Page 101 of Shattered Promise

She shifts so she’s staring at the stars again. “I still get nervous around you,” she says, so quiet I almost miss it. “Even now. Especially now.” She laughs, but there’s no bite to it. “I used to have this epic crush. Like, full-on, write-your-name-in-sharpie-on-my-wrist, build entire fanfics in my head about what it would be like to—” She cuts off, then blows out a breath. “It was always you, Mase. Even when you didn’t notice me.”

My brain short-circuits, hearing her lay it all out like that. “I always noticed you.”

The words are out before I can think better of them, and for a second I’m almost embarrassed. But Abby just turns her head, looking at me with this expression that’s so open it’s almost a dare. Her lips part, and I can’t tell if she’s about to laugh or cry or some wild mix of the two.

She sucks in a breath, lets it out slowly. “Except for that summer at the bonfire,” she says, so quietly it’s almost just a thought. “When I let you take me home, and you forgot about me the next morning.” She’s not accusing, not exactly—her voice is too soft, too careful. But I can feel the old bruise of it between us, pulsing like a second heartbeat.

I go rigid, not from guilt—because the memory is a blank, a black hole, and her words are a match to gasoline—but from the sharp, sick twist of realizing I don’t know what she means. My heart scrabbles for purchase, for some hidden file of shame I should have, but all I get is static.

“I didn’t,” I say, and my voice is too rough, the words like gravel. “What are you talking about?”

She keeps her face turned to the sky, the stars glittering above us, the fire popping in front of us. “It’s not a big deal,” she says, shrugging, except I know her well enough to hear the catch in her voice.

I ease her upright, blanket and all, so she has to look at me. “Hey,” I say, and then softer, “Talk to me.”

Her laugh is brittle at the edges. “It’s ancient history, Mason.”

“Tell me,” I say, because the idea of her holding on to this hurts more than whatever stupid thing I did.

She sighs, breath fluttering the hairs at her temple, and for a long minute, all I hear is the crickets and the slow draw of her lungs. Finally, she shifts her weight, knees curling a little toward her chest, and looks at me sideways through her lashes.

“I’d just celebrated my nineteenth birthday, and it was the annual quarry bonfire,” she says slowly. “We were hanging out, having a couple of drinks, you know, the usual bonfire stuff. Then we walked back to your house and we spent the night together. In your room—in yourbed. It was my first time, Mase.”

She says it so matter-of-factly that I almost miss the way her voice cracks at the end. The bonfire, the walk, the night in my bed. I try to find the memory, but it’s slippery, a film reel that’s been overexposed until all that’s left is a haze of heat and gold and the taste of her name in my mouth.

I search for the memory, clawing at the edges of it, but all I find is the flashes of a fever dream and the sickening certainty that I’ve let her down before I even had the chance to try.

All those years ago, I was a mess of hormones and broken glass, still learning how to be a person, let alone someone she could trust with that kind of thing. My mouth feels dry enough to crack.

“Abby, I—” I start, but I have no idea what comes next. Sorry doesn’t touch it; sorry is a band-aid on a bullet wound. “Fuck, baby, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

I reach for her hand, threading our fingers together until it’s physically painful to let her go.

She gives me a lopsided smile, the one she uses to pretend she’s fine. “It’s okay. I know you don’t remember. You guys had just graduated.”

“All this time you thought—” I cut myself off, shaking my head as guilt weighs down my tongue. “I’m sorry, Abby. I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you, if you let me.”

She sighs, voice dissolving in the smoke. “It wasn’t a bad experience, if that’s what you’re worried about. You were perfect—except for the whole not remembering part,” she says, waving her hand around. “It just always felt like analmost. Like something that happened to someone else. I guess I wanted it to matter to you, too.”

“Abby.” I say her name like a prayer, like an invocation. “You always matter.”

She shakes her head, almost laughing at the earnestness of it, but the sound dissolves and leaves us sitting there, shoulder to shoulder, with nothing but the pulse between our joined hands.

I don’t know how to fix the past. All I can do is show her now.

So I tug her toward me, just enough that her thigh slots over mine and her hair falls between us like a curtain. The fire flickers behind her, gold and hungry. I take her face in both of my hands and tilt it up, giving her every second to say no, but she doesn’t move. Her lips part, her breath trembles against my skin, and then I kiss her.

Not quick or polite or any of the ways you’re supposed to atone for old mistakes. This is the kind of kiss that asks permission and gives it, the kind that promises I’m here, I’m not leaving, I am never forgetting you again. She makes this small, desperate sound in the back of her throat and I feel it everywhere, an echo of every silent wish I ever made for her.

Her hands fist in the front of my shirt, dragging me closer, and closer, until the blanket falls away and her arms are bare and goose-bumped in the night. I run my palm down the length of her spine, feeling the way she arches into me, the way she shivers and presses her mouth harder to mine, like she needs to fuse us together.

She tastes like sweet marshmallows from the s’mores she insisted we make earlier and something uniquely her.

The world narrows to the way she fits in my hands, the way she sighs my name against my lips, the way she is both the fire and what it’s burning down.

When I break away, it’s only to breathe, and even then, I can’t go far. I rest my forehead against hers, eyes closed, hands steady on her cheeks. I want to say something, to carve this moment out and keep it somewhere safe for the next time she forgets how much she matters. But all that comes out is her name, soft andhoarse, over and over until the word loses meaning and becomes just the ache in my chest.

She laughs, breathless, and drags her fingers along my jaw. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to you kissing me like that,” she admits, voice shaky with wonder.

---