Page 162 of What We Bury

Our stories are similar. I just found my sister in time. She survived the assault. She survived the after—barely. Which meant she had to keep surviving it, every morning after.

In some ways that was worse.

She had to keep waking up after. Keep walking around with it in her skin, in her startle response, in the way she stopped wearing her hair down because he’d grabbed it. She had to sit in a courtroom and hear a defense attorney say words likemisunderstandingandmixed signalswhile I learned what it felt like to want to kill someone with my bare hands.

Maybe Dean wants the same . . .

Loki told me to test whether he holds, and Odin is done waiting for me to do it slowly. I’ve run out of slow.

I release my cup before I crush it.

“Hypothetical,” I say.

Dean’s eyes come off the TV. “Okay.”

“If I brought you a body. Asked you to make it go away.” I keep my voice level.Unhurried. “What would you do?”

He doesn’t laugh. Doesn’t even blink. He doesn’t do the thing a normal man does, which is decide I’m joking and wait for the punchline. He just looks at me and turns the question over, considering it.

“Depends on the body,” he says. “And why you need it gone.”

I’d braced myself for,I’d call someone,orwhat the hell, Eli.But when he comes out with a genuine answer, my pulse does something I don’t let reach my face.

“Someone like the men who hurt our sisters,” I say. “Or worse.”

The coffee shop hums around us. The espresso machine shrieks. Somewhere behind me a woman laughs about oat milk. And Dean watches me across a slab of reclaimed wood in a neighborhood built entirely out of other people’s safety.

“A guy like that?” His eyes flick to the TV where the news segment is wrapping up, then back to me. “I’ve got a crematorium and no shortage of paperwork. I’d burn it. Without hesitation.”

I sit back.

Dean lifts his cup and takes a sip like he didn’t just casually volunteer body disposal over crappy coffee.

“Good to know,” I say.

He sets the cup down.

“Why?” he asks. Quiet. “Is that something you need, Eli?” He waits a beat. “Is there a body?”

“No.”

I skip thenot yet. I don’t say that part.

Dean doesn’t move for a long moment. His hand stays wrapped around his cup, thumb resting against the seam in the cardboard sleeve.

“This about the girl?”

My eyes lift to his.

Dean’s expression doesn’t change, but something in his voice sharpens. Not accusation. Not curiosity, exactly. More like he’s found the edge of a thing I’ve been trying to keep covered.

“The one you keep asking me to watch?” he says. “Pacific Street. Diner shifts. The one you won’t explain.”

My hand tightens around the coffee cup.

“It does and it doesn’t.”

Dean waits.