I kiss the corner of her mouth because if I look at her too long, I’ll say something unhinged.
She pulls back, tugging me with her, and I let her. She lowers herself into the grass, and I lie down beside her.
For a while, neither of us says anything.
The grass whispers every time the wind shifts. Above us, the sky is stupidly blue. Too open. Too clean for men like me. I keep one arm bent under my head and stare up at nothing while she breathes beside me, quieter now, the last of that laugh still lodged somewhere under my ribs.
I can feel her there without touching her.
Warm. Close.Real.
A dandelion brushes the back of my hand. I catch the stem between my fingers and pull it free without thinking. Just instinct. White head gone soft and full. Fragile as hell.
I turn it once between my fingers, then hold it out to her.
“Make a wish.”
She takes it gently and rolls the stem between two fingers.
A quiet chuckle leaves her. “That’s not how it works. My mom used to say if you think the wish instead of saying it, it lasts longer.”
I roll onto my side and prop my head on my hand so I can look at her properly.
“Tell me about her.”
She doesn’t answer right away.
Just keeps turning the dandelion stem slowly between her fingers, eyes on the white head like she’s looking at something else entirely.
When she finally speaks, her voice is quieter than before.
“She was warm.”
Ayla swallows.
“Fun,” she says after a second, and there’s the faintest ghost of a smile at the corner of her mouth. “She used to make everything feel like a game when she could tell I was getting scared.” Her thumb brushes over the stem again and again. “If we were out somewhere and it got too crowded, she’d hide me away.”
My eyes stay on her face.
“Hide you where?”
She shrugs one shoulder against the grass. “Anywhere she could. Bathroom stalls. Back rooms. Once under a restaurant table with the clothpulled down all the way to the floor.” Her mouth twitches a little more. “She told me crowds weren’t safe because Baba had a scary job.”
Her lashes lower. “At least that’s what she told me.”
The wind moves over us, bending the grass in soft waves.
“She couldn’t exactly tell an eight-year-old her father was the leader of a syndicate,” she says, and this time the smile that touches her mouth is thin.
My chest tightens.
I watch her profile. The line of her nose. The bruise still fading at her cheek. The way she’s looking up at the sky like it’s easier than looking at me.
“She’d braid my hair too tight,” she says softly. “Always too tight. And then she’d kiss the top of my head after like that fixed it.”
She takes a breath.
“She smelled good. Sweet. I don’t know.” She frowns a little, trying to pull the memory closer. “Like flowers and sugar and something warm.”
