Page 10 of What We Bury

The guy in front of me is still talking. “Can you breathe okay? Are you hurt?” His hand hovers at my elbow, not touching, but I feel the weight of it like a steel bar. Behind him, two of the men move around Brock’s body, working fast, methodical, like they’re cleaning up after a house party that got out of control. They’re not upset. Not freaked out. It’s like this is . . . routine. Normal. A regular Friday night.

Nothing is normal. Nothing will ever be normal again.

I want to go home.

The one holding me releases his grip by a millimeter and I seize the moment, adrenaline detonating in my blood. I drive my heel into his shin and twist sideways, slamming my shoulder into the guy with autumn eyes. I don’t have a plan. My body makes the decision and my mind has to keep up, half a second behind. I’m on my feet, sprinting. Amy’s dress is soaked and sticky and rides up my thighs. I barely register it.

The guys behind me shout, then curse, but I already have a lead—I am pure survival, moving in a scramble, knees high, teeth gritted, sucking oxygen through a straw-sized windpipe.

I lunge for the moonlight, heart slamming against my ribs. My lungs are fire. Every step slams through my bones, every breath knives hot in my throat. I clear the shadow of the jetty to sprint up the slippery slope. I slip once, catching myself bloody palmed, digging my toes into the sand and frantically pushing.

I’m almost to the open beach when something heavy slams into me from behind, a freight train of bone and heat. We hit the packed sand shoulder-first, and I taste blood, salt, and panic in one dizzy mouthful. His arms are around my middle like iron bands, my heels scraping, all leverage lost as we tumble over and over. The breath flies out of me. I turn into a rabid animal, fighting, scratching, and clawing, desperate to escape.

“Stop,” he grunts in my ear, and for a second, I think it’s Brock again—but no, this voice is rougher, deeper. His weight pins me to the ground, his chest to my back.

“Get off.” I flop, wriggle, buck. I don’t care that I’m making a spectacle on an empty goddamn beach. I don’t care that my dress is up, my knees are scraped, or that every movement hurts. All I can do is keep struggling, keep making it as hard as possible for him to hold on. I’ll rip my own skin off if I have to. I will not go down like prey.

Not again.

Not again.

But this guy is a wall. Every angle I try to bite or kick, he’s already there, blocking, absorbing. He rolls us fast and practiced, and then I’m on my back in the sand beneath him, gasping. He’s got my wrists pinned—my own arms folded above my head, his hands covering mine, fingers splayed like he’s used to holding down things that fight.

“Stop,” autumn eyes says again, and this time it’s a plea. I snarl, arch my back, try to bridge off the ground, but he holds firm. His body is all heat and adrenaline and the scent of sweat and ocean and blood.

“Hey! Look at me.”

I do, because what the fuck else am I supposed to do with my face inches from his. He’s breathing hard, lips parted, eyes wide and clear even in the dark. His jaw is hard, stubble shadowing his cheeks, a muscle jumping in the hinge like he’s fighting himself as much as me.

“You’re not in danger. You’re not. I promise, okay? I’m not going to hurt you. Fuck—please, just . . . just breathe, all right?” His voice warbles near the end, and it’s the only thing that even registers—just that one syllable,please.

You don’t hear that from men like Brock. It’s not a thing people beg for unless they really fucking mean it.

I go still.

My breaths are ragged, wild, but I stop fighting.

For a second, we just stare at each other, both of us panting like we’ve run a marathon.

“Let me go.” My voice cracks, my tears blurring everything. “I won’t tell. Swear to God, I won’t. Please—just let me?—”

“I know you won’t tell.”

The certainty in his tone slices through me.

“You know how I know?” He eases his grip on my wrists, just a fraction, his thumb brushing my pulse. “Because you killed him. We all did. You’re in this just as much as we are.”

That stops the world on its axis. My limbs go limp, pulse a ragged thread under his thumb, and I blink at him in the dark. He’s not bluffing. He’s not evil. He’s just . . . cold, and terribly, terribly certain.

I want to scream at him that he’s wrong, that I didn’t want this. But in my mind’s eye, it’s me with the knife, my hands driving again and again, my voice howling like nothing living. They might have started with the rope but it was me who ended Brock’s life.

I twist my wrists. He lets go and sits back, arms hanging like he’s afraid to touch me at all now. My hands shake so hard I have to fist them in the sand to keep from hitting him.

“What do you want from me?”

He shakes his head, slowly. “Nothing.”

And the fucked-up thing is, I believe him.