Unbecoming ✞ Gecko Brothers

Ava was never supposed to leave alive.

Not with her brother dead, a body in her past she doesn't know how to bury, and a name she can't say out loud without feeling like she's choking on it.

But she does leave.

With Seth Gecko.

And now she's somewhere between survival and surrender-running through border towns, motel rooms, and nights that don't feel real enough to trust. Seth calls it temporary. Ava doesn't believe in temporary anymore.

Because Richie didn't feel temporary.

He feels like something still watching her. Something she can't wash off. Something that lives behind her ribs when she sleeps and waits in the silence when she wakes.

The further she gets from home, the less she recognizes what she's becoming. Grief doesn't look like crying anymore. It looks like dissociation. It looks like attraction. It looks like clinging to the only person who doesn't let her fall completely apart.

Seth tells himself he's keeping her safe.

Ava tells herself she's just trying to stay alive.

But nothing about them is clean. Not the choices. Not the timing. Not the way they keep orbiting each other in the aftermath of violence, pretending it isn't turning into something else.

Something dependent.

Something dangerous.

And somewhere in the distance - between Mexico, memory, and guilt - Richie isn't done with her yet.