Page 267 of Don’t Say Mafia

Somewhere along the way, he’d slipped out of that skin.

It wasn’t on me who he had become. I’d done everything to try to keep us together. You can’t save someone who’s determined to unravel.

But the boy had been real.

And so had the promise.

I stood, the urn heavy but steady in my hands, and walked toward the tree at the edge of the park. The bark was rough beneath my palm, the roots pushing up through dirt that had always been uneven.

“That’s who I’m saying goodbye to,” I whispered as I knelt beneath its branches. “The promise. Not the failure.”

My fingers rested on the lid, and I realized I felt calmer now.

“You meant it then,” I whispered. “And I know that.”

I would hold on to that part. The sincerity. The way he’d loved me when we were still small and fearless and certain the world could be bent to our will.

The wind brushed against my skin again, tugging at my hair like it wanted this over with. I twisted the lid free, and the ash shifted softly inside the urn.

“I hope you finally found some peace,” I murmured.

The breeze caught my first handful and carried it outward, scattering it into open air.

And I let the boy go.

CHAPTER 19

EDEN

Iwoke slowly, the kind of slow that only came after real, uninterrupted sleep.

For a moment, I stayed where I was, suspended in the unfamiliar luxury of feeling rested. My body felt loose instead of braced, my head clear instead of humming with low-grade dread.

I hadn’t slept this deeply in . . . I couldn’t even remember. Maybe I’d never slept like this, not without jolting awake at every sound. Not without listening for a door slamming, a bottle clanging, or footsteps pacing.

This week, though, my body had simply . . . let go.

And that realization carried a thin thread of guilt through the calm.

It felt wrong that I was finally resting now. That my muscles weren’t braced for whatever Ryan might do next. For the next spiral. The next apology. The next crash. It was as if my nervous system had quietly decided the watch was over and understood it no longer had to stand guard.

I took a deep breath and frowned.

The scent slid in so subtly I didn’t register it at first—until my stomach clenched in response. Clean and dark and impossibly good, it moved through the air, settling low in my body before my brain could catch up. Heat flared in my chest, an instinctive reaction that made no sense and felt embarrassingly intimate.

The smell was everywhere, threaded through every breath I took. It made my pulse pick up, and my breath deepen . . . I sat up, unsettled. This was the third morning that I’d smelled it.

The first time, I’d told myself it was nothing. The second morning, I’d laughed it off again, and chalked it up to my brain inventing things because it wanted to feel something.

But three mornings in a row felt like more than coincidence.

Swinging my legs out of bed, I stood and scanned the room as if the answer might be hiding somewhere obvious. The window was shut, though, and a quick glance toward the front door showed me it was still locked. Everything was exactly as it had been before bed.

I pressed my fingers to my throat and swallowed. “You’re imagining it,” I murmured, though the words didn’t quite convince me.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

My heart lifted instantly at the sound, and even though I knew I shouldn’t be this excited to see him, I still practically raced toward the door. I pulled it open . . . and the anticipation of seeing Jagger drained out of me immediately.