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Marking him.

9 1 23 21. On his chest, right over his heartbeat. Scars that would remain, and only us would understand it. For the first time it doesn’t follow a perfect logic. But it makes sense.

Blood is falling down his chest, it’s in my fingers, but he doesn’t care, he doesn’t seem hurt at all. He looks down right away, tracing the path of my fingers cleaning up the mess I made. “What does that mean?” he asks.

“‘I’m with you,’” I reply, but he keeps looking at it like he’s trying to understand it.I haven't moved my hand yet, I keep tracking the numbers, one by one. “It’s just how I shorten it,” I say. “In my head.”

He glances up, smiling, proud almost to have this on him forever. “How?”

“I don’t keep the full sentence when you say it,” I add. “It breaks into parts when I repeat it too much.” I tap lightly on his chest. “It becomes smaller so it’s easier to hold.”

I point to the first number. “9 is I.” Then the next. “1 is am.” I pause, trying to explain it properly. “23 is W. And 21 is U.” Then I hesitate, because I start overthinking how to explain it. “Sometimes if the sound is too long, I just compress the letters again because it’s—” I stop mid-sentence. It’s getting too complicated.

He laughs softly, before grabbing my face and pulling me closer, “I get it, Mireya. I like it that way,” he says.

I look at him, lost in the affection and warmth I find in his eyes. “What way?”

He nods at my hand on his chest. “The messy version. The way your head actually does it. Not the perfect explanation.”

“It’s only going to make sense for us,” I whisper, and I stop trying to fix it.

He leans in and kisses me, slowly like it doesn’t need to make more sense than that, and when he pulls back he repeats softly, “912321.” A pause. “I’m with you.”

I try to pull my hand back because I don’t want to put more pressure on his wound, but he stops me gently. “Leave it,” he says. “And kiss me again.”

So I do. And when I stop thinking about it, I realize I’m not even trying to translate it anymore. I’m just here. With him.

105

Mireya

Play - Yellow by Coldplay

A Galaxy For You

Less petals are missing now.

I notice it when I look through the sketches I made that night. A week has passed since he and I spent the night at his house, and somehow, even though I haven’t finished a single drawing, they’re better. The hands are almost touching now, one is his, the veins, the tattoos, I know it’s his. Mine stops at the wrist, for now at least. I don’t know what that means. But it’s a step closer to his goal. One final drawing at the end of this year.

We both missed St. Ellesta the next day. I asked Hayzel to cover for me, which, of course, meant answering a million questions afterward. I told her I’d been with Damien to ‘work’ on a project. She laughed, asked even more questions, and eventually reassured me that Blue could stay with her for as many days as I needed when I asked her to keep him until I’m back.

I just needed a day. One away from life. One close to him.

I miss Blue. I wish I could bring him here soon, he’d love the windows…

I didn’t tell her anything else.

Then Tuesday came, and reality came with it. Classes started again for me. We went back to the academy, back to our routines, back to pretending we were nothing more than student and teacher.

And he stopped talking about the case. At first, it bothered me. The case was what had brought us together in the first place. It was the reason I had started spending so much time around him, the reason we had gotten close enough for everything else to happen. Now it seemed like he had pushed it aside. I tried to do the same. But I couldn’t.

The Chain Poet was still there, sitting at the back of my mind no matter how hard I tried to bury him. The man who took my mother’s life, the man who took so many others.

So I kept going through the files. Again and again. Alone in my bed as Blue curled against me. Between classes whenever the need came back and I had to focus on something else. I reread everything we had, looking for something we might have missed, some detail that could move us forward. But we were still missing the donor list, and without it, there was only so far we could go.

So I focused on what I could control. His courses. My work. Anything that could keep my mind busy. Anything that could keep me from thinking about the poison in the makeup bag. I’m trying to stop. Some days are easier than others, most aren’t. I miss it every day. The blades are appealing too, but I learned how to use them so that no one would notice, not even him. My body reminds me of it too. The sweating, the restlessness, the exhaustion that somehow never feels like enough. I keep telling myself it will get easier if I just keep going, if I keep fighting it.

And whenever it gets particularly bad, Damien shows up at my dorm.