing her in red. She looks back once — just a glance — and that glance lands in my chest and stays there.
Then she’s gone, her truck rolling away from the overlook and down the dark road.
I sit there for a while, watching headlights rise and vanish on the far side of the mountain, feeling this heart do this thing in my chest — constricting in disgust, expanding in love, doing both and filling my throat with this choking sensation.
I’m going to ruin her.
My phone vibrates on the seat. Just once. That’s all it takes. It’s a single-buzz, the short alert I set for only one contact. The one that owns me.
I don’t answer. I stare at the screen, the number blocked, the caller ID just???like it always is. The message is the same every time: Call me.
That’s all it takes to drain the heat out of my blood.
I start the sedan and head back toward Ironwood Falls. Streetlights strobe across my windshield. The world feels thinner than paper, and just as fragile. I pass The Noble Fir — Molly’s bar, now closed, windows dark — and feel my stomach twist. I hate that she’s a target, not an escape.
Love makes you soft, and soft gets people killed.
The apartment complex waits at the end of the dead-end street, a few clumping stories of weathered brick and busted porch lights. I park in my usual spot, the engine ticking as it cools. For a moment I rest my head on the steering wheel, breathing the stale air, wishing I could forget what Molly smells like when she’s happy.
I want my bike. Wind. Noise. Speed. Something honest.
Instead, I get out of the car and walk upstairs with my keys in my fist like they’re a weapon. The hallway smells like old carpet and someone’s overcooked microwave dinner.
Across the hall, Molly’s door is shut.
I can still feel her mouth. Still hear her voice, that hushed, cautious ‘I love you’ ringing in my ears.
Why the fuck did she have to say those words?
I unlock my door and shoulder it open
My apartment is so dark it might as well be an unlit stage, the props cast in deep shadow: the sagging couch, the rickety TV stand, my battered toolbox squatting by the door like a sleeping dog. It smells faintly of my last two meals — canned chili and the half-burnt pizza I’d left to crisp in the oven while I watched the logging trucks trundle past my window.
I throw the deadbolt out of habit, then check it twice, palm pressed flat to the door as if I can will it to hold. I flick the lamp on — just the one, the cheap cylinder from Goodwill — so the yellow light makes ugly puddles in the corners and everything else stays half in the dark. My phone vibrates in my palm, and I toss it onto the table, watch it spin, and hear it land with a slap that echoes around the empty room.
I’m halfway to the bathroom when I hear it: a sound so slight I almost mistake it for the memory of a sound. Not footsteps, not the pop of settling drywall, not the familiar squawk of the upstairs neighbor fighting over the remote. Metal on metal. The whisper of a lock turning with the patience of a surgeon.
The tiniest click.
My whole body locks.
The front door.
The deadbolt shouldn’t move. I checked it.
The lock turns anyway — slow, controlled — like whoever’s on the other side wants me to hear every second of it. My blood turns to ice.
