Page 105 of Veil of Smoke

He nods again, accepting it, and I look down at the ignition, the key still half-turned. I don’t move it, don’t try again, just let it sit.

“I won’t be one more woman who ran,” I say, voice low but fierce, the words a vow I feel in my bones.

The flame in the lantern shivers as the wind snakes through the cracked window. A brief sputter. Then it dims, almost folding in on itself.

Dario reaches into his coat without a word. His fingers close around a small, beaten lighter. Silver scratched down to brass. He flips it once, twice, then sparks it to life. The flame catches, leans sideways, then steadies as he tilts the lighter to the wick.

It flares.

Not loud. Not dramatic. But it holds.

“That’s you,” he says quietly, his voice thick with something too deep for naming. “Small. Fierce. Still burning when everything else fades.”

I stare at the flicker between us. It throws shadows up his cheekbones, dances across the scar at his temple, glows faint against the knuckles that have cracked bone and held me through storms. I should flinch. I should laugh. Instead, I lean closer.

Not to him.

To the flame.

My fingers stop just short of the glass, hovering. Close enough to feel it. Close enough to know it could hurt me if I let it. But I don’t pull back.

“Then I’ll carry it,” I say. “Right into their goddamn house.”

His eyes meet mine. Steady. Steeled. The light catches in them—not soft, not tender, but resolute. No trace of doubt anymore.

“Together, then,” he says. “When night falls again.”

He sets the lighter down. It clinks against the metal console. His hand stays open, palm up between us. I reach for it without thinking, and our fingers mesh in the middle—like the flame needed a witness.

We don’t speak for a while.

Outside, the clouds begin to crack. The first drops tap the windshield, slow and rhythmic. Each one sounds like punctuation on the end of the last chapter. We’re not driving away from this.

We’re driving toward it.

He leans forward, and so do I.

Our foreheads press together, breath to breath, skin to skin, no kiss between us. Just warmth. Stillness. The kind of hush that doesn’t beg to be broken.

“You could be the end of me,” he says into the space between us.

I smile faintly. “Or the start of you.”

His shoulders rise with one deep inhale. I feel it all the way through him. And still, he doesn’t pull back.

Neither do I.

The rain picks up. A soft hiss now. Like the world’s exhale.

The flame still burns.

And for once, I don’t question the heat in my chest. It’s not lust. Not rage. Not grief. It’s fuel. Clear and unwavering.

I close my eyes, pressing my forehead against his a fraction tighter. I let the thought root deep, thick and final.

I was never meant to run.

I was meant to rise.

---