Promises and Pomegranates by Sav R. Miller

“Here.” Kal shoves a piece of paper in my hands, cutting me off. I glance
down, my stomach knotting even more.
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts Certificate of Marriage.
Somehow, it didn’t really feel real until now.
My hands shake, the certificate slipping from them as anxiety floods my
chest, clogging my arteries. “I can’t sign that.”
Heaving a low sigh, Kal catches the paper and drags me over to the bed,
positioning the page on top of Mateo’s chest. He pushes a pen between my
fingers, then curls his own around them, guiding my signature.
Resentment burns furiously inside me as I watch him effortlessly forge
my name as if he’s done it a thousand times.
I avoid looking at Mateo’s lifeless form, my stomach on the verge of
rejecting yesterday’s dinner as it is. When Kal lets go, I swing away from
him, smothering a sob with my palm.
If I’d known sleeping with Kal was going to result in this, in the complete
stripping away of any semblance of freedom I’ve ever had, I never would’ve
done it.
Right?
When you spend your life resigned to a certain fate, making yourself
comfortable with the inevitable, even an ounce of change can feel like the end
of the world.
And while it’s true I didn’t want to marry Mateo any more than I want to
be married to Kal, at least I knew what to expect with him. We’d been
friends, after all, once upon a time. Back before he sought out power and
violence, and decided to wield it against me when he didn’t get what he
wanted.
But I could have handled that.
Spent the last several years navigating around it, using it to my
advantage, meeting his fists with my own bruised knuckles. It was
manageable.
This thing with Kal, though, hasn’t been charted out. I’ve never seen him
with another woman, though presumably, there have been many in his thirtytwo
years.
I can’t even rectify why he was okay with any of this, considering the last
time I saw him, he fucked me raw and left before the sun was up.
Only a poem, scribbled on a scrap piece of paper, and a black rose
remained, making me wonder for a long time if I’d dreamed the entire