Chapter 19 - Seraphina #2
“What are you doing here?” he said, finally. His voice was flat. Not angry—just tired.
I opened my mouth, but my throat closed around the words. “I’m sorry,” I managed.
He laughed, a dead sound. “For what? Telling the truth?”
I shook my head. “For not telling you first. For doing it on my own.”
He walked toward me, slow, wiping his hands on the shirt. I could see the blue of old bruises on his ribs, the thin red line of a fresh cut on the forearm. He stopped a meter away.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Not anymore.”
I searched his face for anything—a flicker of hope, a hint of forgiveness. There was nothing.
I tried again. “They’re going to leave you alone, now. The Justice Department. The Bureau. I made sure of it.”
He looked past me, at the Civic, at the open world.
“You think they ever leave anyone alone?” he said. “You think that’s how this works?”
He stepped around me, picked up the wrench, and set it in the cradle of the engine block. His hands were steady, but the motion was all for show.
I closed the door behind me and let the sound of it settle.
“I just wanted to see you,” I said, voice barely audible.
He nodded. “You’ve seen me.”
The silence was worse than before, because now it belonged to both of us.
I moved closer, close enough to smell the sweat and gasoline. He didn’t move away.
“I’m not going back,” I said, meaning the lab, the way things were, all of it.
He shrugged. “You don’t have to do that.”
I reached out, hand trembling, and touched his shoulder. The muscle twitched under my palm, but he didn’t shrug me off.
“I’m sorry,” I said again.
He turned, caught my wrist in his hand, and held it there, not gentle but not rough. He stared at me, unblinking, like he was trying to memorize my face before it vanished.
“You did what you had to do,” he said. “So did I.”
I wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. Not now, not here.
I leaned into him, just enough to feel his heat.
For a second, we just stood there, breathing in time.
He stared at me, trying to calibrate the truth of it. Then, all at once, he grabbed me by the back of the neck and pulled me in, mouth to mine, teeth clashing, the taste of metal and smoke and regret.
We collided, both of us starving for the violence of it. My hands tangled in his shirt, fingers searching for leverage. He spun me against the bench, knocking over a tray of parts that skittered to the floor. I didn’t care. The world had already gone to hell; this was just another descent.
He hoisted me onto the bench, wrenching my legs apart, kissing me with a hunger that bordered on desperation.
His breath was ragged, each exhale a confession.
My own hands found the hem of his shirt, pulling it up to expose the lattice of bruises, the old burn scars, the place where his body refused to quit.
He groaned, low and wounded, as I dug my nails into his back. He bit my lower lip hard enough to draw blood, and the taste of it set something loose in both of us.
“You’re crazy,” he whispered.
“So are you,” I gasped, breathless.
He peeled off my shirt, buttons snapping loose. The cold of the air hit my skin, and then his hands were everywhere—rough, relentless, finding every old scar, every fresh hurt, as if he needed proof that I was still whole.
He kissed my throat, my jaw, the hollow at the base of my neck, then worked lower, tongue and teeth tracing the line of my clavicle. I clung to him, refusing to let go even as the pain from his grip radiated down my arms.
He reached between my legs and tore at the waistband of my pants, the fabric yielding with a pop. I yanked at his belt, got it half undone before he slammed me back against the wall, mouth crushing mine, both of us sucking the air from each other’s lungs.
He entered me in a single motion, no warning, no apology.
The shock of it made me gasp, nails raking his back, legs locking around his waist. He fucked me like a man digging his way out of a coffin, all force and no finesse.
I met him thrust for thrust, every inch of my body burning with the need to erase the last hour, the last day, the last decade.
We didn’t speak. There were no words left.
The climax hit like a seizure, muscles locking, eyes rolling back. I buried my face in his shoulder, biting down to keep from screaming.
When it was over, he just held me there, both of us sweating, shivering, neither willing to be the first to let go.
We stayed like that for a long time, the world outside reduced to the click of the cooling engine, the drip of oil on the concrete, and the steady, stubborn rhythm of two hearts refusing to stop.
Eventually, he pulled away, hands gentle now, smoothing the hair back from my face.
He kissed me, softer this time.
We were both still broken, but for the first time, it felt like something we could live with.
***
We ended up on his couch, the only piece of furniture in the room that didn’t look like it had survived a war.
The springs dug into my hips, and the blanket was an afterthought—thrift store fleece, so thin the edges curled like old leaves.
We were still mostly naked, our bodies cooling down in the draft from the busted window above the headboard, the TV casting blue shadows over everything.
I lay with my head on his chest, ear tuned to the low subsonic of his heart. He held the remote in one hand, cycling through the channels with a patience he’d never shown for anything else in his life. The news was on, as always—muted, but not enough to keep us from reading the crawl.
The newscaster wore a helmet of blonde hair and an expression somewhere between sympathy and rabid delight.
The screen behind her split into thirds: my face, the podium, a looping B-roll of the ranger station crime scene.
My glasses made me look older. The text at the bottom read: “LOS ALAMOS SCIENTIST brEAKS SILENCE. MC CONNECTIONS UNCLEAR.”
Nitro’s arm tightened around me. I could feel the old rage in him, the way it always hovered just below the skin, ready to ignite at the slightest friction.
“They never fucking quit,” he muttered.
I shrugged, the motion barely lifting his arm. “They have a job. So do we.”
He grunted, flipping the channel. More coverage, more angles. This one had found an old graduation photo—me with longer hair, a forced smile, and a dress I barely remembered owning. The anchor called me “controversial” three times in one minute.
I almost laughed. “I always wanted to be famous.”
He kissed the top of my head, but the gesture was automatic, like he was setting a waypoint he could return to if he got lost.
The room was full of blue light and the smell of us—sex, sweat, the chemical burn of adrenaline working its way out through our pores. I listened to the television, then to the silence, then back to the television, as if one would explain the other.
A knock at the door. Neither of us moved. After a second, the knob turned, and Augustine poked his head in, eyebrows doing half the talking.
“They dropped it,” he said. “Just now. Justice Department. All charges. You’re clear, brother.” He looked at me, then at Nitro, and gave a half-smile. “Guess you’re a hero now.”
Nitro snorted, flipping Augustine off. “Get out.”
Augustine left, closing the door with the soft click of someone who knew exactly what was happening on the other side.
I shifted, rolling to my back, the blanket pooling at my waist. On the TV, a lawyer with the jawline of a wood chipper was already speculating about my “dangerous liaisons” and how the government’s reversal was a cover-up.
Nitro watched the screen, but his eyes were far away.
“What now?” I asked.
He didn’t answer right away. He let the question hang in the stale air, bouncing from the cinderblock walls to the old motorcycle parts on the shelves to the soft, sticky place where our legs tangled under the blanket.
Finally, he said, “You go back to work. I keep the heat off your back. World keeps spinning.”
“Just like that,” I said.
He nodded, but it was a lie.
I propped myself up on one elbow, staring at the side of his face. The scar on his jaw looked newer in the TV light. “We could leave, you know. Start over.”
He smiled, sad and sweet, the kind of smile that never got shown to anyone outside this room. “We’d last a week before we burned it all down.”
I traced the line of his ribs with my finger, feeling the places where the bones didn’t quite match. “Not if we didn’t have to fight so hard.”
He pulled me back in, tucking my head under his chin. “You always fight. It’s who you are.”
I let the silence take us. The TV cycled through the same stories, the same footage, the same endless crawl of disaster and accusation. I watched it all, eyes open and unblinking, until the blue light was the only thing I could see.
He stroked my hair, slow, as if counting the seconds between the next siren, the next phone call, the next time the universe would try to erase us.
I closed my eyes, let the sound of his heartbeat override the noise of the world.
For now, we were safe.
For now, we were enough.
The blue light flickered, and the shadows on the wall kept us company until morning.