Page 256 of What We Bury

I don’t know why that surprises me—it’s his house, of course it smells like him—but there’s something about walking through the front door and being hit with it that makes my chest go tight. Cedar and soap, like the leather of his work jacket absorbed into the walls. It’s clean. Organized. The kind of space that says a man lives here alone.

The entryway opens into a living room with hardwood floors and a big couch that is simple but looks like the most comfortable thing on earth. There’s a fireplace with a mantel that has a painting of a landscape above and a handful of well-chosen knick-knacks along the surface—nothing personal. No photos. But it’s decorated and it’snice. When I look to the left there’s a kitchen with an island counter and pots hanging above it, knives on a magnetic strip along the wall. There are stairs going up.

“It’s not much,” Holden says, and the fact that he sounds almost self-conscious makes me want to wrap my arms around him and not let go.

“It’s perfect,” I say, because it is.

The others file in behind us, and the house absorbs them. Knox sets my bag down by the stairs and does an immediate perimeter check—windows, back door, sight lines—because Knox can’t exist in a space without assessing its weaknesses first. Milo wanders into the kitchen and opens the fridge with the familiarity of a man who’s already decided this is his domain.

“Holy shit, Holden. Do you meal prep?” he calls out. “Look at all this. You have containers. You have protein. You have, look at this, little bags of carrot sticks.”

“I’m starting to think he’s not really a cop,” Micah deadpans, leaning against the kitchen island. “He’s an undercover event planner.”

“Oh my God, no, he’s the dad,” Milo says, head in the fridge. “It’s all seltzer water and three kinds of cheese and very,veryfancy mustard.”

Holden just rolls his eyes and sighs. “Eat whatever you want. If you want something I don’t have, there’s a grocery store two blocks east.”

“Perfect. I’ll go tomorrow. But tonight we order in.” Milo’s already pulling out his phone, scrolling through delivery apps with the focused intensity I imagine he usually reserves for forging suicide notes. “Pizza? Thai? There’s a place that does?—”

“Pizza,” Knox and I say at the same time.

Milo grins. “Democracy at work. Eli? Micah?”

“Whatever’s fine,” Eli says from the doorway, where he’s leaning with his arms crossed, scanning the space with an expression I can’t read. Not disapproval. More like recalibration. Maybe dread.

Micah drops onto the couch, tests the cushions, and nods approvingly. “This couch is incredible.”

“It’s twelve years old,” Holden says.

“Exactly. It’s been broken in perfectly. Like a good pair of boots.” Micah stretches out, arms behind his head, and for a second he looks so at ease that I almost forget why we’re here—that someone hung a noose in my living room and wrote my death in block letters on a piece of paper.

But that isn’t something you get to forget for too long.

Holden catches me standing in the middle of the room, arms wrapped around myself. He doesn’t say anything. He puts a hand on my lower back and guides me toward the stairs.

“Come on. I’ll show you the bedroom.”

His bedroom is at the end of the upstairs hall. It’s sparse—a king-sized bed with a navy comforter, a dresser, nightstands on either side. One with a lamp and a book he’s halfway through. There’s a bathroom through a door on the right, tile floor, a tub that looks deep enough to drown in. The window faces the backyard, and through it I can see the last light catching the tops of the trees.

“Towels are in the cabinet,” he says, dropping my bag on the end of the bed. “Extra blankets in the closet. Lock works.” He taps the bedroom door handle. “If you need space, use it. No one comes in without knocking.”

I look at him—at this man who bought a house for a family he never built, who keeps it clean and maintained and ready, like part of him never stopped believing they might still show up—and the tenderness of it nearly takes my knees out.

“Thank you,” I say. It’s not enough, but it’s all I’ve got.

He nods once, the way he does, and heads back downstairs.

I sit on the edge of his bed. The mattress is firm. The comforter smells like his laundry detergent—clean and unscented, practical, no-nonsense. I press my face into the pillow and breathe him in and let myself have thirty seconds of falling apart.

Thirty seconds. That’s the deal I make with myself. Thirty seconds to shake and go small and let the fear do what it wants. Then I get up, wash my face, and go back downstairs, because there are five men in this house who moved their lives to protect mine, and I’m not going to sit in a bedroom and crumble.

Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. Thirty.

I get up. Wash my face. Look at myself in the mirror.

“You’re not going to be a victim, Sage. Not again.Neveragain.”

My reflection seems stern, so I nod at myself and go back downstairs.