Benji didn’t breathe.

Didn’t blink.

Didn’t move—except for the involuntary twitch in his jaw when her lips left his and took half his damn soul with them.

He sat there, dazed and wrecked and hopelessly turned on, staring at her like she’d just rewritten the sky. Because that kiss—that kiss—wasn’t just heat. It was strategy. It was a goddamn checkmate.

And she knew it.

Of course she did.

Heather Goodwin didn’t kiss boys to seduce them. She kissed them to own them. To brand her name into their chest and walk away with the match still lit. But this one—this kiss—had been different.

Soft. Subtle. Cruel, in the most addictive way.

It wasn’t a promise.

It was a warning.

And Benji? He was done for.

He stared at her as she sipped her coffee like it wasn’t a crime scene. As she smirked with that glossy, lethal mouth and delivered the line—“No more kissing. Not until you earn it.”

His hand curled around the edge of the table, grounding himself. Barely.

Then he laughed.

Low. Wrecked. Worshipful.

“Jesus Christ, Goodwin,” he muttered, voice husky and ragged. “You kiss like a prophecy and then pull a plot twist? That’s just mean.”

He shifted in the booth, like sitting still might actually kill him, and scrubbed a hand over his face before dropping it to rest on his thigh—dangerously close to hers, but not touching.

“Earn it,” he repeated, shaking his head with a slow grin. “You’re gonna have me doing backflips in the parking lot for one more taste, aren’t you?”

Then, his gaze dropped to her mouth again, eyes dark with a hunger he wasn’t even pretending to hide anymore.

“But alright. No more kissing.”

He leaned forward, elbows on the table, his smile softening just enough to show something real under all that heat.

“I’ll earn it,” he said simply. “Every inch. Every secret. Every piece of you you’re not ready to give yet.”

A beat.

“But when you are ready?”

He let the words hang in the air between them, electric and inevitable.

Then he took a sip of his coffee, winced—too hot—and muttered, “Still not as dangerous as you.”

He sat back, one hand trailing down her arm as he stretched—leisurely, like he hadn’t just been hit by an emotional truck—and let their fingers tangle under the table.

And for the rest of the night, he didn’t kiss her again.

But he looked at her like he already had.
And like he was counting down the minutes until he’d get to again.

Because Benji Burroughs?
He was patient.

And she was worth the wait.

"What gave you the impression that I was nice?”

The words dripped off her tongue like cherry syrup over broken glass—sweet, sharp, and meant to wound in the most delicious way. And the look in her eyes?

That wasn’t a girl playing coy. That was a storm in red lipstick, daring him to chase her straight into the wreckage.

Heather didn’t do nice. She did unforgettable. She did unforgettable in thigh-highs and silk with a grin that made boys nervous and a tongue that could slice through diamond. And Benji?

He wasn’t nervous.

He looked at her like he wanted to drown.

And goddammit, she already wanted to break her own rule.

One kiss. Just one. A flick of her fingers, a lean across the booth, a taste of that mouth again—

No.

No.

She was stronger than that. She had to be. Not because she didn’t want him—she did, with a kind of hunger that had her blood humming—but because she respected him too much to give him a lie by omission. She wouldn’t let him fall into bed with her without knowing the truth of where she came from.

So she breathed.

Sat back. Smoothed her fingers over her dress like she hadn’t just imagined yanking him into her lap and making the entire booth tremble.

Instead, they ate.

Slow. Easy. Careful.

Her fork dragged through the pie in lazy swirls while his thumb brushed hers under the table, just once in a while—like a secret pulse line connecting them. She sipped her coffee, let the bitterness settle under her tongue while he blew on his and pretended not to wince again. She smirked. He smiled. It was the most ordinary thing she’d done in months—and it felt extraordinary.

Every bite was a stall tactic. Every sip a silent reminder: not yet.

But even in the silence, even in the stillness—he never looked away. That part undid her the most. The way he looked at her like he saw her, not the version she wore like armor, but the girl underneath. The one with a cursed last name and too much fire in her chest.

By the time the last crumbs of pie were gone, her pulse had steadied, but only just.

She pushed the plate away. Leaned back in the booth. Watched the steam curl up from her half-drunk coffee and felt her heart starting to crack under the weight of everything she hadn’t told him.

He deserved to know.

And if it made him leave?

So be it.

But he wouldn’t be leaving because she lied.

Her voice was quieter when she finally broke the calm. Still sharp, still Heather—but layered now. Real.

“Benji,” she said, letting his name settle between them.

She turned her head to look at him fully, hair falling over one shoulder, eyes steady and unflinching.

“I have a confession.”

A beat. A breath.

“My last name isn’t Goodwin.”

The words tasted foreign on her tongue. Ancient and bitter.

“It used to be Goode.”

She watched his face, her own unreadable—but her fingers under the table tightened just slightly around his.

“It was my family that cursed this town.”

There it was.

Out in the open.

No kiss. No tease. Just truth.

Because this boy—this man in a bad boy package—deserved to know exactly what kind of fire he was playing with.

Benji didn’t flinch.

Not even a little.

He just sat there, fork resting on his empty plate, coffee cooling between his hands, and looked at her like he had all the time in the world to listen. Like she hadn’t just dropped a legacy soaked in blood and brimstone between them. Like she hadn’t just told him she came from the same name that had made Shadyside bleed.

Goode.

Of course.

The moment she said it, something in him clicked. Not horror. Not disgust. Just understanding—like a puzzle piece finally slotting into place. Like every dream, every shadow, every thread he’d been pulling on since the curse started crawling back into their lives suddenly had a name. Her name.

And she had chosen to give it to him.

Chosen.

Benji stared at her, at the girl sitting across from him with stars on her thighs and wreckage in her bones, and he felt something deep and sharp settle in his chest.

Not fear.

Awe.

She had looked him dead in the eye and handed him her truth like a weapon. Not expecting mercy. Not asking for forgiveness. Just laying herself bare because he deserved it.

“Okay,” he said.

Just that. Soft. Even.

He reached across the table again, fingers finding hers with no hesitation this time. No teasing. Just warmth. Just anchor.

“I figured it was something like that,” he added, voice low but steady. “The dreams. The way you talk about the curse. The weight in your eyes when you think no one’s watching.”

He shrugged—almost gently.

“Didn’t know the name. Doesn’t matter.”

He gave her hand a squeeze, like punctuation.

“I’m still here.”

His thumb brushed the back of her hand again, and his eyes softened in a way that made her throat tighten. Like he wasn’t just seeing her. He was choosing her, curse and all.

“You think that changes the way I see you?” he asked, leaning in slightly. “Because it doesn’t. It just explains why you’ve been carrying the weight of this town like it’s yours to fix.”

A beat.

“But it’s not just on you, Heather. It never was. You inherited a name. I chose you. And I’m not going anywhere.”

Then—because it was still Benji, and because she’d just shattered every wall between them—he smirked, crooked and adoring and so damn him.

“Besides,” he added, voice dropping to that low, wicked place she could never resist, “I’ve always had a thing for dangerous girls.”

Another beat.

His hand tightened around hers.

“So if you’re the fire that started all this…”

He leaned closer.

“…let me be the one who doesn’t burn.”

And just like that, he gave her what no one else ever had.

Not forgiveness. Not fear.

Faith.

In her. In them.

In the wildfire they’d become—together.

She hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath until it came out in a slow, shaky exhale.

He didn’t flinch.
He didn’t pull back.
He didn’t look at her like she was poison.

He stayed.

That was what undid her—not just his words, not just the steady warmth of his hand around hers, but the fact that he didn’t even hesitate. No pause. No recoil. Just… okay.

It made something in her ache.

A deep, bruised place she didn’t let people near—because she was always too much or too dangerous or too complicated to risk loving. And now here he was, sitting across from her like she hadn’t just confessed to being the living legacy of Shadyside’s darkest nightmare.

Goode.

She’d spent so long hating the name that she forgot how much it hurt. How much it mattered. How many people had died—slaughtered, cursed, buried—because someone in her bloodline decided they were owed more than the world would give them.

And sure, she wasn’t that person.

But still.

Still, the weight of it sat on her shoulders like a crown of rot. A name written in screams. A history carved in stone and grief and graveyard silence.

She’d told herself she didn’t care. That it wasn’t her fault. That she was rewriting it.

But now, with Benji’s hand in hers and his eyes soft and steady and full of her—

The guilt crept back in.

Not because he was scared. He wasn’t. That was what made it worse.

He believed in her.

And all she could think about was how many lives had been ruined by a name she didn’t ask for but still wore like a scar stitched into her soul.

“I shouldn’t feel bad,” she murmured, not really meaning to say it out loud.

Her eyes dropped to their joined hands, watching the way his thumb moved over her knuckles like he was memorizing the shape of her strength.

“But I do.”

Heather swallowed. Her voice didn’t shake, but her heart did.

“All those people. All that blood. And maybe someone out there—someone with my blood—is still doing it. Still playing God. Still… carrying on the legacy.”

Her mouth twisted, bitter. She didn’t cry. She never cried. But there was something raw around the edges of her voice now. A crack in the mirror.

“I don’t know if I’m trying to break the cycle or just outrun it.”

She didn’t let go of his hand.

Couldn’t.

Because if she did, she wasn’t sure the weight wouldn’t crush her.

But then she looked at him—really looked—and there it was again.

That quiet, defiant belief.

Like he saw every shadow in her and chose her because of them, not in spite of them.

And just like that, the fire inside her steadied.

Not snuffed out. Just… contained. Held by something stronger than fear. Something that looked a hell of a lot like love—even if she wasn’t ready to name it yet.

She squeezed his hand back.

“You really are stupid for me, aren’t you?” she whispered, smirking through the haze of truth between them.

But her eyes?

They were softer than they’d ever been.

Because Benji Burroughs didn’t just see her.

He stayed.

Benji smiled.

Not the cocky one. Not the smirk he wore when he was trying to get her to roll her eyes or bite her lip.

This one was quieter. Slower. Like it had roots. Like it had been waiting for her.

He let the silence settle, didn’t rush to fill it with jokes or reassurances. He just kept holding her hand—thumb tracing slow, deliberate circles against her skin—like he could ease the guilt out of her one breath at a time.

When he finally spoke, his voice was low. Sure. Undeniably his.

“Yeah,” he said, a hint of a laugh tucked beneath the wreckage in his tone. “I’m definitely stupid for you.”

A pause. His gaze searched hers—steady, open, unafraid.

“But not because I stayed.”

He leaned forward slightly, their foreheads almost touching now, the rest of the world fading into bad coffee and fading neon.

“I stayed because I know who you are, Heather.”

His hand tightened just slightly around hers, grounding.

“You’re not your name. You’re not your blood. You’re the girl who walked into the curse instead of running from it. Who looks hell in the eye and says not this time.”

Another breath.

“You’re fire, yeah. But you’re the kind that remakes things. That burns the rot out. That starts over.”

He smiled again, soft and ruinous and real.

“And me? I’ve spent my whole life surrounded by people too scared to feel anything real. So if you think I’m letting go of the one person brave enough to bleed in front of me—”

He shook his head.

“Not a chance.”

He looked down at their hands, then back up.

“So if you don’t know whether you’re breaking the cycle or outrunning it—okay. We’ll figure it out. Together.”

And just when she thought he couldn’t possibly say anything more devastating, he added—quietly, almost shyly:

“I’m not going anywhere, Goode girl.”

Then, with a crooked grin and a wink that could only belong to him:

“…unless you make me pay for the pie. Then we might have to talk.”

And just like that, the heaviness cracked. Not all the way. But enough.

Because Benji Burroughs didn’t just hold her hand.

He held the weight.

And made her believe—for the first time in a long time—that maybe she didn’t have to carry it alone.

Her chest felt tight—not from pain, but from the way everything he said landed like truth she hadn’t known how to hear until now.

For so long, all she’d seen was the stain.
The name.
The legacy.
The rot.

She’d worn the guilt like a designer coat with the tag still attached—too expensive to justify, but too sharp to take off. She let it define her. Haunt her. Shove her into late-night obsession spirals and cursed books and case files that smelled like mildew and death.

She’d been so focused on the wrong—what her family had done, what had been taken, what had been damned—that she never stopped to look at the right.

The right being her.

Her, clawing her way out of a legacy built on graves.

Her, choosing truth over comfort.

Her, sitting here with a boy who could have run but didn’t.

The obsession with the murders had started like a dare. Something twisted and morbid and thrilling. A break from the polish and pretense of her old life—the cheer captain, the Sunnyvale darling, the curated lie. She’d loved the blood and the mess and the fact that it felt like something real.

But it wasn’t about the thrill anymore.

It was about solving it.

Ending it.

Not for her family. Not even for herself. For them. For the ones who never got a second date. For the ones who were buried before they could say I’m scared. For the ones who didn’t even know they were part of a curse until it swallowed them whole.

And yet—beneath the resolve, beneath the fire—something small and scared whispered inside her.

What if ending it means losing him?

She hadn’t let herself think about that before.

But now, sitting across from him with his fingers tangled in hers and that soft, ruinous smile still curling at the corners of his mouth… she couldn’t help it.

She wanted another date.
And another.
And another after that.
She wanted to argue over movie picks and steal his hoodies and kiss him in places that weren’t shadowed by secrets. She wanted to know what it felt like to fall in love without a ghost trailing behind her every step.

She wanted him.

And she didn’t want to lose him to the same legacy she was trying to kill.

But when she looked at him again—really looked—he was already there. In it. With her. Like he’d never even considered being anywhere else.

So she smiled, slow and dangerous, but real.

“This is our first date,” she said, and the words tasted strange and perfect on her tongue. “And normally? A gentleman should pay.”

She squeezed his hand, just enough to make him pause.

“But I’ve got some reparations to make.”

Her other hand slipped into her bag, pulled out her wallet, and dropped a few crumpled bills on the table like it was nothing. Like money could settle blood debt. Like it mattered, and it didn’t.

What mattered was that she wasn’t running.

Not from the past.
Not from the curse.
Not from him.

She stood then, tugging him up by the hand she still refused to let go of. Her heels clicked against the floor as she pulled him toward the door, her pace confident, her chin high—but her eyes?

Her eyes said thank you.
For staying. For seeing. For believing.

And just as they pushed through the door, the bell jingling above them, Heather glanced at him—lips smudged, heart hammering, hand still in his.

She leaned in close, breath skating over his cheek as she whispered, “You earned your kisses back.”

A pause. A wicked grin.

“All of them.”

Then, without waiting, she kissed him.

Not soft. Not shy.

A kiss full of everything she hadn’t said and everything she wanted to say. It was slow and unapologetic, the kind that made time bend and hearts race. One hand fisted gently in his shirt, the other still clutching his hand like an anchor.

When she finally pulled back, her lips barely parted, eyes still half-lidded, she added—voice low and soaked in certainty:

“That was just your down payment.”

And then she walked into the night beside him—cursebreaker, firestarter, girl in love—ready to burn it all down and build something better.

Together.

Benji stood frozen for a heartbeat, lips tingling, breath stolen, the imprint of her kiss seared onto his soul like a brand.

Down payment, she’d said.

Jesus.

He was done.

Absolutely wrecked.

Heather Goode—Goodwin, fire-forged and curseborn and unapologetically herself—had just paid the bill, kissed him like a woman claiming fate by the throat, and walked out into the night like she owned the stars.

And she did.

Every part of her, from the silk and heels to the rage and righteousness, was blazing. Beautiful. Unstoppable.

And Benji?

He didn’t hesitate. Didn’t smirk. Didn’t ruin it with a joke, even though his brain was short-circuiting in eight directions.

He just followed.

Not behind her. Beside her.

Because that was the whole point, wasn’t it?

She wasn’t his to protect. She didn’t need saving. She was the storm and the sword and the girl who smiled at legacy and said watch me undo you.

But he could walk with her.

Could hold her hand through the fire and remind her that she didn’t have to do it alone anymore.

The wind hit them as they stepped into the lot, lifting her hair like a spell in motion, and he glanced sideways just in time to see the moment her smile faltered—just for a second.

Soft.

Unarmored.

Real.

He tightened his grip on her hand, knuckles brushing hers as he said, voice low and full of promise:

“You’re not getting rid of me.”

Heather rolled her eyes, but she didn’t let go.

And as they made their way toward his car—two silhouettes in the dark, one legacy running hot in her veins, the other waiting quietly in his chest—Benji knew it without needing to say it out loud:

This wasn’t just the beginning of a love story.

This was the beginning of the end.

Of the curse.
Of the silence.
Of the fear.

And maybe—just maybe—the beginning of something that finally felt like freedom.

For both of them.