Page 69 of What We Bury

“How what works?”

I shrug. “Whatever this is. Whatever we’re all becoming. Something happened to us all that night to make us this way—twisted together in the same orbit. So let it be weird. Let it be messy. But let it be real.”

She blinks like she wants to cry but is now unsure if she should. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“You’re not the one doing the hurting.”

She studies my face for a long moment. Then she leans in and kisses me—soft, sweet, nothing like the desperate heat of this morning. A thank you. A promise. Something I don’t have words for yet.

“Stay,” she says against my mouth. “Just for a little while longer.”

“Of course.” I pull her into my arms, and she comes willingly, her head finding the hollow of my shoulder like it belongs there. “I’ll stay as long as you need.”

NINETEEN

SAGE

“Here’s your patty melt,” I say, setting the plate in front of Frank. He grunts his thanks without looking up from the sports section, and I slide the ketchup bottle closer to his elbow before turning away.

The dinner rush has thinned from chaos to manageable irritation, the diner settling into that weird close-to-closing hum where the booths are half full, the coffee is always half empty, and the fryers never stop hissing. I’ve been on since noon, and my feet are aching in that dull, familiar way that usually feels grounding.

Usually.

Today everything feels two degrees off, and I know exactly why. It’s Wednesday, and I haven’t laid eyes on Eli since he stood in my bedroom doorway Monday morning looking like I’d reached into his chest and come back with a fistful of nerves. No coffee at the counter. No amber eyes tracking me across the room while pretending not to. Nothing.

Not that I’m short on company. Micah came by an hour ago with a smoothie he claimed he “accidentally” bought extra. Knoxwas parked outside my window this morning, and I’m fairly sure Holden did a silent drive-by around ten. Only Milo’s stayed away—giving me space, Micah says—which is probably for the best, since I don’t think I’m emotionally equipped for whatever flavor of chaos he brings.

So I have a whole roster of devastating men accounted for. Just not the one I keep checking the door for.

I hate that I care. I have survived worse things than one broody man going radio silent after watching another man get me off. But every time the bell jingles, some stubborn part of me expects him to walk in wearing that careful, devastating look he gets right before he says something that lodges under my skin.

“Sage,” Rosa snaps from behind the counter, “table four wants more ranch.”

“Of course they do,” I mutter.

I grab the bottle and head over. The bell over the door jingles, and a hint of awareness prickles over my skin as a man with dark curls slides onto a stool four seats down from Frank. By the time I’ve made my way over to him, he’s already settled in, elbows planted on the counter, leaning forward in a way that suggests we’re mid-conversation and have been for some time.

“Thai food,” he says without preamble. “Thoughts?”

I stop with the coffee pot halfway to his mug.

“What?”

“Thai food. Quick, don’t think about it.” He snaps his fingers at me. “Spicy or sweet?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Spicy or sweet, Sage. Hurry, this is time sensitive.”

That’s when the recognition hits.

It dawns all at once. I know his face. I’veseenhis face. In the moonlight under the jetty when the skull masks came off and five men stood around me in the sand, looking at what I’d done.

He’s the one who cracked the joke about the piñata then went on a rant about the swirls in Brock’s ‘g’s.

My pulse goes up as I remember exactly how bright his eyes were. How strange it felt, that much humor standing next tothatmuch blood.

He grins at me like we’re old friends and not two strangers linked by homicide.