I kissed him back.
We didn’t talk about what it meant. About whether this was a mistake. About how stupid it was to let someone this close when the world was actively trying to kill us.
We just breathed each other’s air until the edges of the night blurred and sleep dragged at our bones.
When I finally closed my eyes, it wasn’t Raptor’s last breath I saw. It was Jersey’s face—Evan’s face—bare inches from mine, watching me like I was the only thing in the room that made sense.
At some point before dawn, still half-lost to exhaustion, we reached for each other again.
Touch turned to heat. Grief turned to something else for a little while. We fit together not like an escape, but like an answer. No fireworks. No slow-motioncinematic bullshit. Just two people clinging to the one soft thing the war hadn’t managed to burn out of them yet.
When morning came, the light was pale and unforgiving through the slats of the blinds.
I woke with my head on his shoulder and his arm around my waist, bodies tangled, sheets twisted. For a second, there was no sound but his breathing and the distant rumble of someone starting a bike too early.
Then the weight of everything crashed back in.
Raptor. Black Velvet. The smell of blood and spilled liquor.
I shifted. He stirred, blinked at the ceiling, then looked down at me.
“Morning,” he rasped.
“That what this is?” I muttered. “Feels more like we never actually left the night.”
He huffed a humorless laugh. His thumb dragged a small, slow line along my hip where his hand rested. It sent a shiver up my spine.
“You okay?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “You?”
“Same,” he replied. “But I’m… better than I would’ve been if I was alone.”
That landed somewhere deep. I tried to look away. His hand came up, fingers tipping my chin back gently.
“You’re allowed to have that,” he said. “A space that doesn’t hurt when you sit in it for five minutes.”
“You volunteering?” I asked, trying for flippant and landing somewhere closer to raw.
“Already did,” he said. “Last night. Probably before that if we’re being honest.”
I swallowed.
“Safe space,” I echoed. “In a Devil’s bed?”
“In our bed,” he corrected, soft. “At least until this is over.”
“Bold assumption,” I said. “Thinking we make it alive to ‘over.’”
“Then we use what we’ve got while we got it,” he replied.
I kissed him again because talking felt too complicated right now.
We didn’t get long.
A knock hit the door. Not frantic. Firm. Businesslike.
“Church in twenty,” 8-Ball’s voice came through the wood. “Blackjack wants everyone fresh and sitting upright. We’re hitting the Vincino’s back today.”
