Page 102 of Property of Scar

Neither of us speaks for a long moment while the city hums below, indifferent and unknowing.

Above us, the stars stay exactly where they are.

After, we end up sprawled across my club cut on the roof, Cali tucked against my chest with my arm wrapped around her waist. I keep her there partly because she doesn’t seem interested in moving, but mostly because I don’t want her to.

The realization should probably bother me more than it does. Hundreds of years of keeping people at arm’s length don’t disappear overnight.

Tonight, I can’t seem to find the motivation to try.

The night settles around us, cool air moving across the rooftop, but I barely register it. My attention stays fixed on the weight of her against me, the steady rise and fall of her breathing, the warmth of her beneath my hand.

Real.

Present.

Here.

My grip tightens slightly at her waist, more instinct than thought. She fits there so naturally that it feels less like holding her and more like finally putting something where it was always supposed to be.

Because she does.

And I’ve been an idiot about it for long enough.

I watch the stars.

And then, the flash arrives.

Clean and fast, the way it always is.

Astrid.

Not the end of her. Not the weight I’ve carried. Just her face, at the beginning, when she used to look at the sky exactly the way Cali looks at it now. Young, fierce, and laughing at something I’d said that wasn’t nearly as clever as she insisted it was.

A grimace moves through me, slow and honest, and I know what it means.

I have known it for a while, and I’ve been too caught in the habit of guilt to name it plainly.

I can set Astrid down.

Not forget.

Not abandon.

But I can stop building my life around a grave.

Astrid would have hated that I didn’t figure that out sooner. I can almost hear her laughing at me for it. Hear her telling me, in that blunt way she had, that loving someone who’s gone isn’t the same thing as staying loyal to them.

It’s just another way of standing still.

She didn’t fight as hard as she did, so I could spend centuries turning her absence into something sacred. She would’ve told me to get the hell on with living.

And knowing Astrid, she probably would have called me a stubborn bastard first.

The grimace eases.

Not absolution. Just a door I choose, finally, to walk through.

Let her go, old man. She already let you go.