Page 271 of What We Bury

My mouth opens and closes. I shoot a glance at Eli, but he’s looking at his feet.

Why isn’t he saying anything? Why isn’t he telling Odin to back off? Why isn’t he?—

“No. I won’t do it. Those men”—I gesture at the door, at the world beyond it—“they’re worth more than anything you can offer me. I would rather die than walk away.”

Odin regards me. He doesn’t seem surprised by my answer. He expected it. Which means this is a test, or a formality, or the prelude to something worse.

My stomach aches, my chest growing tight.

“The men who care about you,” he says slowly, “are compromised by that care. Their judgment is affected. Their operational security is weakened. Every moment they spend protecting you is a moment they’re not spending on the work—and their workmatters,Miss Adams. It’s essential. You understand that, surely?”

“I do.”

He waits, letting the logic do its work.

“You want me to feel guilty about making your Hangmen love me,” I say.

“I want you to consider the consequences of being loved by monsters,” Odin corrects gently. “No one can keep you safe forever, Sage. The damage will taint you. The only question is how—by your choice or someone else’s?”

“I’m not leaving them.” I don’t look away. “I can’t.”

He lets out a slow exhale then looks at Eli.

“Perhaps you could help Sage understand the situation from your perspective?”

My stomach drops. I turn to look at Eli, and the expression on his face—or rather, the absence of expression, the careful, constructed blankness—makes my blood go cold.

“Eli?”

He pushes off the wall and walks to the center of the room. He doesn’t sit. He stands there with his hands in his pocketsand looks at me with eyes that are flat and distant in a way I haven’t seen since that day in my kitchen, when he couldn’t bring himself to touch me.

“You should take the offer, Sage.”

I recoil. “What?”

“Odin’s right. You should go. Start fresh. Get as far from this as you can.”

“Eli, what are you?—?”

“This.” He gestures between us. Between me and the door, the room,everything. “Whatever you think this is—you’re wrong. We’re not your boyfriends. We’re not your family. We’re a group of men who kill people, and you’re—” He stops. Swallows. Starts again, and his voice is harder this time, deliberate, like he’s reading from a script he wrote to destroy me. “You’re the girl who happened to be on the beach that night. Wrong place, wrong time. We got attached because proximity does that—because you were there and you were willing and it was easy.Youwere easy.”

Every word is a blade. I feel them go in, one after another, precise and cold.

“Easy?” I repeat.

“Easy,” he confirms. “You think this is love? Five men passing around the same woman? Come on, Sage. You’re smarter than that. This is adrenaline. Shared trauma. A fucked-up situation that made us all feel something intense, and we confused it for something real.” He shrugs, and the casualness of it is so wrong, so manufactured, that it makes my vision blur. “It was fun. You were fun. But it can’t go anywhere. Do you seriously think we’re all going to live in Holden’s house together? Our own happily-ever-after orgy? You think that’s a life?”

“Stop it,” I whisper.

“No. You need to hear this.”

“I don’t need to hear anything from you.” My voice cracks, and I hate it—hate that he’s doing this, hate that it’s working, hate that the tears are already building behind my eyes because some stupid, wounded part of me is listening to the words instead of the actions of the man saying them. “You told me you wanted me. You said you wanted me so much it was making you sick. Were you lying then, or are you lying now?”

“People say a lot of things to get what they want,” he says, teeth clenched. “Doesn’t make them true.”

The tears come. I can’t stop them. They spill down my cheeks and I swipe at them furiously, angrily, because I will not give him the satisfaction of seeing me break. Not when I was stupid enough to believe I meant something to him.

“Fuck you, Eli.” My voice shakes, but the words don’t. “Fuck. You.”