Page 200 of What We Bury

“Okay. Sure. But why am I always the last person to know?”

“Because you’re not a hangman, Sage. You might be mixed up in this. But operationally, you’re not one of us.”

My hands remember the weight of Hank’s knife. The seam giving under the blade. Milo’s grin when I said next one.

Eli has no idea how far behind he already is.

The words are out before I can soften them. Before I can pretend they’re only anger.

“Maybe I should be.”

He looks at me, his eyes dark and raw and furious—but underneath the fury is something worse. Fear. Plain, ugly fear.

“No, little savage. That isnevergoing to happen.”

It feels like a slap.

“You don’t get to tell me what to do.”

He goes silent for a moment, his brow knitting like he’s trying to force something out of his head. When he finally speaks, there’s an edge to it.

“We’re done.”

I pull my head back. “What?”

“This”—he points between us—“needs to stop. Whatever the fuck it is.Was.” He drags a hand down his face, and my stomach twists into a knot.

“Eli—”

“No, Sage. This. All of this. We’re too fucking close. It needs to stop for all our sakes.”

“I don’t need you to protect me, Eli.”

“I’m protecting me too! Your roommate—mycolleague—just watched four men walk into your apartment. She knows my name, where I work, what I—” He stops. Breathes. “Do you understand what that means?”

“She’s not going to?—”

“She doesn’t have to do anything. She just has to mention it. One comment in the staff room. ‘Oh, I saw Eli over the summer. He was with a bunch of guys and my roommate.’ That’s all it takes. Then it’s parents. Administration. Safeguarding questions. Why is Mr. Ward hanging around a colleague’s roommate with four other men? Why was he in her apartment? Why is her boyfriend saying things got ugly?” He’s pacing now, short, tight laps between the kitchen and the living room. “I teach kindergarten, Sage. Five-year-olds. Their parents trust me with—” His voice cracks. He stops pacing. “Do you have any idea what something like this would look like?”

The anger in his voice hits me like a slap, and my own rises to meet it. “Something likewhat, exactly?”

“This. All of it.” He gestures between us, down the hallway, at the front door where the others just left. “The arrangement. The sharing. Whatever you’re calling it.”

“We’re not calling it anything. We’re just . . . figuring it out.” My voice wobbles on the last word, which I hate. “If you don’t want to be a part of it, say so. No one’s forcing you.”

That lands. I watch it hit him—watch the flinch he tries to hide and the way his hands curl into fists at his sides. Desperate. Like he’s fighting to hold onto something that keeps trying to slip through his fingers.

“You think I don’t want to?” His voice drops, rough and low. “You think I stand back because I don’t feel it? Every time I watch you. Every time I see you with them. Every time Milo sends some bullshit text about how you laughed or what you said—” He exhales through his teeth. “I want you, Sage. Fucked up as it is, I wanted you on that beach. I’ve wanted you every moment since. So much it’s making me sick.”

The words hang, and I don’t know when he got this close but he’s right there, close enough that I can see the pulse hammering in his throat, the fine tremor running through his shoulders.

“Then stop fighting it,” I whisper.

“I can’t—” He squeezes his eyes shut. “I can’t be like them. I can’t smile about this and high-five Milo in the fucking hallway. That’s not who I am.”

“Nobody’s asking you to be Milo.”

His breath hitches. “There’s no control. Before there was. But now there?—”