Page 115 of Just One Little Bargain

The third landmark is Widow’s Crossing. The bridge waits at the bend in the river, so narrow that two people would have to turn sideways to pass each other. Its railings are bleached almost white, slick with damp. Below, the current moves with a quiet, stubborn pull, dragging moonlight through the supports in broken strips. Daisy stops us along the near bank, where the river chill slips under my coat.

“This bridge has come to represent something the whole town understands: what it means to stand between one thing and another and try to hold on.”

I glance down at Evie.

Eleven days.

The number arrives uninvited, the way it always does now, and it lodges somewhere below my ribs.

“Couples walk this bridge. It’s where people promise to find their way back.” Daisy lowers her voice. “Who wants to cross?” Her attention lands on the two of us with all the subtlety of a spotlight.

Evie exhales through her nose. “She’s unbearable.”

“She’s brilliant.”

“Those two states coexist.” She eyes the bridge. “We’re crossing it. Don’t make it a big deal.”

But it became one the moment Daisy said find their way back, because the words catch on the hope I’ve been trying very hard not to name: that Hell could take me away and some stubborn part of me would still know the way back to her. If souls remember anything, mine will remember Evie. Leaving her is no longer the worst outcome; forgetting her is.

I thread my fingers through hers. Her hand is small in mine, callused at the base of each finger, and as we step onto the planks together, the wood lets out a long, low protest beneath our feet.

Halfway across, she stops.

Evie turns into me, and the bridge seems to narrow around us. Her hand lifts to my coat, not quite touching skin, only catching the edge of the lapel and holding me there.

As if I’d go anywhere.

She tips her face up to mine in the dark. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Because it’s hideously unfair to be given this much wonder on a deadline.

For fifteen years, my life has been contracts, punishments, and ledgers. Now I finally have something I want to keep, and I’m already running out of time. It shouldn’t be possible to meet someone this late and still feel as if some part of you has been moving toward her forever.

“I’m using every scrap of restraint I have not to say something that will make this more complicated than it already is.”

Her fingers splay wider over my chest. “Then don’t tell me.”

“I wasn’t going to make you a promise.”

“Good.” Her jaw loosens. “I hate promises.”

“I know.”

“They’re structurally unsound. No load-bearing capacity whatsoever.” She goes up on her toes and sets her lips at the hinge of my jaw. The kiss is barely more than pressure, but it hits like she’s put her lips directly to a wound. Then she takes a fistful of my shirt and brings my mouth down to hers.

What stuns me is where she’s chosen to kiss me: out here, halfway across a bridge, with her sister and seven strangers ten feet away. Evie guards everything, and she’s doing this in plain sight.

I groan into her mouth and give in. My arm locks around her waist to drag her flush against me while the other slides into her hair. She gasps and I swallow it, kissing her back like the world ends in eleven days. Which, for me, it does.

Wolf whistles erupt from the group.

“Oh, come on,” Theo says. “That’s so gross.”

I can’t imagine a less accurate assessment, but he’s young and therefore prone to catastrophic errors of judgment.

Chapter 34

Evie