I exhaled through my nose and let my hand slide up her spine. My fingers traced the ridges of her vertebrae. "Fine."
“Thank you.” She kissed my chest again. "Now. . .I have to get up—"
“Not yet. I want you laying across me like this.”
“There’s aftercare.”
“Not yet, Tora.” I closed my eyes. “Just lay against my chest and hold me. That’s enough aftercare for now.”
And she did as I asked, soothing me down to my soul.
And behind my eyelids, I saw her.
Standing in the garden—my mother's garden, the one from the fever dream, the one with the koi pond and the cherry blossoms.
My Tiger wore white, and her hand rested on her full belly. And the sun hit her brown skin and turned it gold. She was barefoot in the grass and she was smiling at me.
The little girl with her eyes sat by the pond, dragging her fingers through the water while the koi circled her hand.
The boy with my jaw and eyes chased a dragonfly across the lawn, laughing so loud the cherry blossoms shook.
Yes. Soon.
I watched my Tiger in the garden for as long as the image held. Memorized the curve of her belly. The way her fingers spread across it—protective, proud, already a mother in the way she stood.
She'd get off the birth control.
Maybe not tonight.
Maybe not this month.
But one day, I would walk into a room and she would look at me with those eyes—the same ones that had watched me burn tonight—and she would tell me that she was pregnant.
And I would drop to my knees.
Soon.
I tightened my arm around her and pressed my lips to the top of her head. "Thank you, Tora."
She was already half asleep on my chest.
And I held her in the ruins of everything I used to be and understood finally, that surrender was never the end of power.
It was the beginning of something stronger.
Then, darkness took me.
Chapter twenty-six
Black Water
Kenji
In my dream, I stood naked in a lake of black water. Ink-dark. It came to my waist and clung to my skin like oil. Beneath the surface, I couldn't see my own body or the bottom.
Where am I?
Above me, the sky was a flat, suffocating gray that stretched in every direction. There was no sun, clouds, or horizon.
