Turn 18 of 19

He reached for my hand. I let him. My new body reacted instantly—skin too sensitive, curves aching for attention. Shame and desire crashed together. “I don’t want to lose you,” he said. I looked down at the black bag on the floor and whispered, “I’m not sure how much of me is left to lose.”

His fingers close around mine and the sensation hits me like a current — every nerve ending lit up, the skin too sensitive, the curves aching for attention in a way that has nothing to do with Marcus and everything to do with what the bag has built me into. His thumb strokes the back of my hand and I feel it in my chest, in my stomach, lower, and the shame and the desire crash together so hard I can't separate them. I want to pull away. I want to lean in. The body wants something my mind hasn't agreed to and the dissonance makes my breath catch.

"I don't want to lose you," he says. His voice is raw, stripped of everything but the bare fact of it. He's not performing. He's not begging. He's telling me the truth the way people tell you they're cold or tired — simply, because it's happening. His hand tightens on mine and I feel his pulse through his fingertips, fast and unsteady, and I remember when that pulse was the most reliable thing in my life.

I look down at the bag on the floor. It sits between my feet, the gold clasp catching lamplight, the leather gleaming. It looks patient. It looks like it has all the time in the world. The warmth radiates up from it even now, even sitting three feet below me, and I feel the pull in my arm the way you feel a draft — constant, low-grade, impossible to ignore completely.

"I'm not sure how much of me is left to lose," I whisper. The words come out in Vivienne's register but they're Sophie's words, Sophie's fear, and the combination sounds like a woman singing someone else's song and meaning every note. Marcus's grip tightens. He heard it — the Sophie underneath. I can tell because his face changes, something cracking open behind his eyes, hope and grief tangled together so tightly he can't tell which is which.

"There's enough," he says. "There's enough left. I can see her." He lifts my hand and presses it flat against his chest, over his heart, and I feel it beating — steady, stubborn, his.

"She's still in there. She's fighting. I can feel her fighting through you right now."

I want to believe him. I want it so badly that the wanting itself feels like proof — Vivienne wouldn't want this. Vivienne wouldn't sit on a couch in a leopard-print top holding a boy's hand and aching for something she can't name. Vivienne would be at Bistro Margot by now, in the corner table, ordering the Sancerre, letting the silver-haired man touch the back of her neck. The fact that I'm still here, still sitting, still holding Marcus's hand — that has to mean something. The phone buzzes in the bag. Seven-twelve. Eighteen minutes. The bag pulses warm against my ankle and I feel it ask, without asking: *Are you coming?*