Chapter 2 · free to read
He asked me again tomorrow night. So here I am. Still not knowing which answer I came to give.
It was close. Frighteningly close. Which was somehow worse than wrong.
No thermometer. No scale. Just his hands over mine, and the smell of forty years.
For one breath, the lane, the carts, the war between us — all of it went quiet. And I forgot to be afraid of him.
Artwork and narration generated with AI.