Hers To Choose

Chapter Five

I’ve been walking the same forty feet of river path for an hour, and the river still hasn’t told me to stop.

Down at the wall.

Back to the bridge pylon.

Down at the wall. The tide’s out, and the stones are slick and black and smell like rust and old pennies. My boots know every c***k by now. If I stand still, I start thinking, so I don’t stand still. My right palm is bleeding through the bandage again. I peel back the edge to check. Bad idea. The line across my palm is red and angry and wet, and the gauze comes away pink.

Mars took one look at it this morning and said, “You’re dramatic about pain, Marchetti,” like that’s a character flaw and not a survival strategy. Easy for him. His bandage looked like it came out of a first-aid manual. Mine looks like I lost a fight with a cheese grater.

I press it back down and keep walking.

Above me, Point Street Bridge hums with traffic heading home. Down here, there’s nothing. No gulls. No splash of anything moving in the water. The river at low tide has a particular kind of quiet, like a held breath, and everybody who grew up in this neighborhood knows not to stand too close to the edge when it gets like this. Nobody ever said why. Nobody had to.

I kick a stone into the shallows. It doesn’t splash so much as disappear.

“Great,” I tell the river. “Very normal. Love that.”

Then the thing in my chest turns. It’s been there since last night, since the burn: a thread hooked somewhere under my ribs, pulled tight, with the far end somewhere across the city. All day it’s been steady. Now it swings, like a compass needle finding north.

North is coming down the hill.

I know who it is before I turn around.

Of course I do. There’s only one person on the other end of that thread who’d come looking. I turn around anyway, because I’m an i***t. Sofia comes down the path with her coat half on, one side buttoned wrong, her right hand jammed in her pocket and her jaw set like she’s going to break it on somebody. Probably me.

“Hey,” I say. “You look—”

“Don’t.”

“—cold. I was going to say cold.”

“You were going to say something stupid.”

“Fair. Historically, yeah.” I spread my hands, then remember the bleeding one and put it behind my back. Too late. Her eyes go straight to it. She stops a few feet away. Close enough that I can see her breath. Close enough that the thread in my chest goes quiet, like it got where it was going.

“What did you do?” she asks.

“Today? Walked. A lot. Insulted the river—”

“Dante.”

There it is. My name, flat, no patience left in it. I’ve known her since she was the kid in the corner at every family dinner, counting the forks. I know that voice. That voice doesn’t laugh at the second joke.

So I don’t make it.

“Matteo told you,” I say.

“Matteo told me the rules. Five of you. Nobody claims me alone.” Her mouth twists on the word. “Nonna told me about La Veglia. And that the pact is a patch, not a cure. She’s been holding me up for four years and nobody bothered to mention it.” Her voice cracks on that last part, and she covers it with anger, fast, the way I’d cover it with a joke. “So nobody’s told me what you did. Just what it is.”

I look at the water. It’s easier than looking at her.

“Roc came up with it,” I say. “The pact, the rule, who’d be in it. He picked us.”

“I figured.”

“He didn’t pick me first.” I make myself turn back to her. “I made him. He had four names, and I walked into the warehouse and told him he had five, and if he didn’t like it he could fight me for it. He didn’t like it. He didn’t fight me either.”

She stares at me.

“I’d have bled for you anyway, Sof. Without the vow, without any of it.” It comes out before I’ve checked it, the way most things do, and I don’t take it back. “All the vow does is mean I can’t do it halfway.”

The wind moves off the water. She doesn’t say anything for a long moment, and I have no idea whether I just made it better or worse.

“Nobody asked me,” she says finally. Quieter now.

“No.”

“You don’t get to decide things about my life in a warehouse at midnight and call it love.”

“I didn’t call it anything.”

“You just did.”

Okay. Yeah. I did.

“Roc won’t answer my texts,” she says, looking away. “I sent him three. He read every one.”

I know. He’s had his phone in his hand all day, staring at it like it’s a live grenade.

“He’s not ignoring you,” I say. “Not the way you think.”

“Then what?”

“I’m guessing. He doesn’t tell me anything either.” I scrub the back of my good hand across my mouth. “But I think he doesn’t trust himself to answer. I think if he types one word to you, he’s worried he won’t stop.”

Her eyes come back to mine, sharp. Measuring. She should leave. I’d leave, if I were her. She’s angry, and she has every right to be, and I’m part of what she’s angry at. She doesn't go, but sits down on the low stone wall, pulls her coat tighter, and looks at the river.

After a second, I sit down too. Not close. The burn hits both of us at once. No warning. One second I’m sitting there and the next my palm is on fire, white-hot, straight through the bandage and up my wrist. Sofia makes a sharp sound beside me and doubles over her hand. I stand up too fast, my boot hits the wet stone wrong, and the world tips.

Her hand lands at the small of my back.

That’s it. Just her palm, flat, steadying me.

She doesn’t think about it. I can tell, because she goes still the second she realizes she’s done it. So do I. The burn fades to a warm, low throb. The thread in my chest is pulled so tight I can feel it from her end too, which isn’t possible, except right now it is. Her hand is still on my back. Neither of us moves it.

I can hear her breathing. I can count the inches between us. There aren’t many.

The wind comes off the water, cold enough to sting, and she shivers.

I don’t decide to do it. I shrug out of my jacket and put it around her shoulders, over her half-buttoned coat, and tug the collar closed under her chin. My knuckles brush her jaw. Barely. Her hand slides off my back.

We’re standing so close now that I’d only have to lean in. And there it is between us, the rule, plain as a line drawn in chalk on the stones. None of you. Not alone. I said those words last night with my hand bleeding over a circle of salt. I meant them. I mean them now. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, stepping back.

One step. Cold air rushes into the space where she was. She looks at me like she’s about to say something, and I don’t know what I’ll do if she does.

So I look up.

Roc is standing on the bridge.

He’s at the railing, dead center, perfectly still, the streetlights coming on behind him. I don’t know how long he’s been there. Long enough. His face is too far away to read, but I don’t need to read it. I know how Roc stands when he’s holding himself together with both hands. Sofia follows my gaze. Her breath catches.

Roc doesn’t wave. Doesn’t call down. He just looks at us, at her in my jacket, at the step I took back, and then he turns and walks away across the bridge, steady and unhurried, his back straight, until the traffic swallows him.

The river stays silent. The wind cuts straight through my shirt to the place where my jacket used to be.