Page 265 of Don’t Say Mafia

She closed the door gently—not slamming it, but not lingering, either.

I stayed there a moment after the lock clicked, staring at the faded wood and the thin crack running down the center panel, memorizing it like it might matter.

I had reduced Ryan to something that fit in an urn . . . and I was already planning where I’d stand when she let him go.

CHAPTER 18

EDEN

The bottle was sweating by the time we got it open.

It was cheap champagne that we’d bought with crumpled bills from the gas station down the street because we’d wanted something that felt like a celebration and didn’t care that it wasn’t good. Ryan wrestled with the cork while I sat cross-legged on the hood of our car, the desert night still clinging to our skin, Vegas glowing in the distance like a mirage.

“Careful,” I laughed. “You’re gonna take an eye out.”

“That would be a terrible way to start a new life,” he said, grinning, his hair falling into his face the way it always did when he was excited. “First night in Vegas, and I immediately maim myself.”

The cork popped anyway, ricocheting off into the dark. We both froze for a beat, then burst out laughing like idiots, the sounds spilling out of us loudly.

We didn’t even have cups. Ryan handed me the bottle first, and I took a sip that made my face twist immediately.

“Oh my gosh,” I said, “that’s awful.”

He took it from me and drank anyway, wincing just as hard. “I think it’s perfect,” he decided. “Exactly what this moment deserves.”

We wandered into the park with the bottle swinging between us, the grass still damp from sprinklers, the swings creaking softly in the warm night breeze. The place was quiet and empty except for us and the distant hum of traffic, and it felt like we’d stumbled onto something secret.

Ryan climbed onto one of the swings and pushed off hard, the champagne sloshing dangerously. “Okay,” he said, suddenly serious, dragging his feet until he slowed and looked at me. “Toast time.”

I raised an imaginary glass, smiling despite the tight feeling in my chest. “To not dying in the desert.”

He rolled his eyes. “No. To us.” Ryan cleared his throat dramatically. “To getting out,” he said. “To never going back to the people we were stuck being. To a place where nobody knows our mistakes and nobody expects anything from us except to keep going.”

I swallowed, emotion pressing behind my ribs.

“To a place where we can be loud,” he went on, gaining momentum now. “Where we can mess up and start over, and it won’t haunt us forever. Where we get to be everything we are without apologizing for it.”

He lifted the bottle toward me, earnest and unguarded. “To our new life, Eden. Whatever the hell it turns out to be.”

I clinked my invisible glass against his bottle and smiled, even though I strangely felt like crying. “To all of it.”

We drank under the Vegas sky, sitting side by side on the swings, legs brushing, and hope so thick between us it felt tangible. For that moment, it really did feel like we’d made it. Like the hardest part was already behind us.

That was the last time I remember us being that happy.

The park looked grungier than it had then, more worn and stripped down. The grass was thin and patchy, trampled down to dirt in places, the green dulled by years of sun and too little care. Rust crept along the swing chains, flaking into orange dust. The paint on the seats had faded to a tired blue, chipped and peeling at the edges.

I stood just inside the rusted gate with the urn pressed to my stomach and let the place settle into me. Las Vegas hummed beyond the fence, loud and indifferent, the city unchanged by my loss.

It seemed right that I would come here for this.

Not a cemetery. Not somewhere quiet and meant for endings. This park had never been about endings for us. This was where we’d toasted beginnings. Where we’d said the words out loud and believed them.

This was when we were happy.

The swings were still there, one hanging slightly lower than the other, and my chest tightened as I walked toward them, memory closing in fast and familiar.

I sat on the left one without thinking because Ryan always took the right.