Page 257 of What We Bury
The pizza arrives twenty minutes later, and we eat in the living room with the TV on, numbing out while we fill our bellies. Holden sits on the floor with his back against the couch, plate balanced on his knee. Knox takes an armchair, which creaks ominously under his weight. Milo and Micah are on the couch with me between them, and Eli sits on the coffee table.
Milo eats three slices in the time it takes me to finish one, then steals the crust off my plate when he thinks I’m not looking.
“I saw that.”
“It was going to waste.”
“I was saving it.”
“Nobody saves the crust, kitten. That’s psychopath behavior.”
“Says the guy who forges suicide notes as a side hustle.”
“Touché.” He leans over and kisses my temple, his lips warm and smelling like cheese and garlic. “Eat more. You barely had anything today.”
“I had ice cream.”
“Ice cream isn’t a meal.”
“Knox bought it for me. Are you saying Knox made a bad decision?”
Milo looks at Knox. Knox looks at Milo with the energy of a man who could snap him like a breadstick and is calmly considering it. Milo looks back at me.
“I stand corrected.”
The laughter that ripples through the room is warm, and I hold onto it.
After the pizza is demolished and the boxes are taken out to the trash, the energy in the room shifts. Not toward anything heavy—quieter. The adrenaline of the day bleeding off and leaving tired people behind.
Micah is the first one to pull me in. He doesn’t make a thing of it, just hooks his arm around my waist when I stand up to clear plates and tugs me back down onto the couch, into his lap.
“Nope,” he says. “Sit.”
“I was going to?—”
“Sit, baby girl. We’ve got it.” He wraps both arms around me from behind, his chin finding the curve of my shoulder, and the tension I’ve been carrying in my spine starts to dissolve. His hands are warm on my stomach, thumbs tracing slow circles through my shirt, and when he presses his lips to the side of my neck I shiver and relax into him.
“How are you doing?” he murmurs. “For real.”
“Scared,” I admit, because lying to Micah is impossible and pointless. “But better here. With you guys.”
He hums against my skin and holds me tighter.
Knox collects the plates without being asked, moving through the room with a quiet efficiency, and on his way back from the kitchen he pauses by the couch. He bends—all that height folding down like a drawbridge—and cups my face in one hand, pressing a kiss to my forehead that’s so gentle it makes my throat close.
“Safe now, Fury,” he says.
My eyes suddenly sting.
He straightens and disappears back into the kitchen, and Milo immediately drops into the space beside me, throwing his arm across the back of the couch and pressing close to my other side.
“Scoot over, Micah. I need access.”
“You have the whole couch.”
“I need this specific square foot of couch. It’s prime real estate. Move your elbow.”
They jostle around me until I’m sandwiched between them, laughing despite everything. Milo catches my chin and kisses me—quick, sweet, the kind of kiss that’s less about heat and more about reminding me he’s there. Then he rests his forehead against mine.
