Eris Lugo is kissing me. Kissing me because she doesn't know if she'll live to see the dawn break tomorrow, kissing me as a last resort, kissing me as the result of some newfound lunacy she didn't hold back.

My first instinct is to shove her away. The long walk home should give me ample time to decompress from the shock.

Cold engulfs me again—except for my lips still warm from the two seconds they touched hers, the stir of rabid butterflies in my gut nowhere near calming. All I can say is, breathless and not as aggressive as I'd hoped: "What the fuck was that?"

She reaches up to pull at her hair, and I've never seen such sheer terror cloud her features, realizing she'll never live this down. "Sorry, I'm going crazy, I don't know what I'm doing I just—"

"Don't make excuses," I command. "Tell me clearly. Why did you think that was okay?"

What she thought she would get out of that is beyond me. It's all risk and no reward—unless she was messing with me, wanting to be the one to make the "straight" girl question everything.

Her hand drops from her hair. "Well... you're not walking away anymore, are you?"

The words should be immensely infuriating, said with an arrogant smirk, but all her razor edges are softened, her arms wrapped around herself as if protecting her from the embarrassment, her head lowered, more afraid of my rejection than getting murdered by wannabe Chapos. Why such a simple, human expression unravels me in my entirety, I have no idea. If anything, the scene should be comical with her holding her gun while wearing those ridiculous panda slippers.

There's not a single soul in sight—even the squirrels hold their breaths.

"Drop the gun," I order.

She looks up, simmering with suspicion, but she slowly kneels and places the gun on the ground. With the hand not holding my wretched failure of a painting, I pick it up. Whether it's made of gold or only coated in it, it's the most expensive thing I've ever held. I run my thumb down the diamonds on the handle, wondering how many lives it's taken—or if it's always been just for show.

I want to point it at her. I want the barrel digging into her neck. I want to be the one to wield the power; I want to be the one to make her submit. But this isn't a mafia movie, and I'm not a psychopath, so I set it back down.

"Come here," I say.

She's gone dead still. "What?"

I know for a fact she heard me. Hesitantly, she takes a step closer. Looks up at me with those big doe eyes but her mouth set in a tense line, like she's fighting her hardest for control, forcing her guard up even as fear shows through the rapidly-spreading cracks.

Compared to the types of men she's killed, I should be nothing but a mouse to her.

"Ef, listen, I'm sorry," she blurts out. "Let's just forget this happened; I don't know what I was—"

"Come here, Eris."

She shuts up. Her irises search mine for the name of the game I'm playing, but not even I have the slightest idea what I'm doing. My mind is shouting profanities at me in French, urging me to walk away. She takes another slow, rigid step. I think of her arms around me, her body unfathomably close, but I ruined the moment, and she doesn't hate herself enough to try again.

"Why, so you can tell me you hate me?" she asks. "Tell me I'm the lowest of the low, that I'm everything that's wrong with the world, that I'm nothing?"

She makes another effort to keep up her guard, bracing for more venom, fully expecting me to break her down again, like she needs the rejection to be unquestionable so she doesn't get any more ideas. Any other time, I would be mocking her endlessly for trying to kiss me.

But I'm quiet. She's already taken everything. My family's money, my artistry, my independence, my glory. And now my words.

"Come on," she whines. "You're not the type to say shit you don't mean. So say it again."

Now it's her eyes watering because of me, which only reminds me of how only a few minutes ago, I was sobbing because of her.

I come up blank. Because she looks so... defeated. And it erases any triumph I might've felt at rejecting her.

"Say something," she says, begging me again.

I grab her chin and tilt her head up toward me. "You're unbearable."

"That's it? That's all you can come up with?"

But I'm distracted by her mouth, her lips rosy from the cold. Before, my anatomical study consisted of bones, measurements, science. Now I wonder about something light years out of my realm—warmth and piercings and spit and teeth.

"Every time you ignore me, it makes me lose sleep," I admit. "I should feel relief when you're not bothering me, but I don't. I never did."

The catch in her breath tells me this was definitely not what she expected.

"I spend most of my time alone," I say. "Only the routine keeps me going. And for years you're the one interesting thing in my existence. I miss your chaos every time you're not around. Isn't that pathetic?"

She wraps her hand around my wrist, almost as if she's going to pull my arm away from her, but her hand lingers there.

"Sure it is," she says, her voice a note higher, and I can physically feel the shift in energy as her terror drains into the ground. My words ease her—in the same way her confession that she didn't hate copying my painting comforted me.

"And the only reason you're insistent on having me around is because you can be yourself around me," I continue, testing her. "Because you don't have to hide. You can wave your gun in my face like it's nothing. But at the end of the day, you're just using me."

She frowns. "It's really not like that, Ef."

I squeeze her chin harder, forcing her neck up at a painful angle, but she doesn't flinch. "Then what?"

She glances at the canvas I'm still holding in a death grip. "I know you hate it and hate me a hundred times more because of it, but that painting—fuck. I have a new appreciation, not gonna lie. I get why you're so uptight about the details—I've been killing myself to get them perfect for a week. And it all comes together, the way you blend time and movement. It was dumb to expect you to react any other way. And I thought I would be a lot more mad, but it's like I'm in motherfuckin' Ottawa all peaceful in the spring, laying with the tulips in your painting, and I honestly want to get into your head, because I'd never think of techniques like that on my own. It was like a dream, looking at the world through your eyes. Is that really what you see all the time? Because... I don't know. I don't think anyone else sees things the way you do. Projecting a whole ass geometrical grid onto the world. Like fuck, bro, I'm almost failing trig over here. Guess I'm getting my practice in for you."

Her compliments remind me of the whiskey I sipped back at the warehouse party in L.A., harsh at first but settling into a comforting warmth. But this is that feeling concentrated, tailor-made for me and my sad, desperate need to be someone oh so special.

My smile starts off genuine, but I twist it into a mocking one.

"Careful, Eri," I say, coming up with an equally obnoxious nickname to match mine. "You almost make it seem like you're into me."

I expect her to match my tone, spit back a witty remark, but she's holding my arm with both hands now, like she won't stay steady on her feet otherwise.

"Would that be the worst thing?" she asks. "Would that be completely fucking stupid?"

"Yes," I say, dropping my painting to the ground, and it clatters beside the gun.

I hate owing her anything. I hate being in debt from last time, and at this point, I'm nothing anyway. It doesn't matter how deep she carves into my hollow spaces for scraps.

It makes no difference whether I succumb. If this makes us even, so be it.

And thus I surrender the only thing I have left—my pride.

I let go of her chin. I wrap my hand around her throat, and I would've choked her a little if her tight necklace, shaped like barbed wire, didn't poke so hard. So I grab the loose fabric of her hoodie and pull her closer. She staggers toward me like a living doll, and I hold my breath for a second, giving her ample time to close the remaining space, but she's still, forcing me to stoop to her level, forcing me to feel her shame and expose myself completely.

Fine. I slip my hands under her hoodie along the spine I've come to know so well, tracing the scattered scars lining her sides. I don't know why it makes my entire body flame as if she's kissed me all over. I place my palms flat on her back and press her against me, inducing a small gasp, and any semblance of control breaks. I don't know if it's me or her who moves first, but we're entangled again, and I want to judge her so hard for how easily she melts against me, but this time, there's nothing slow and pleading and hesitant about her—my—kiss.

This time, I can't push her away. Her saints have possessed me, corrupted me—this could only be the work of some ancient, forgotten lesbian Aztec god.

She's furious even as she stands on her tiptoes, her arms wrapped around my neck so tight they pull at my hair, and I drag my long, manicured nails down her back as our mouths collide, again and again and again.

Unlike Axel, she doesn't immediately go for the French kiss. No—she's tentative and calculated, making me want something that I would normally find disgusting. Even with how eager she is to bite my bottom lip, surprisingly hard for someone with such a soft mouth.

Another boundary broken. Another moment we'll never come back from. The only way I will ever be able to forgive myself for this is if I claim her completely. If her entire soul is mine.

Her measurements are still ingrained in my memory. I thought studying her would be enough to erase whatever effect she has on me, but it was only the precursor, like one of her Spanish colonizer ancestors making a map of an elusive territory before risking everything in its conquest.

I want her to understand without a shadow of a doubt how much I loathe all the things she makes me feel. Maybe once we get this anger out of our system—despite this being the most homosexual outlet imaginable—we'll be able to focus on the painting, but even those thoughts flee the moment she grabs my jaw, then my neck, then my collar, then settles with a tight grip on my waist.

I'd been fantasizing about bruises on her neck from my hands, but maybe they're from my teeth instead.

When I lower my head, she arches her neck for me, her breasts pressed even harder to mine, and the friction is provoking unacceptable, unfamiliar, and entirely inappropriate sensibilities in me. All I can do is bite down on her skin and leave the evidence of my lunacy. Make her walk in shame back to her house, face her family, and when she inevitably goes mess around with one of her stupid little girlfriends, they'll see the mark and know she's already been claimed.

And she's so shameless about it. She arches her throat farther back and makes this fragile little sound, shocking me so deeply I almost stop. The bitch is on the verge of moaning for me, and I'm indulging her, leaving another hickey as she digs her fingers into my back, and I wonder foolishly in the least heterosexual thought I've ever had—which part of me does she feel the same about as I do with her spine?

When I pull away, she's brandishing two ugly bruises, like a bite from an over-eager vampire now infected.

And then it's over. Thanks to that lesbian Aztec goddess, retroactively paying back blessings one of Eris' distant ancestors must've made an offering for, no one has seen us. I'm breathing hard, and so is she. We aren't high, drunk, or sleep-deprived—there is no explanation.

"We're not done here, Persephone," she says. Instead of whiny, it's all aggression now. But it's tainted with something that she can't erase even if she fired one of her bullets through my head—desire.

It would be so easy. Heed her call. Go back inside. Make out on her bed, in her art studio, in front of Santa Muerte. Strip off her clothes. Trace the anatomy of her bones with my lips instead.

If I dared to take it all the way, would she submit to me? Would she break her vows? I think of her making more of those sounds, the entirety of her collar and small breasts lined with a bouquet of bruises.

Even though I've never let my mind go there, the possibility is now much closer than what should be permissible in this dimension, and it terrifies me on such an existential level all I can do is turn away.

"Don't get used to this," I clarify. "Don't let this make you think any differently of me. This was solely to clear my debt."

She scoffs. "Like hell it was. Either way, it's not enough. Your debt isn't clear."

"Wasn't that sufficiently degrading?"

She reaches up to feel the vampire bite. "You didn't kiss like it was degrading."

"I'm not doing anything else with you. Ever."

"I'm not asking you to. All I'm asking is for you to come back inside and we can watch a movie or I can watch you paint triangles until my eyes bleed."

"I'm calling Fitz to pick me up."

"So you're breaking your word?"

It's off-putting to view the kiss as some transaction, part of our impulsive agreement weeks ago. But maybe that makes it easier for both of us to swallow—a necessary boundary, an assurance that nothing like this will ever happen again.

Because it can't. No more sleepovers, no more pool days, no more Lugo family dinners, no more smoking with the enemy. This is my limit. We will win this competition and finally depart from one another's life.

I will finally be free from her.

"You know, Ef, you can't just make deals you don't intend to honor. Especially not with me."

I don't have anything left to say in defense. No witty come-back, either. So I grab the canvas and simply, like I should've done from the start, walk away.

This time, Eris doesn't follow. When I allow myself to spare her a final glance, she's vanished. A small part of me wanted her to keep begging. To degrade herself as much as I feel I have. I wanted her to kneel at my feet, emptying the bullets from her gun and presenting them to me like a sacrifice.

I call Fitz. He shows up a half an hour later, and I'm shivering, which is shameful, because I didn't grow up in Ontario and Montreal for nothing. Eris is contaminating me. From Iker's Sonoran desert to the lush, sweltering greenery of Guerrero—her blood itself is nothing but heat, making me intolerant to the cold.

The loud engine as Fitz speeds on his motorcycle is the first shred of relief. When he stops in front of me, handing me the second helmet, I say nothing. And I realize far too late... the painting I grabbed... was it the forgery, or the original? In my tears and distress, I couldn't tell the difference.

And I'm left with another burning, far more urgent question:

Am I... a lesbian?

▴ ▴ ▴

a/n: i can't get over this chapter title. it is truly peak trashy wattpad vibes, but i'm kind of feeling it. but wooooow persephone is finally questioning herself! let's have a virtual round of applause 👏

after she pushed eris away in the beginning, did you think it was over? did you expect them to kiss again?! sorry to tease you guys with that cliffhanger last time only to have it brutally ripped away, but i hope the build-up was worth it 😇

picture in the header in the beginning is ottawa! i'm sure persephone's painting does it a lot more justice, but there it is. 

i don't have a specific song rec for today, but you can add the playlist for this story (and our two MC's) on spotify! check the first part of this book (playlists + aesthetics) for the links. 

24 chapters down, 7 to go! (and if you'd like extra chapters, such as some in eris' POV, let me know what you'd like me to write about... her scenes with persephone, or her cartel life, or a post-ending epilogue, or flashbacks to her past?)