Bound Eternal - Part Two
The Vow
THE VOW
They stopped pretending it was a fling.
A week passed without either of them naming it, but the shift was there. They moved like something already been decided. Emma left her things in the room without asking and paid for things. She wouldn’t let Donny spend any of the little cash he had. It made him feel small, but she told him she wanted to take care of him. When they weren’t touching, they stayed close enough to feel the heat.
They drank less. Not because they wanted clarity—because they didn’t need the buffer anymore.
Emma told him about the horrors of her Oklahoma childhood. The big house with white columns, the kind that looked perfect from the street, hid everything that was wrong on the inside. Her father was a rich and powerful man. He would smile for photographs and use that same smile when he came to her room at night. It turned crueler in the dark, creating a shadow in Emma’s mind that never left her.
When she told Donny the story, her voice didn’t shake. She said it like she was talking about someone else, because in her mind, she was. That girl—was dead to her now.
Donny told her about the Indiana trailer parks, the ones held together by plywood, rust, and cockroaches. Every night, he fell asleep to the sound of different men’s voices in the next room, one for nearly every day of the week. His mother worked the highway motels, gone for days and sometimes weeks; chasing whatever money or high came first. He learned early how to feed himself, how to stay quiet, how to survive.
When Donny was older, he learned what sex was by watching those men with his mother. She never cared—or maybe she was too far gone to notice her own son standing there, seeing everything.
They laughed sometimes, not because anything was funny, but because it felt good to be seen by someone just as broken. By the end of the week, they weren’t just lovers. They were mirrors, each reflecting the other’s ruin, each craving the same illusion of control.
And by the end of the week, they’d run out of secrets worth confessing.
That’s when Emma said it softly, like a dare. “Let’s do something real. Let’s rob some people.”
They picked the place because it was forgettable.
A corner convenience store wedged between a payday loan office and a run-down porn shop with flickering lights. No cameras worth worrying about. No hero energy. Just a man behind the counter who looked tired in a way that suggested this wasn’t even a job he wanted to show up to today.
They chose the masks together for the job, something black and untraceable. Donny made sure to tell Emma not to get or wear anything flashy. They needed to be forgettable. Blend in.
“Register,” Dony said, tapping the counter with the muzzle of his pistol.
The clerk didn’t argue. The guy could have cared less and gave Donny a look like he was more annoyed than anything. Emma stood a few feet back, gun steady, and posture perfect. She wasn’t watching the man. She was watching Donny and how he carried himself.
“Have a good day,” the clerk said as he handed over the money, like it was just another transaction before closing.
Emma couldn’t see Donny’s face, but she felt the shift in him. Those words hit the wrong nerve with her man. Donny snapped—jerked his arm forward and cracked the pistol across the clerk’s mouth. Teeth scattered. The man dropped, blood spilling down his chin.
Emma inhaled sharply. Not out of fear.
After, in the car, her hand wouldn’t leave Donny’s thigh. She didn’t speak until they were blocks away.
“I liked that,” she said.
“Got a little mad, sorry,” Donny said, not listening fully, half-laughing. “But, you okay?”
She leaned in and kissed him hard, open-mouthed. “I’ve never been more okay, baby.”
That night, she didn’t let him sleep. Emma kept him awake on purpose. Every time Donny drifted, she pulled him back from his slumber with teeth, with nails, or with praise whispered right where shame lived. Every time his body slackened, Emma would shift into him. She touched his mouth and his throat, placed her hand between his legs, just enough friction to wake him without finishing anything.
It scared Donny how much he wanted her approval. He didn’t say anything.
“You do that on the inside?” she asked quietly.
Donny opened his eyes, giving up. “Do what?”
“Pretend you’re asleep when you’re not.”
“You like watching me now?” He swallowed.
She smiled. “Always.”
Near dawn, she spoke again. Donny might’ve slept a few hours.
“Do you think people mean it when they say forever?”
He didn’t answer.
“I don’t think most people understand the cost,” she said, tracing a finger over his chest. “They want permanence without proof.”
Donny turned his head. “That’s a hell of a way to put it.”
“You know what I mean. People get bored. They lie. They stay because leaving feels worse.”
“And us?”
She looked at him, steady. “We don’t lie. We can’t survive like that.”
“So, what’s the fix?” he asked. Something in his chest tightened.
“A rule,” she said. “A simple rule.”
He waited.
“I don’t know… something like vows before the marriage, ya know?” She smiled faintly. “Till death do us part. No one else. Ever.”
Donny was going to respond, but she kissed him before he could and rolled away. He lay there awake and stared at the ceiling until the sun rose that morning, unable to fall back asleep, heart racing for reasons he couldn’t quite name.