Page 26 of Reaper

“I’m not her.”

“I know.”

“Then stop treating me like I am.”

Something broke. Not visibly. Not in the way things break when they hit the floor. This was quieter. Internal. The particular collapse that happens when a wall you’ve been holding up, for so long you’ve forgotten it’s there, finally gives way under a pressure you didn’t know you were carrying.

I stood.

The chair creaked. Springs complaining, leather groaning, and then I was on my feet and the distance between us was inches, not feet, and her hand was still on my knuckle and my other hand found her waist without me telling it to. The fabric of the gray sweater was thin under my palm. Warm. I could feel the ridge of her ribs through the wool, the architecture of a body that had been holding itself together with both hands for longer than either of us wanted to admit.

She didn’t step back. Didn’t pull away. Just stood there with her eyes on mine and her finger on my split knuckle and her breath coming short and controlled the way it did when she was measuring something important.

“I can’t lose you,” I said.

The words came out before I could catch them. Raw. Unfiltered. The kind of admission that lives so deep you don’t know it’s there until the room asks for it, and then it comes out carrying the weight of everything you’ve been refusing to name.

Her hand left my knuckle. Found my face instead. Palm against my jaw, fingers pressing into the stubble along my cheek, and the warmth of it was so immediate that I felt it in my chest like a physical thing, a pressure behind my sternum that had nothing to do with breathing and everything to do with the woman standing inches away with her eyes wide, her mouth set and her thumb tracing the line of my jaw like she was memorizing it.

“Then don’t,” she said.

I kissed her.

Not gentle. Not careful. The kind of kiss that happens when two people have been standing in the same eight feet of space for too long and the air between them has stopped being air and started being something else entirely. Her mouth was warm. Soft. Her lower lip had that slight unevenness I’d noticed in the kitchen, and I felt it against mine, the texture of a body I’d been cataloging without meaning to since the fence.

Her hands found my chest. Gripped the fabric of my shirt, knuckles pressing into the muscle underneath, and the pressure was enough that I could feel her pulse through her fingertips where they dug into my skin. I backed her toward the cot. One step, two, and the metal frame hit the backs of her knees and she sat down hard, springs whining, and I followed her down, my weight settling over hers, one hand bracing against the wall beside her head.

The cot creaked. Loud. Metal against metal, springs complaining under the sudden load, and the sound carried in the small room and neither of us cared. Her fingers were in my hair now, gripping, pulling, and my mouth found her neck and the taste of her skin was salt and something floral and the warmth of a body that had been cold for too long and was finally letting itself warm up.

I pushed her sweater up. Her hands helped, pulling the fabric over her head, and it landed somewhere on the concrete behind the cot. The bruise along her left ribs was darker up close. Purple-green, spreading outward from the center where the impact had been hardest, and my mouth found the edge of it and traced the discoloration with a gentleness that surprised both of us. Her breath caught. Sharp. Audible. Her fingers tightened in my hair.

“Reaper,” she said. Just my name. Not a question. Not a stop. Just my name in her mouth, rough with something that hadn’t been there before, and the sound of it did something to my chest that I didn’t try to name.

Her hands found my belt. Clumsy. Urgent. Fingers working the buckle with a determination that made my breath shorten. I caught her wrists. Gentle. Not stopping, just slowing, her eyes found mine in the dim light and whatever she saw there made her still.

“Slow,” I said. The word came out rougher than I meant it. Stripped. Raw. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Something shifted in her face. The control she’d been holding with both hands since the fence, since the gravel lot, since the room with the deadbolt between us and the world—it softened. Not broke. Softened. The way something softens when it realizes it doesn’t have to hold itself together quite so hard anymore.

I kissed her again. Slower this time. My mouth on hers, then her jaw, then the pulse point beneath her ear where her heartbeat thrummed against my lips. Her hands found my shirt and pushed it up, palms flat against my chest, tracing the scars she found there—old ones, years old, the particular topography of a body that had been doing this work for longer than she’d been alive. Her fingertips lingered on each one. Reading them. Memorizing them. The way she memorized everything.

The cot creaked. Springs complaining, metal frame shifting against the concrete floor, and the sound was loud in the small room and neither of us cared. Her breath came short against my ear. Rasping. Controlled, like she was holding back sounds she wasn’t ready to make yet. My hand found the waistband of her jeans. Button. Zipper. The metal teeth gave way under my fingers, and her hips lifted to help me, and the cot springs whined louder.

“Wait,” she said.

I stopped. Hand still at her waistband, fingers curled into the denim, and I looked at her. Really looked. Her eyes were wide. Dark. Carrying something that hadn’t been there a second ago—not fear, not exactly. Something closer to certainty. The kind that comes from a decision made in the space between heartbeats.

“Trust me,” she whispered.

The words landed in the dark between us. Three of them. Delivered soft, against my mouth, her breath warm on my lips, and what she was asking sat in my chest like something I’d been carrying for longer than I wanted to admit.

I didn’t say I trusted her. Didn’t say anything. Just lowered my mouth to hers again and kissed her with a thoroughness that made her fingers dig into my shoulders and her breath catch in a way that wasn’t controlled anymore, and the cot creaked under us, and for seventeen seconds—I counted them—nothing existed outside the eight feet of concrete and the woman beneath me.

Then my phone screen flared.

The light hit the ceiling. Blue-white, harsh, cutting through the dim room like something alive, and the radio crackle that followed was compressed, urgent, the words fighting through static before they found shape.

“Reaper. East gate. Someone carved her name into the fence post. Fresh. Tools still on the ground. No visual on the cutter. Perimeter sweep negative. Moving to check the cameras.”