Page 60 of 13 Nights

The orgasm seizes her. She clenches around me so hard my rhythm shatters. The contractions pulse along every inch of my cock, and the feedback sends white heat up my spine.

"Ashley." Her name leaves my mouth with nothing behind it. Two syllables spoken as though they matter. As though she matters more than the identity Fritz stole, the legend Irving invented, and every year I spent refusing to say a single word that could be used against me.

I bury myself to the hilt and come with her name still on my tongue. The release tears through me in waves so intense that my knees buckle, and I carry us both to the floor.

My hips grind against hers on the cold hardwood while my cock pulses inside her. My heart pounds against her sternum, frantic and violent, as though it can keep me here by force.

I don't move. She doesn't let me. Her fingers trace the line of my spine while my breathing settles and my heart rate descends from catastrophic to merely punishing.

We lie on the bedroom floor, tangled and graceless, and her ear finds my chest. She's listening to the heartbeat, measuring me the way she measures everything that matters to her.

"You're still here," she says.

"I'm still here."

We move to the bed eventually. Neither of us sleeps.

We lie facing each other with the blanket pulled to our waists, and we talk about things that don't require resolution. The coffee she makes that I call terrible. The regiment she positioned incorrectly in her novel, her friend Lena and the deadline she gave Ashley.

"She sounds formidable," I say.

"She'd terrify you."

"I've been decapitated by a cannon. The threshold for terror is high."

"Lena operates above that threshold. Trust me."

The sky begins to lighten. Ashley reaches for her phone.

"Sunrise for October 31 is 7:24 a.m."

She starts the stopwatch at 7:24:00. I brace against the headboard from habit, although the gesture feels increasingly ceremonial.

Four seconds pass. Then eleven. Then a full minute.

Nothing reaches for me.

The pull doesn't come. No weakened version. No echo. The Void does not answer the dawn. The stopwatch climbs past two minutes, three, and the silence where the pull should be is louder than any sunrise I've endured.

"It's gone," Ashley says. She lowers the phone. "The pull is gone."

The curse is not weakening. The curse is dying.

Halloween has arrived. One night remains.

The boundary plan remains. The walk to the river, the timing, the route through the woods. Ashley's argument lodges between my ribs like a splinter I can't reach, and the case she presented arranges itself into a pattern I can't dismiss. A debt. A toll. Something owed by the soul who refused.

The harder truth is the one I've been circling since the kitchen. Crossing the boundary can no longer undo what's already happened. The love exists whether I'm in the Void or not. The curse will break because it's already breaking, and my absence won't reverse a feeling that has taken root in both of us. The plan doesn't prevent the Gate from opening. It only ensures I'm not here when it does.

And Ashley is right about the mechanics. The boundary destroyed me when the Void was strong enough to swallow what remained. The Void can't hold me now. I don’t know what crossing will do to a body the curse can no longer recall.

I pull her closer. Her forehead presses against my collarbone. Her breath warms the skin above my sternum. For 250 years, I have called isolation discipline and refusal control. The heartbeat beneath her ear proves both were lies.

Tonight, when the Gate opens, I have one objective. One purpose. One thing I can still control. Make her let go of my hand.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Ashley