Ch.25

Carolina’s room was the smallest, a hutch above the covered porch where the dampness crept in through the carpet and the windows wouldn’t latch. She sat cross-legged on her duvet with the envelope, turning it by its corners, staring at the blunt, ceremonial print of her name and the snake-trail return address. She had already read the letter twice, but it kept calling her back in the way only a wound could.

This would be the third time—this time, out loud.

She braced herself, then began, doggedly, in a whisper: “I know you think you’re lost. You’re not. The hunger is the answer, not the problem.” She choked, skipped ahead. “You are more like me than you think. I do not regret what I did. Only that you hated me for it.”

On the second page, a crease caught her fingernail, and for a moment she was a child again: sitting on a stool in a greasy kitchen, forced to lift her chin so her mother could pinch her lips apart and see what she’d been chewing. There was always suspicion. Cheeks flushed with shame, tongue curled against the taste of beans and carrot shreds. “Open,” her mother said, and she always did, even though she would have rather bitten her own hand. The memory soured, as it always did, to the flash of silver at the sink, the sound of bone striking plate, and the dripping clatter that followed. Her mother would turn, smiling, and say, “This is what we are.”

She folded the letter, pressed her thumb hard into the seam, and at last slid it into her desk drawer. For now.

A knock rattled the door. She jumped, startled, then exhaled. “Yeah?”

Xander popped his head in. The swelling above his eye had gone down to a sickly yellow bloom, and his hair was damp, as if he’d just come in from the rain. He didn’t speak at first—just considered her from the threshold, gaze sticking to the space where she’d hidden the letter.

“Can I come in?” he asked, softer than usual.

She shrugged, and he entered. He stood beside her desk, surveying the piles of books, the faded photo of her and her father in a rowboat. A few seconds passed, comfortable in their mutual inability to make small talk.

“You get a verdict yet?” he asked.

“They’re letting me run point on the next op.” She didn’t look up, still focused on the thin veins of water worming down the window. “Not sure if it’s a reward or a punishment.”

Xander laughed, the sound short and dry. “Both, probably. You did good out there.”

She rolled her shoulders. “I killed a kid.”

He sat on the edge of the bed, making it sink. “You survived. Sometimes there’s no poetry in it.”

She glanced at his hands, knuckles bruised and healing. “You ever think of quitting?”

“Every minute until I don’t.” He smirked. “Now, less than before.” He reached for her, tentative at first, then with more certainty, cupping the side of her face. “Hey,” he said. “We’re still here.”

Carolina wasn’t sure who moved first, but suddenly his lips were on hers—warm, insistent, tasting like blood and coffee. She opened to him. The kiss was hungry, not sweet, like they were both gnawing at the same cracked bone. He pushed her back onto the narrow mattress, bracing himself above her. The room was so small that his knees hit the desk, scattering pens to the floor. She laughed into his mouth, and he laughed too, before pinning her wrists above her head. His breath was hard in her ear.

“Let go,” he whispered. “Just for tonight.”

She did, and it wasn’t gentle. His hands stripped the hem of her t-shirt, raking nail over skin, and she arched into it, part of her already bruised from earlier in the ring but wanting more. She yanked his shirt off, fingers digging into the line of his spine, counting each vertebrae. He tasted like the road—sweat and sweetness—and when their hips ground together, she bit down on his shoulder, marking him the way wolves do, teeth scraping a shallow crescent into the flesh.

He groaned, grinding into her. Somewhere outside the glass, rain battered the porch roof. Xander slid his hand into her jeans, fingers parting, searching for friction, and she bucked up to meet him. There was no time for shyness. She let her body do the arguing, clashing with his, quick and desperate and almost mean.

They rolled, her straddling him now, hands pressed flat to his chest. For a rare moment, he was unguarded, eyes clear and searching. He reached up, thumb tracing the line of her jaw.

“You’re not broken.” The sentence came out half-shattered.

She shook her head. “Neither are you.”

He kissed her again, slower this time. She ground against the bulge in his jeans, feeling his pulse kick in time with hers, letting the ache build until neither of them could stand it. She fumbled his fly, tugged him free, and lowered herself onto him in one motion—her favorite kind of defiance.

The bed shuddered. Her hand went to his throat, gentle at first, then firmer. He shivered under her, eyes rolling back, mouth slack. She fucked him hard, pace set by a need that had nothing to do with him and everything to do with everything else: the missions, the letters, the mother she would never stop hating. She took and took until he bucked, hot and helpless. Then she let herself fall apart, pulse drowning out everything but the cold clarity at the finish.

Afterward, she lay beside him, breathing in the static hush. His arm circled her waist, and for the first time in ages, her body felt like only hers. She propped herself on an elbow, studying the constellation of bruises rising across his collarbones.

“They’ll never let us both win,” she said. “They’ll pit us against each other at the end.”

Xander shrugged, eyes on the ceiling. “So we give them a show.”

She grinned, wolfish. “Or we burn it down first.”

He pulled her closer. “Whatever you want, Ro.”

She tucked her head under his chin, feeling the steady thump of his heart. Tomorrow, there would be plans and counterplans, scars and new reasons to fight. But for now, in this hush, she closed her eyes and let the hunger settle, not as a curse, but as a companion.