The moment stretched. She turned to face me, her hair whipped by the wind, her face so close I could see the freckles across her nose. I brushed a strand from her cheek, slow, so she could stop me if she wanted. She didn’t.
When I kissed her, I went gentle. I waited for the flinch that never came. Her lips were cold, then warming against mine, and the kiss deepened, a slow burn that built until she pressed in, hand catching the back of my neck, holding me there like she was afraid I might vanish.
We broke apart, both a little breathless.
“You don’t do this often, do you?” she said, and for once, there was no armor in her voice.
“No,” I admitted. “I’m not very trusting.”
She rested her head on my shoulder, the cut of her jaw perfect against the curve of my collarbone. “Me either. So let’s not fuck it up.”
I promised her nothing, but I meant everything. We sat together, the sky fading from red to blue to black, and watched the lights of Los Alamos flicker on, each one a signal that somebody else was still out there, still holding on.
Maybe it was enough, for now, to just sit in the dark and not be afraid.
Maybe that’s what hope felt like, after all the bullshit and all the blood: a cold wind, a borrowed jacket, and the sense that, for the first time in your life, someone had chosen to stay.
11
Dean
We rode back through the gathering dark, the Harley chewing up the canyon road in long, hungry pulls. Emily’s arms never loosened from my waist; if anything, she clung tighter as we dropped off the overlook and let the sodium spill of the town reassert itself beneath us. The air was cooler now, less desert than edge-of-mountain, and the wind tunneled straight through my jacket to pick out every raw place I hadn’t realized was left on my skin.
The engine’s vibration ran up my spine, from the seat to cut to sternum, until my bones hummed with it. Emily pressed in so close I could feel the gallop of her pulse through the layers—hers or mine, I couldn’t tell. I let thethrottle out just enough to stretch the ride, not wanting the moment to shrink back to normal too fast. At every stop sign, she held on, chin against my back, her breathing loud enough for me to catch over the idle. It felt like being trusted with a live grenade: exhilarating, but you had to handle it carefully.
We cut through downtown, past shuttered strip malls and the low-lit laundromat where nothing ever closed. No one paid us mind, but I caught our reflection in the windows: two shadows fused by necessity and maybe something more. At her apartment, I killed the engine and let the quiet settle around us. The sudden absence of noise made my ears ring.
Emily climbed off, standing a little unsteady on the pavement. Her hair was wild from the helmet, jaw set, but mouth twitching at the corners like she was fighting a dare. She didn’t move for the door. Instead, she looked me dead-on, the streetlight turning her eyes dark and bottomless.
“Coming up?” she asked. It wasn’t a question, not really.
I nodded, pulled the helmet off, and looped it over the handlebars. My hands felt too big for the keys, but I pocketed them anyway.
Inside, the building was all stale heat and echo, footsteps doubling back from every cinderblock surface. Her apartmentsat at the end of a short hall, door marked with a sticker that said “No Soliciting” in permanent marker. We reached the landing, and she paused, fishing for keys. She dropped them twice before getting the lock to turn. Her hands shook, but I pretended not to see it.
The door opened on a dark interior. She didn’t bother with the lights. Instead, she turned to face me in the glow from the hallway’s single, flickering overhead. It threw her face into relief, high cheekbones and the strong cut of her mouth, hair a mess of shadows on her shoulders.
I waited for her to speak. She didn’t. Instead, she watched as I shrugged off the cut and laid it over the back of a kitchen chair. I set the helmet next to it, the sound sharp in the hush. Emily just stood there, leaning against the inside of the door, arms folded, and watching me.
Something in my chest clicked over. I closed the distance, and she didn’t move, just looked up at me, her jaw defiant but her breath shaking a little. I braced one hand on the doorframe above her head, the other hovering at her hip until I was sure it wouldn’t be unwelcome. She nodded, almost imperceptibly, and I let my palm settle on her waist.
Our mouths found each other like magnets on a cracked table—skewed, a little desperate, but so necessary it made my knees lock. She pulled me closer by the shirt, her fingerstwisting in the fabric, and her body fit against mine like she’d been engineered to plug the holes in my perimeter.
I braced her against the door, careful but not soft, the way you handle a rescue with a mean streak: respectful of the power, but not afraid of the bite. I tasted the edge of her laugh, the salt of her sweat, something wild and bright that lived just under her skin. Her hands moved to my back, slid up and under the hem of my t-shirt, fingers mapping the raised lines of old scars and the fresh bruising from the week’s worth of trouble. She didn’t flinch, not even when she hit the stitched-over wound that still throbbed from the knife.
Her own wounds were less obvious. When I pressed my body to hers, I felt the way she kept her spine straight, refusing to let me fold her in half. I got it. You fight your whole life to hold a shape, you don’t let anyone else break it for you. But she did let me bend her, just enough to get her mouth under mine, to open and let me in.
I could have fucked her in the hallway, right then. I would have, if she’d asked. Instead, she pushed me back a step, eyes locked on mine, and walked backward down the short hall, never breaking the line of sight. I followed, pulse loud enough to drown out the traffic beyond the cinderblock. She stopped at her bedroom door, reached behind her, and flipped the switch.
The room wasn’t what I expected. No frills, just a rumpled bed and a shelf full of animal photos, some framed, some just taped up. She didn’t give me time to process it. She reached for the buttons on my shirt, her hands more sure now, popping them open one by one. I let her, the cotton falling away, and then she ran her palm up my chest, slow, like she was reading braille.
I let my hands do their own exploring, tracing the line from her shoulder to the dip at her waist, then lower, skimming the denim where it hugged her hips. I caught the edge of her t-shirt and tugged, not hard, but enough. She raised her arms and I pulled it over her head. Her skin was warm, scattered with freckles, the bra beneath black and surprisingly delicate.
She reached for my belt, deft and practiced, and I heard the clink as it came undone. She leaned in, biting my bottom lip just hard enough to draw a sound from me, then let it go.
I pushed her gently against the wall, hands on either side of her head. Her gaze flickered over my face, searching for something—I don’t know what, but whatever it was, she found it. She pulled me in for another kiss, deeper this time, her tongue sliding against mine in a way that made my hands shake.
I felt her shiver, and I thought maybe the wall was cold. I broke the kiss to ask, but she shook her head, smiling, and yanked me closer so our bodies aligned. The pressure made my cock jump, trapped in my jeans. She felt it, smirked, then rolled her hips just enough to drive me a little crazy.
