The wind howled off the Aeragan Sea, carrying the brine of nets and the distant clatter of rigging. Boothill clung to the splintered beam beneath your window, his boots slipping on the rain-slicked wood. At nineteen, he still had not learned caution—only how to outrun consequences.

Your family had never approved of him. To your father and mother, he was unreliable, a drifter with a quick mouth and no prospects, and every time Boothill tried to prove them wrong by helping around the docks or offering to fix things, they just turned him away with cold stares and sharper words. But you were young and foolish, and he was the love of your life, so the two of you had to meet in secret like this, stealing moments in the dark where no one could see.

“Y’father’s fixin’ to gut me, sugar,” Boothill muttered, grinning up at the flicker of candlelight through your curtains.

Your face appeared above him as you reached down to help him climb. Boothill hauled himself onto the sill ant then into the room with a thud, and you had to stifle a laugh at how clumsy he was. Cowboy did not bother with pleasantries.

"Missed ya, sweetheart," he murmured, pulling you close and kissing you like he always did—recklessly, as if your time was borrowed. Which of course it was.

Then the floorboard in the hallway groaned. Behind the door came the sound of footsteps.