I swallow against the lump in my throat. “Yes.” Barely audible. Barely real.
She nods, tears slipping free. “Then this has to be honest. All of it. Because lies will destroy us faster than the Syndicate ever could.”
I nod once, barely, like a man accepting a verdict. “If the Syndicate ever realizes what you mean to me,” I whisper, voice raw, “you’ll be gone before I can stop the bullet. The club can survive my silence… but you won’t survive my enemies.” The truth tastes like blood. And she hears every word.
“And if honesty means goodbye?” I ask.
She closes her eyes, and a tear tracks down her cheek. “Then goodbye.”
The moment she says it, something inside me shatters. Not loudly. Not violently. Quietly. Devastatingly. The way a heart breaks when it knows it’s losing something it never deserved to have.
I reach for her like it’s instinct. She reaches back like it’s fate.
Our mouths meet in a slow, trembling kiss that tastes like salt and sorrow.
Not hungry. Not frantic. Just... goodbye.
I lift her onto the workbench, her legs wrapping around my waist as snowmelt drips from her hair onto my shirt, cold trailson overheated skin. Her fingers slide under my shirt, not to claim but to memorize. The shape of my ribs. The scar beneath my shoulder blade. The way my heart hammers against her palm.
If this is the last time I get to hold her, I think as I pull her closer, I want to carve every second into my bones. I’ve never deserved her. I just hope she lets me pretend I do tonight.
Every touch is archaeology. Every breath, a question with no good answer. Every kiss, a plea for more time than we have.
"Isaiah…" My name breaks open in her throat, and the sound nearly undoes me.
I lay her back gently, the wood cold beneath her, my body warm above. I undress her slowly. Each button, each zipper, a small ritual of devotion. I kiss the hollow of her throat where her pulse flutters like a trapped bird. The curve of her shoulder. The inside of her wrist, where blue veins map her vulnerability.
She trembles. Not from cold.
"Look at me," I whisper.
When she does, her eyes are bright with unshed tears, and I see everything. The woman she was before this, the woman she'll have to become after. I kiss her eyelids closed, tasting salt.
Her hands thread into my hair, anchoring herself to this moment, to me, to the impossible choice of loving someone you're about to lose.
We move together unhurried, like we have all the time in the world when we both know we don't. There's no urgency, no desperation, just the slow, synchronized rhythm of two people trying to hold onto something already slipping away.
I touch her like I'm learning a language I'll never speak again. She responds like every sensation might be the last one that matters.
The garage around us fades. The storm, the snow, the danger waiting beyond these walls, all of it dissolves until there's onlyskin against skin, breath mingling, the exquisite ache of being fully present in a moment you know is ending.
Her fingernails drag lightly down my back, not possessive, just present. Bearing witness. I memorize the sound she makes when I kiss the curve between her neck and shoulder. The way she arches. The way her body knows mine like coming home to a house that's already been sold.
"I love you," she whispers against my mouth, and the confession shatters something in my chest.
"I know." I press my forehead to hers. "I know."
We're both crying now, silent tears mixing with sweat and snowmelt, baptizing this moment in grief for what it is and what it can't be.
When she finally comes apart beneath me, she cries into my mouth, a sound so broken and beautiful it destroys every defense I've ever built. Her body trembles, clenches, and surrenders completely.
I follow moments later with a shudder that starts in my spine and radiates outward. I bury my face in her neck, breathing her in, trying not to shatter into pieces she'll have to sweep up after I'm gone.
We stay tangled together long after the world stops moving.
Her fingers trace patterns on my shoulder blades, constellations, maybe, or maps to places we'll never go together. My hand cups her face, thumb brushing away tears that keep falling.
Neither of us speaks. Words would cheapen this, would try to make sense of something that only makes sense in the language of touch and breath and beating hearts.
