Age Gap13 min read
Stay With Me — Don't Ever Leave
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Rain hits my umbrella. I step off the cracked stone and listen.
"Do you hear that?" I ask, because the city always sounds different when it is dying a little.
"Shut up, Elise. Keep moving," Gage snaps behind me, voice sharp as the wet air.
I pull my silk coat tighter. The rain is thin, the kind that only makes the ground honest. Blood has already stained the stones here. I smell it before I see it.
"That alley's trouble," Maxwell says. "Someone's been fighting."
I stop anyway. I always stop when the city bleeds. People think I'm fragile because of my face and my white coat. They are wrong.
A man stumbles into the open, bleeding across his chest, following the sound of vengeance or rescue. Two more fall behind him. They shout, sound small under the rain.
"Our boss—he promised—" the nearest man gasps.
"Keep your head down," I say.
"Keep your head down?" he repeats. He laughs, but the laugh tastes like iron. "You? A woman? Do you know how to fight?"
"I know enough," I tell him.
I do. I have always had too much strength. My father's men learned not to underestimate me. My hands are not gentle without reason.
A shadow moves at the mouth of the alley. A low collar, a soldier's gait. He pushes past the others with a calm I have seen only in men who have taken too much air for themselves.
"Preston." My mouth says the name before my head catches up.
He stands there in the rain, all sharp jaw and ruined silk. Blood clings to his sleeves. He looks like a man who has been two kinds of war and survived both.
"You shouldn't come here," I say.
He smiles and the world tilts. "And miss seeing you? Never."
Gage clears his throat. "Boss, she's a civilian. We should leave."
"She's not your business," Preston says softly. He looks at me like he knows the private map of my face. "Elise Lefevre, is this your family home?"
"Yes," I say. I do not tell him how small the house is, how my mother's letters smell, how my grandmother's grave waits two bends up the mountain road.
"Then let me walk you home," he says.
I think of every reason not to. I think of the men who will use my face to bargain, of the rumor mill in the city, of my father and his silk-and-trade rules. I also think of the way Preston looks at me—as if a part of him has answered finally, the way a stubborn lock gives up to the right key.
"Thank you," I say. My voice surprises me.
He bows like an old knight would, one shoulder dipped in the rain. "Then I will be of service."
We walk. He keeps an arm a polite distance from me, but the city has ears and the rain has eyes. Gage and Maxwell trail a step back, watching. For once I'm not the only one weighed by what looks like a promise.
Later that night, after the shop is closed and the servants hush their steps, the house smells like boiled tea and clean linen.
"Kendra," I say. "Bring the kettle."
"Yes, Miss Elise." Kendra is fast and small and brave in the ways that keep a home from falling apart.
I sit by the window and think about the man who walked me home. Preston Ford—he's twenty-six, everyone says. Older than me, used to being the strongest thing in every room. He is a leader, the sort who moves people like chess pieces. He is dangerous, and he is also, I now know, the one who will not look away.
Two days later I see him again.
"Elise." He says my name like tasting honey.
"Preston," I answer, and I add, "Don't call me that in front of your men. They make jokes."
"Then what should I call you?" He leans on the balcony rail, his uniform wet and perfect. "Elise. Or... Al Dust. No. That won't do." He grins like it's a small rebellion.
I slap his shoulder lightly. "Stop being childish."
He laughs, and his laugh is a rough song. "I can't help it when I'm around you."
"That's nonsense," I say, but my heart does a nonsense thing every time he smiles.
He wipes rain from his hair and his hand accidentally touches mine. The contact is small and hot and then gone.
"You're staying at the Lefevre house?" he asks.
"I am," I say.
"Then stay safe. The city is not safe. Not anymore."
"Neither are you," I mutter, thinking about the gunshots at the riverside and the men who shot first and asked questions never.
"I know," he says. "But I don't intend to be reckless anymore. Not while you are here."
"Why me?" I ask.
He looks at me like he is cataloguing small things. "Because you are the only one who refused to look afraid at me."
That answer is ridiculous, but I do not tell him so. Instead I look at the dark city below and feel, strangely, like someone has put a hand against my back and steadied me.
"Thanks," I say.
Soon, my days become measured in moments with him. He arrives like weather—sometimes stormy, sometimes too warm. He brings obligations and he brings protection. He brings a small, ridiculous present once: a black tie in a little silver box.
"What is this?" I ask.
"Take it," he says. "Wear it if you will. Tie it around a book, around your hair. I like giving you things."
"You're ridiculous," I laugh.
"Only in the best ways," he replies.
When the city grows louder and the war outside our walls gets closer, he changes.
We stand at a dinner in Preston's big house—his world now has flags and officers and polite smiles. I sit next to him because he sits next to me. The room smells of cooked meat and old alliances.
"Elise, please," he says. "Let me share this with you."
"Preston," I answer. "If you do not eat, I will eat both of ours."
The table laughs. The city outside explodes again. Gunshots, far and then close. Sirens scream.
"Stay," he says, and the command is kind. "Stay with me tonight. It's not safe here."
I see him when a bullet cracks through the window glass and a man falls outside.
"Run!" someone shouts.
He moves before I can think. Preston drops himself over me and the world shifts. Something hot tears through his shoulder. He freezes, breath going thin. I see his sleeve darken with blood.
"Preston!" I grab his hand and he grips mine like it's the center of his world.
"Elise, get back!" a soldier barks.
"I am not leaving you," I say.
"You must!" the man shouts.
"No." I force the word out. I have always had more strength than a woman had the right to have. I jab forward and a knife skids away from a man about to strike. The attacker staggers back from a clean kick, thrown with a force that surprises the room.
"Who taught you that?" Preston gasps, pain making him soft, human.
"My father used to say—" I begin, but then the light in his eyes goes ridged and sharp.
"Don't tell me," he says, but he smiles. Then he closes his mouth and winces.
The bullet is in his bone. They call for a doctor and he is taken to surgery. I sit outside the operating room with my hand folded over his, feeling every tick of the clock.
"He's awake," a nurse says suddenly.
I stand on my feet like a spring.
Preston wakes and his fingers find mine like home. He holds on the whole night and when the doctor says he will live, I let out a laugh that tastes like wet stone.
"You scared me," he murmurs. "Don't leave."
"I'm not leaving," I answer. "You can't get rid of me."
"Good," he says. "Then do me a favor. When I'm better, let me show you how ordinary life can be. Fish soup on the first day I'm out. You like fish soup?"
"I do," I say, and then I add, "You can't cook."
He smiles. "I can learn."
"Promise?" I ask.
He looks at me with that dangerous face that is soft when it needs to be. "I promise."
The city shifts into a worse shape. We call it Year One of the New Order. Preston becomes official. He is not proud of the word "marshal" but he accepts it. The gangs have become armies and the armies are now new governments. The world outside my little courtyard grows stranger. Men arrive with guns and laws and strange offers.
"Your father will not be happy," Gage says.
"Who says I asked," I snap. "But if we are honest—he will judge us."
I have not told my father about Preston. Lincoln Aguirre taught me many things—trade, how to guard my heart like a ledger. Lincoln believes in plans and letters and neat columns. He does not like surprises.
"Elise, he will protect our trade if we do this right," Maxwell says.
"Or he will try to sell me again," I say.
Preston hears none of this. He is always careful to be patient with my concerns, but he has urgency in his decisions.
"Let me meet him," he says one evening. "I will go to your city. I will ask for you."
"No," I say too quickly. My heart stabs with a color I cannot name. "Not yet."
"Why?" he asks plainly.
"Because you're dangerous," I answer. "Because he's a man who believes in paper. He will not want me tied to a man who has a black trenchcoat and a gun."
"Then we'll give him reasons he can understand," he answers. His voice is iron and promise.
"Preston—"
He kisses my forehead, a small, possessive thing. "I will make him listen."
The next weeks are full of plans. Preston organizes men to protect the family holdings. He trains my guards. He sends one of his best, Gage Daugherty, to remain in charge of the outskirts where rumor and thieves still linger.
Lincoln watches the city through the windows of his counting house like he is waiting for someone to knock over the ledger. When Preston arrives to ask for my hand—because he asks in this old-world way—my father looks at the man as if examining a dangerous painting.
"Mr. Ford," Lincoln says. "Your men have been helpful. You do understand trade, yes?"
"I understand protection," Preston answers. "I also understand that trade needs safety to survive."
Lincoln tests him with questions that are polite knives. "Do you promise to keep my daughter safe? Do you promise she will not be used as bait in the new wars?"
"I promise," Preston says. "And I will build a guard that answers to us both."
Lincoln looks at me then—at the steady thing I have become—and smiles with a softness I have not seen since my mother left.
"Show me," he says. "Prove to me you are a man I can trust."
Preston nods. "I will."
He returns to the city and for the next weeks he becomes all business and tenderness. He is teaching my guards to take orders. He laughs at me in the kitchen when I pretend his hands are clumsy. He insists on walking me through the market. He refuses anyone who flirts with me.
"Leave her alone," he says once, quietly but with a blade behind the words.
"How possessive," I tell him later.
"I am not possessive," he answers, though he holds my hand like a claim. "I am careful."
A rival from the north, Knox Zaytsev, moves armies into the border towns. Knox has a bitter laugh and old debts. He is the one who sent the two men to ambush us at the riverside.
"Knox wants the mines," Preston says. "He thinks we stole his future."
"We didn't," I say. "My father builds, he does not steal."
"Then we will make sure Knox knows the truth," Preston says.
We prepare to go to the border, to show Lincoln and the town that we can protect business with both ink and gun. Preston asks me to come. I say yes because I cannot imagine being anywhere he is not. He says not to come and then asks me to sit beside him in the carriage like a thief's prize and a promise.
We meet trouble on the road. Men in dark coats leap from behind a wall and demand our cart. We give nothing and push on. A blade takes a near miss at Preston's back. I step forward, because the reflex has become habit.
"Elise, get back!" he roars.
I don't. I kick a man into the mud and then throw the leader off his feet. The fight ends dirty, with thief and blood and the taste of copper.
"You're mad," Preston pants afterwards, wiping rain and blood from his brow.
"I am alive," I say.
"Yes," he breathes. "And you are mine."
That phrase does something in me, like a gentle theft. I do not argue. I hold his hand under the sun. "You belong to yourself," I whisper.
He laughs. "I belong to you now. You took me."
We win the day and the town. At the market in the border town, Preston signs a treaty—an agreement between the new marshal and the traders—so no more raids can happen here without consequence.
My father watches him sign and then looks at me. He is quiet for a long time, then he takes my hand and squeezes it.
"Elise," he says. "Show me the ledger of the trade. Show me what you want."
So I do. I open boxes of cloth, show him the routes. He nods like a man who finds comfort in explanations. He does not say much about Preston until the night before we leave.
"Elise," he says, when the house grows quiet. "He is a dangerous man."
"He is kind to me," I say.
"You are kind," he replies. "Do not be used."
"I will not," I say.
He studies me by lamplight. "Then let him prove it properly."
"How?"
"Bring him to the city square, make him publicly accept to be judged by trade and law. Let him sign a charter. Let him be accountable to paper, not only his men."
Preston meets my father's test with his usual stubborn grace. He takes pen and paper and signs a charter binding his forces to protect trade routes, to accept fines, to register men who cross into markets. Lincoln nods, and the ledger finds him acceptable. The solemnity of the contract sinks into the city's bones like a pledge.
"Now," my father says, looking at me with a small smile. "He has shown he is responsible for more than fury. He may be reckless, but he learns to be careful."
"Then you will allow it?" I ask.
He shrugs. "I will watch him. You will both be tested. If he fails you, I will teach him the ledger's hurt."
He laughs and the sound is the sound of a man who is not broken yet. Preston laughs with him. The three of us sit at the table, and for one evening the city seems quieter, as if it respects a feat of paper and promises.
But promises are not enough. War cannot be kept out entirely. Knox strikes an outer town and a rumor of a mapped mine spreads like oil. Preston must go. Lincoln's traders will be targeted. The city will burn if we do not fight back.
"Don't leave me," I say.
"Then come," he says simply.
I look at Lincoln. He watches me, his face unreadable but his eyes like coals.
"This is my life," I tell him. "I am not a thing to be kept."
"Then you will come," he answers. "You will come because you choose us."
So I go. Together we march along red earth and thin roads. Preston sits on the first cart, his tie pressed and his face set. He wears the black tie I bought him properly around his neck. He looks frightening and exactly like the man I want to hold.
"In case I die," he whispers before we leave the camp at dawn, "tell me you loved me."
"I will tell you that everyday," I answer.
We reach the mine where Knox's men have taken over the shafts. The air tastes old and the miners hide like ghosts. Preston sends me inside with the guards to give water and speak to the trapped families. I move quietly among them, talking and gathering voices into a single truth.
"Elise!" A small boy calls. "Are you an angel?"
"No," I say, and then smile. "I'm a strong woman."
I leave the children with food and return to find Preston facing Knox. The fight is not elegant. Men shout names and move like storms. Knox has a hound of a grin and a pistol. Preston is a steady point.
"Get down!" I shout when a stray bullet wings past. My body moves first and the world confuses me. I see Preston's hand move to steadiness and then to blood.
This time it's deeper, and I know bone. He does not spare a sound. He fights through the pain and his face becomes an animal. The fight ends when Kendall—one of Maxwell's men—throws Knox to the ground and ties him.
Preston looks at me, wild and wounded, and then he sits down on the stone and laughs soundlessly.
"Are you mad?" I demand.
"I am alive," he says. "And you are alive. We'll make it safe. I'll make it safe."
Back in the town square, people cheer. They have their trades, their markets, their women, their men. They put down weapons for a night and light lanterns. Lincoln studies Preston, then nods at him in a way I can read now: father finally approves.
"Mr. Ford," he says later, solemn under the lantern light. "See? You kept your word."
"You gave me a chance to do so," Preston replies. He kisses my father's hand like a ridiculous soldier in an old film. "Lincoln, I am not honorable like you. I can be stubborn. I am also—" He stumbles on the words. "I am a man who loves your daughter."
Lincoln's mouth curves. "Then love her well. Do not let either of you forget who you are."
"Never," Preston promises.
We return to the city with Knox's men in chains and a charter signed and a bargain struck. Preston has made himself accountable. I choose him though he is dangerous and not always safe to be around. Choosing is a small war of its own.
Weeks pass. The city settles. Preston keeps his promises. He grows patient in small ways—he learns to tie a tie properly, he learns to cook fish soup, which turns out to be surprisingly good for a man who once only knew how to command.
One night in late autumn, the city smells like wood smoke and the market is closing, I find Preston in the small kitchen stirring a pot.
"What is this?" I ask.
"You taught me," he says, and his voice is tender and clumsy. "You said fish soup could calm anything."
"It can," I answer.
He hands me a bowl. We sit on the low bench, leaning close, our feet almost touching. The steam rises between us.
"Elise," he says. "Will you marry me?"
He does not kneel, which would be dramatic and false. He looks at me like a man who will not give me away piece by piece.
"Here?" I ask, because I like an answer with a place.
"Here," he says. "With the city outside and the ledger of my promises behind us. Will you be mine?"
I laugh because the answer is so ridiculously easy.
"Yes," I say. "Will you marry me?"
He nods, as if he has done this a thousand times in his head. "I will."
We announce it quietly. Lincoln throws a small dinner and smiles like a father who has bargained well. He says, "You better make him behave."
Preston kisses me in public for the first time and everyone's faces go into a small, reverent shock. Gage and Maxwell clap like idiots. The city gossips, of course, but the sound is sweet now. A woman I once fought with at a market brings us two loaves of bread.
The next months are a study in ordinary love. Preston takes me to the city square and we watch children play. He helps me write a ledger to manage trade details for the town's safety net. He holds my hand through storms and legal arguments.
One afternoon, Knox is released under terms; he will not return. He sends a petition and Preston burns it. "Tell them," Preston says to his adjutant, "this city answers to peace."
"Are you sure?" Maxwell asks.
"I'm sure," Preston says. He folds his crown of duties into his chest and hands me the other half.
We marry in a small ceremony. There are no banners, just paper, and a lot of hands held. Lincoln signs a marriage contract first because he likes these things, because it helps him sleep. He does not say anything dramatic. He simply gives my hand to Preston as if he is transferring a ledger into safer hands.
On the day we leave the house, Preston presses his lips to my forehead. "I will always protect your ledger," he says. "Even if it gets boring."
"It will not be boring," I tell him. "We will argue about numbers forever."
We walk from my old house to his quarters, and the city watches like an old cat. It will not always be quiet. There will be storms and men who come with demands. But we will be a single, strange island in the middle of it.
At night, under a thin moon, he feeds me a bowl of fish soup he made himself.
"Not bad," I say.
He puffs, proud and foolish. "I told you. I can learn."
"Then don't ever leave," I tell him.
He grips my hand and says the small, perfect vow I needed to hear. "I will try my best. But if I fail, you can hit me with a ledger."
"I will," I promise.
He leans forward and kisses me. It is a kiss that tastes like rain and ink and the smell of the sea. It is a promise without paper but with a thousand small gestures.
We go to bed like two soldiers exhausted and whole. I curl into the curve of him and think of all the maps that led me here—of a grave on a hill, of a black tie, of a man with a gun and a fierce idea about keeping one woman safe.
"Elise," he says in the dark.
"Yes?"
"Stay with me."
"I am staying," I answer.
Outside, the city breathes, a slow, honest thing. Inside, the lamp drops to sleep. I hold him and listen for the future. It will be noisy and messy, but it will be ours.
I fold the black tie and tuck it into my ledger. The paper has lines and numbers and a place for signatures. I sign my name at the bottom, in a hand that has learned to be brave.
"Here," I say, to both of us.
"Here," he echoes.
We close the book together.
The End
— Thank you for reading —