Page 16 of Bonepetal
I will hunt god if u die
Me
cute. kiss jamie thru a cider donut for me
Miles
rude and hot. go home rn, Salem.
I slidethe phone into my pocket and keep walking. Gravel gives way to the old asphalt strip that passes for a road. A single streetlight buzzes at the corner like it’s chewing the dark and losing. My boots thud hollow. The crow drops from a pole and ghosts along beside me at head-height, then ahead, then back, flitting like a thought I can’t shake.
“Thanks for the escort,” I mutter.
The night inhales.
It’s subtle. A small theft of heat from the pocket of air around my throat. I know that feeling. It’s the moment before a hand covers your mouth. It’s the breath you take before you run but already know you won’t get away.
I don’t run. Running makes noise. Running is an admission. So I keep walking exactly this fast, exactly this measured. My palms sweat; I rub them on my dress and pretend I’m smoothing wrinkles.
A sound to my left, beyond the cattails. Not a step. A decision. The kind of quiet that has weight.
My heart knocks twice and then slips into a harder rhythm, one I know too well. The same one it found under Finn’s mouth the first time he kissed me in secret. The same one it kept while he saidmineinto my throat, a whisper. A fucking brand.
“Don’t,” I whisper to the night, and I don’t know if I’m telling it not to stop or not to start.
Ahead, the last turn before Main Street opens like a mouth. The crow leaps from the wire and sails it in one clean stroke, a black underline. I follow. The fog thickens at the corner, like pouring milk. The air there smells like damp stone, and long-dead fire.
My steps slow without me. My skin knows something my brain refuses. I want to turn around and I want to keep walking. I want to be caught and I want to never be seen again and all of it stacks on my ribs like hands.
“Finn,” I say barely, like if I say it small the night won’t hear.
But the night hears.
The crow croaks once. The sound is a pin in fabric, holding the dark taut so nothing slips.
I keep moving. Because if I stop I’ll shatter. Because if I run he’ll think I don’t want this. Because if I call out again and it’s not him I’ll dissolve.
Main Street’s first lamp spits weak light onto the sidewalk in front of the old mill. The bricks sweat. The windows are dead eyes. My reflection ghosts in one pane and startles me, then stands, stubborn as ever—short hair still damp at the ends, jacket zipped to my throat, a girl trying to look like steel with moth wings pinned underneath.
Something like footsteps unfurls behind me. Too soft for boots. Too certain for wind.
I swallow hard and force my voice out. “If you’re some asshole in a mask,” I say to the dark, “I have a key between my knuckles and a mean right hook. I will ruin your whole fucking Halloween.”
Silence, but the fog breathes.
I close my eyes for one heartbeat and let the truth bloom where it’s been waiting all night—I want it to be him. I want it like oxygen. I want it like sin.
The veil is thin enough, and the crow is watching.
I open my eyes and keep walking. “Catch up,” I whisper, to the night, to him, to the part of myself that never stopped running toward the woods and never will. “If you’re coming, then come.”
The crow launches, arrowing ahead, a black stitch pulling the street tight. I follow, every step a dare and a prayer, every breath a confession I won’t say out loud.
CHAPTER 4
FINN
The fire escape groans under my weight as I climb, iron teeth biting into my palms, rust flakes clinging to my boots. I know this route already, I’ve taken it in my head a hundred times watching her lights flicker out at night. At the top, the window is stubborn, swollen with paint, but it gives when I wedge my knife under the latch and lever it.
