Romance Weekly - Short Stories of Love, Erotic and Paranormal Thrillers
Sep 13, 2026 · 19 min · 13 segments
She wakes cold from the bone out. Her hands — the surest thing about her, eleven years without a tremor — are shaking, and there is less of them than there was. Something is set behind her sternum…
The morning I understood what I had done, I could not get warm.
I noticed it first in my hands.
My hands are the surest thing about me.
They have laid gold seams finer than a hair for eleven years without a tremor.
That morning they shook, and they were cold in a way the fire could not touch.
A cold that came from inside, from the bone out.
and when I held them up to the light they looked thinner, not much, but I know my own hands the way I know my own name, and there was less of them than there had been.
I had begun to feel it in other places too, a greyness, a pull, low in my chest, always toward the same direction, toward the harbour, toward the water." like a hook set behind my sternum, with a long line running out to sea, and something at the far end reeling, patient and steady, taking in the slack.
I went to Ruth first, and then to the old books, and then, when I could not stand it, to Wes, because Wes had said before it finishes, and Wes knew what the water does, and I had run out of people who would tell me the truth.
I found him at the empty grave, Jonah's grave, the headstone over nothing.
And Wes was sitting in front of it in the fog with a bottle, the way I had heard he did.
And when I came up the hill, he did not turn around.
You know now, he said, I can see it on you.
You're going grey at the edges.
It's taking you.
He took a drink.
It always takes somebody.
That's the price of the crossing.
Nothing comes back for free.
And then Wes told me the whole of it.
The thing he had carried for three years.
The thing that had hollowed him out slower than the water was hollowing me.
It came out of him in pieces, the way a true thing comes out when it has been held too long.
The night of the squall, they had both gone into the water.
The boat went over and they both went in, and the cold took them fast, and Jonah, who was the stronger swimmer, who was always the one who saved things, got Wes to the overturned hull and got his hands on it, got him a grip, got him safe.
The morning I understood what I had done, I could not get warm.
I noticed it first in my hands.
My hands are the surest thing about me.
They have laid gold seams finer than a hair for eleven years without a tremor.
That morning they shook, and they were cold in a way the fire could not touch.
A cold that came from inside, from the bone out.
and when I held them up to the light they looked thinner, not much, but I know my own hands the way I know my own name, and there was less of them than there had been.
I had begun to feel it in other places too, a greyness, a pull, low in my chest, always toward the same direction, toward the harbour, toward the water." like a hook set behind my sternum, with a long line running out to sea, and something at the far end reeling, patient and steady, taking in the slack.
I went to Ruth first, and then to the old books, and then, when I could not stand it, to Wes, because Wes had said before it finishes, and Wes knew what the water does, and I had run out of people who would tell me the truth.
I found him at the empty grave, Jonah's grave, the headstone over nothing.
And Wes was sitting in front of it in the fog with a bottle, the way I had heard he did.
And when I came up the hill, he did not turn around.
You know now, he said, I can see it on you.
You're going grey at the edges.
It's taking you.
He took a drink.
It always takes somebody.
That's the price of the crossing.
Nothing comes back for free.
And then Wes told me the whole of it.
The thing he had carried for three years.
The thing that had hollowed him out slower than the water was hollowing me.
It came out of him in pieces, the way a true thing comes out when it has been held too long.
The night of the squall, they had both gone into the water.
The boat went over and they both went in, and the cold took them fast, and Jonah, who was the stronger swimmer, who was always the one who saved things, got Wes to the overturned hull and got his hands on it, got him a grip, got him safe.
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