Page 78 of What We Bury

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Sage is a sledgehammer. There’s no room for her because she doesn’t fit in a room—she goes through the wall, takes the frame with her, stands in the rubble like she doesn’t understand what she’s just done. Every rule I have about distance and control and not wanting things I can’t have, she walks straight through without noticing they were there.

I can manage Micah.

I can’t manage her.

I’ve barely managed to keep my distance in the three days since her bedroom, and that’s even with Knox bolted between us like a deadbolt.

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It’s now Wednesday evening, and Monday morning still lives behind my eyes like it happened ten minutes back.

The two of them. On that bed. Both of them reaching for me at once.

That’s the thing the architecture was never built to survive. Micah I can hold. Sage I can run from. But MicahandSage, inthe same room, asking me into the same moment—that’s where the blueprint just stops. No wall, no compartment, no lock. I stood in that doorway and felt every system I’ve ever relied on go quiet at once, and for one unforgivable second I didn’t want control. I wantedin.

Touch me.Her voice is still in my head, shaped around my name.Eli, please.

When she came—when she reached up out of her own undoing, fingers grasping the air for a hand I wouldn’t give her—I broke.

I can admit it now, in this stupid, half-distracted moment, while I’m merging onto the highway with headlights glaring in my eyes: I wanted to touch her. I wanted to bury my face between her legs and find out if the sound she made at the end was for me, or just the heat of doing something out of character. Something to claw back her own control.

But that’s the thing.I need control.

She was asking for surrender.

I pull into the parking lot of Westlake Adult Learning at 8:15 and sit with the engine running. Westlake is built in a pre-fab sprawl on the old aerospace brownfields. Four single-story rectangles connected by breezeways littered with sad little planters and motivational signs.

I kill the engine, pop the trunk, and haul out the box of teaching supplies I keep for the GED-lifers, then walk slow up the sidewalk, fighting the urge to rehearse my next thousand moves.

There’s no script for Sage, or for Micah, or for whatever the three of us are clawing blindly toward. The only controlling interest I have is in what comes next—room 111, my Tuesday and Wednesday class, twelve adult students and a chalkboard that stains my hands blue because the eraser is a joke. I open the door and the room is already half full. People look up when I walk in. Inod back—maybe even smile. I run this class like I run every part of my life: zero surprises, zero margin for feelings.

I set everything on the desk then head into the breakroom for a cup of crappy coffee. Time stretching as the machine hums bitter liquid into a paper cup.

Touch me.

I shake my head, trying to make the memory of Monday morning go away.

I need you, too. Okay? Always have.

The coffee finishes and I snatch it up, take a burning gulp as I check the time on my phone. Five minutes before class starts. There are at least twenty messages waiting for me in the group chat. So I force the scalding coffee down and scroll up.