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After the last mourner finally left the wake, I stood in front of the mirror, still wearing the black mourning dress. As I did, I made myself a promise.

No boys. No sex. No love.

Love destroys. I’d learned that now.

I’d never forget it again.

64

RAE

USGS — SEISMIC ACTIVITY REPORT

Station: Brooklyn, NY (Network Code: US-BK)

Date: 19 December 2025

Time: 23:58:04 EST

Anomalous vibrations detected in residential zone. Classification: Not an earthquake.

But something shifted.

When Lukas returns, he finds me sobbing, ruined, distraught. I tell him everything. It all pours out of me in one breathless, hiccuping torrent.

I feel pulled in so many directions all at once. There are fishhooks in every inch of me skin, pulling, pulling, pulling.

At the end of it, I break.

“I love you, Lukas. I love you. I love you. I love you.”

He sheds his clothes and slides inside me, and the second he does, I cum so hard that the world goes black.

When I wake up, I’m untied and Lukas is cradling me to his chest. I’m trembling in a way I’ve never trembled before. It’s like my soul is shivering.

But he’s so big and so warm. I’m safe here. He’s got me. I’m safe here. I’m home.

Lukas kisses my hair and brushes the dried tears away. “I love you, Rae Everett. I’ll take care of you. I swear to God I always will.”

65

RAE

NATIONAL ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM, NAPLES (Exhibit 4.12)

Plaster cast, two figures embracing. Recovered Pompeii, 1748.

Often called "The Lovers," though identity remains unknown.

It feels like we’ve found our way to the epicenter of the universe. All of everything revolves around us, stars and planets, comets and asteroids and alien spaceships, all of it turning on an axis that’s anchored right here, in this bed, where I lie in the hollow cradle of Lukas’s arms.

The skylight shifts from midnight black to murky gray to dawn’s white-gold, and still, Lukas holds me. The shakes phase out. The tears, too. My breathing calms and the fishhooks retract, one by one, until I’m just me again.

Scraped clean, yes, and different, perhaps, but lighter than I’ve been in years.

I twist in Lukas’s arms and look up at him. His beard is disheveled, his silver hair mussed. He looks wrecked. We both are. It was a very long night.

“What does this mean?” I whisper.