Page 26 of Shatter
It lay there, ticking into nothing.
Rain struck his skin directly. Cold. Immediate. He turned his wrist. The skin beneath was pale, faintly indented.
His pulse moved under it. Fast. Uncorrected.
He let the rain fall.
“That’s all,” he said.
Xaiden released Alden and stepped back. Alden dropped the last few inches into the mud, catching himself on his hands. Xaiden did not look at him again.
He turned to Dawson.
Rain moved between them. Xaiden’s breath came uneven, the last of the drive still in him. His hands shook, not from fear, but from the body’s refusal to stand down.
“We have to go,” he said. “Boat harbor. Lyle cleared a path. Four hours before the tide shifts.”
Dawson moved toward him.
He took Xaiden’s face in both hands.
Cold skin. Rain. The scrape of stubble against his palms. He felt the shift in Xaiden’s breathing the moment contact held.
Dawson kissed him.
Not hidden. Not careful. Out in the rain, beside the road, with headlights and wreckage and everything exposed.
Xaiden’s hands came up, settling at Dawson’s waist, steadying rather than guiding. The contact carried through both of them, clean and unguarded.
Dawson pulled back just enough to speak.
“Take me. Anywhere there isn’t wire.”
Xaiden met his gaze. “Okay.”
They crossed the road.
Xaiden’s hand rested at Dawson’s back, light contact, enough to track him through the rain.
The truck door opened with a worn protest. Dawson climbed in and slid across the bench seat. The cab smelled of oil and damp wood, the lingering scent of a vehicle that had spent too long outside.
Lyle sat at the wheel, already in motion.
“Uplink is down,” he said. “Channel’s clear.”
The truck turned. The road unwound ahead.
Dawson looked back once.
The van sat against the embankment, one taillight casting red across the mud. Alden stood beside it, small against the road and rain.
Dawson expected something sharper. Instead, the feeling came quiet and complete. A door closing without force.
He turned forward.
Xaiden reached across the seat and took his hand. No urgency. No function. Just contact.
His thumb moved slowly along the inside of Dawson’s wrist, over the pale band where the bracelet had been.
