Where We Ended

by Ashley Munoz

For those who stare at the darkness fully aware it’s staring back. Keep looking. Become the monster you always feared, the one who once controlled you. Step out of that inky mass as a new creature with teeth and nails and an appetite for fear.

“I’ll be here. You just keep reading that poetry. Fill your heart with tides and currents, Little Tree, so that one day it’ll take you somewhere good and pure.”

All I wanted was Natty in my arms again. I’d waited long enough; Natty belonged to me, and even if this ended in both our lives being forfeited, at least in the end, she’d be buried with me. Safely cradled in my arms.

Natty let out a sigh. “Silas, you’re not beyond hope. You never will be.” My throat was tight, and it seemed to swell with something uncomfortable. “How do you know?” “Because you have me, I’ll be your hope. I’ll be your sun, your moon and anything else good in this world. Give me your dark and I’ll hand you all my light.”

“You’re the closest I’ll ever get to heaven, to redemption or being found worthy. I look at you, and I see hope. Isn’t that all heaven is? Hope, eternity spent in the one place we can’t imagine living without? You’re that for me. You’re my religion, Natty. My place of worship and devotion. God wants nothing to do with me, but for some reason he still gave me you.”

“Forever, Caelum. I’ll want you for that long, and then longer when the devil demands my soul.” She kissed my chest. “He can’t have what belongs to me.”

“Brother, please do explain to me why the fuck you’ve cuffed yourself to my wife?”

“Anything happens to you, Caelum, and my brain won’t matter. Nor my heart, or anything else that allows me to breathe. It’s you or it’s nothing, my love.”

“I’ve wanted to make you my wife since I was seven years old. Whenever you’re ready to carry my last name, you’re welcome to have

“Where else would I go, Caelum? You’re my home, my heart…my entire fucking soul.”

“Tu meus es sol, luna mea. Vitam meam. Revertar ad te.” You are my sun, my moon. My life. I will come back for you.

Leaving her wasn’t something I enjoyed doing, at any fucking point in my life, but my whole life revolved around keeping her safe.

Loving her, tasting her and owning her, it was the only drug I’d ever allow myself to become addicted to.

“You may be free to do what you want, Caelum, but you’re still mine. Which means...” He tilted his hips and thrust into me, making me gasp. “If you go to a rival club, I will follow. And if I can’t tear them apart for taking you in, then I’ll fuck you so hard, you’ll never forget.”

“I’m a stain on your soul, Caelum. There is no removing me.” No truer statement had ever been made. “I don’t want to remove you, Silas. I want to exist with you…and the only way to do that is to hunt the same monsters you are.”

“If anything happens to you, I’ll burn it down.” I tilted my head. “Burn what down?” His unsettling light eyes arrested me, holding the very air in my lungs hostage as he said with all seriousness that I knew was within him. “Every last thing that makes up this world. The clubs, the people. The towns. I don’t care. I’ll take it. There’s a dragon somewhere curled in this heart of mine, and it’s greedy for you, Natty. Obsessed, insane and absolutely feral to keep you safe.”

“We don’t end, Caelum. We just keep going, we’re like the roots that hold the crust of this fucking earth together. Bound to one another.”

“She is mine! She’s patched to me, she’s my fucking wife!”

“You, my darling light are a whisper on the wind. Here to love me, and gone with my last breath. I vow to carry you with me into the depths of death, wherever it may take me. I will carry your heart with me and it will allow me to live once more.”