Page 51 of What We Bury

I glance at the clock and hesitate. It’s too late. I’d have to sound normal, and normal is beyond me right now.

Instead, I pull up her Instagram and scroll through her latest posts. Sophie at a farmers’ market. Sophie’s cat asleep on her keyboard. Sophie at dinner with friends, laughing, wine glass raised, face flushed. She’s alive and completely ignorant of the blood her freedom is built on.

She’s happy and free.

That’s the point.

That’s the whole fucking point.

I close the app and put the phone face-down on the counter.

For a second, I stand there with my palms flat on either side of it, breathing through my nose like I can force my body back into obedience.

It almost works.

Then I think about Sage.

I can’t not think about Sage.

She said she didn’t feel like a hero. Said she feels like a monster.

Just like me.

No.

Not just like me.

That’s the lie my brain wants because recognition is easier to justify than hunger. If she’s like me, then wanting her feels less like wanting something I have no right to touch. If she’s like me, then the way I look at her becomes understanding instead of appetite.

I know exactly what I am—known for a long time what lurks beneath my skin. I’m the bastard who builds the gallows and calls it justice. I’m the asshole who takes and rarely gives. I’mthe man who can sit beside a crying woman and still catalog the ways she could be used, broken, protected, kept.

Monster through and through.

The difference is I know it.

The difference is I have rules.

Distance is a rule.

No touching unless there’s no other choice is a rule.

Keeping her watched but not crowded is a rule.

Keeping Knox between her and me is definitely a rule.

I contemplate a shower, but there’s a trace of her scent on me.

Vanilla. Coffee. Salt air. Something clean underneath the fear.

I should wash it off.

I don’t.

Another broken rule.

I go to bed instead, fully clothed, because lying down in the dark feels like a punishment I deserve. Sleep is elusive. The sheets are cold. The room is quiet. My body refuses to power down.

Every time I close my eyes, I’m back in the park.