Page 43 of Bonepetal
“Go,” Jamie says, kissing my cheek and leaving glitter. “Text your safe word. Mine’s ‘Pinterest.’”
I smirk and slip off the deck.
The party snaps shut behind me.
Pine needles replace sticky boards under my boots.
The deck light drops off fast. Two, three steps into the trees and the noise thins like someone shut a door behind me. Pine needles give under my boots; the air turns colder, cleaner—sap, damp bark, lake breath. The hat brim cuts the house out of my sight and the bonfire becomes a low orange smear between trunks.
Something under my sternum gives a little tug—steady, insistent—like a hand at the back of my ribs. The bracelets at my wrists itch. I slide a finger under the lace and the tether sends a chill up my spine, anattagirlI didn’t ask for.
A crow croaks from somewhere in the trees, hidden in the shadows.
Following
Always following.
Ten more feet and he’s just… there.
Leaned against a pine like it’s his, relaxed in that way that says he’s been here a while, watching the path he knew I’d take.
He doesn’t straighten when I stop.
“You left me,” I say. “In the graveyard. In the dirt.”
“I let you sleep,” he says, calm, and a little amused. “The crows were watching. You weren’t in danger, bonepetal.”
“Great,” I deadpan. “Hired bird bodyguards.”
“They’re union,” he says, mouth tipping.
Is he really cracking jokes? Right now? After everything?
“Do us both a favor,” I say, “climb back into your hell hole and leave me alone.”
He laughs low, mean, delighted. “We both know that’s not happening.” He pushes off the tree and starts toward me. I backpedal without meaning to until a big pine stops me cold; sap smears my sleeve and the side of my corset, tacky on skin. He closes the last few inches, close enough the night gives up its chill. “Hate me all you want. You still came. You always will.” His gaze drags from the hat to the slit in my skirt to the toothnecklace at my throat—hungry, certain. “The tether won’t let you walk.”
“I can.”
“You won’t,” he says softly, and somehow crueler for it. His thumb ghosts my mouth. It opens like it remembers him. “You made the vow. You still wear my tooth. You sleep in my hoodie. You burned the Patch to ash—their saints, their rules, and yeah, I put your parents in the ground so they couldn’t feed you to the fucking devil for their gain. But even after all that, you never buriedme. Not us. I’m under your skin, bonepetal. I’m the voice in your throat when you come apart. You can hate it, you can hateme, but you don’t get to pretend you don’t belong to what we made.”
I swallow but don’t give him the word he wants.
He hooks a finger under the lace at my wrists and rips one, then the other. Two sharp snaps in the dark.
“Don’t hide these. Not from me,” he says, calm as laying a knife on a table.
I step back; he follows. Another step and bark bites my shoulders.
He crowds in and braces an arm beside my head, closing me in. His thigh slots between mine; heat rolls off him and the cold of the October air lets go.
“Eyes on me,” he says.
I hold them.
He takes my wrists, lifts them to the trunk—light, and testing.
I don’t pull away.
