Page 154 of Shatter

They don't.

She looks at it for a long time.

Then she looks up at me, and her green eyes are clear and steady and a little wet.

"I'm not your property." Her voice doesn't shake at all.

My hands go cold.

"You're mine, too." She takes one step closer. "Both ways, Espen. Both ways, or not at all."

"Yes." It's out of me before she's finished the sentence.

She blinks.

Then she laughs, startled and bright and wet, and reaches into her back pocket.

She pulls out something small and folded.

A square of black fabric, the size of her palm, with letters stitched across it in white thread, a little crooked, the stitches uneven in places.

Annika.

"Tindra showed me how." Her face goes pink. "It took me three nights. I stabbed myself about fifty times."

She reaches up and opens the front of my new cut.

She presses the patch flat against the lining on the inside, over the left side, right over my heart, and holds it there with her palm.

"Here." She looks up at me. "Where nobody can see it but you."

My breath stalls.

I cover her hand with mine, pressing it and the patch flat against my chest.

I bend down and press my forehead to hers and stand there shaking in my new colors while she holds her name over my heart.

***

The courtyard's packed by midnight.

Music blasting from somebody's truck, the fire pit roaring, ol' ladies and kids who should've been in bed hours ago running between the bikes with sparklers.

I'm standing by the fire with Gunnar and Ulf and a beer I haven't touched when the clubhouse door opens.

She walks out, and she's wearing it.

The cut, over one of my T-shirts, the soft black leather hugging her shoulders, her short blonde hair gold in the firelight.

She walks down the steps and out into the courtyard, and one by one, people see her.

The noise drops.

Tindra's hand goes over her mouth.

Aziza starts clapping, slow, and Vail joins her.

Then Rati, and then the entire courtyard, brothers whistling and banging beer bottles together.