Lover's Lane

He found her the next evening in the hills outside Santa Rosa.

Sienna stood at the edge of a ridge, desert wind pulling strands of hair across her face. Her boots were dust-covered. A jagged blade rested in her hand—not raised, not lowered. Just… there. Like a final option she hadn’t yet decided to take.

Cameron approached slowly, unarmed. Quiet. He knew better than to speak first when she was like this—coiled like wire, soul pressed between rage and heartbreak.

She didn’t turn. “Did you follow the rose?”

“I always do.”

They stood in silence, the sun bleeding orange across the sky.

“I thought about it,” she said finally. “Killing you.”

“I know.”

“I still might.”

He nodded. “I’d let you.”

That surprised her. She turned, finally looking at him. His face was weathered. Tired. But not afraid. Not anymore.

“I burned the journal,” he said. “All of it. Every name. Every face. Even yours.”

Sienna’s jaw tightened. “Why?”

“Because I couldn’t carry them anymore. And because if I died tomorrow, I didn’t want the world to know us through headlines and horror.”

She stepped toward him, voice barely above a whisper. “So how do you want them to know us?”

He took her hand—the one holding the knife. Slowly. Carefully. Fingers wrapping around hers with an ache that only lovers on the edge of goodbye could understand.

“I want them to fear us for what we were,” he said. “But remember us for what we became.”

She blinked. “And what’s that?”

“More than monsters.”

Sienna didn’t cry. But her voice cracked when she said, “We don’t get a happy ending, Cam.”

“I don’t want a happy ending,” he whispered. “I want a real one. One that’s ours.”

He dropped to his knees in the dirt.

Not in surrender.

In devotion.

He pulled a small pocketknife from his boot and sliced his palm clean. Held it out.

“A vow,” he said. “No more killing. No more running. Just you and me. Until they find us.”

She stared at his bleeding hand.

Then raised the blade between them.

For a moment, he thought she’d plunge it into his chest.

Instead, she pressed the edge into her own palm. Blood welled up, dark and honest.

They clasped hands.

Blood to blood. Flesh to flesh. Sin to sin.

“We die together,” she said.

“We die free,” he answered.

That night, they didn’t run.

They got a room in a quiet, dusty roadside inn and laid in bed like regular lovers. No knives. No roses. Just tangled legs and hearts that still beat in sync.

They watched the news together.

Composite sketches on screen.

A young couple. Dangerous. Armed. Wanted in eight states.

“Romantic,” Sienna murmured.

“Almost flattering,” Cameron replied.

And then they smiled.

For real.

Because for the first time in a long time, they weren’t chasing death.

They were waiting for it.

Together.