Page 17 of Haunt Me

The movement feels wrong, too small for what it’s refusing. "I can't sit in that room while everyone watches me."

"Then don't sit in the room. Sit in my office. Sit in the garage. Sit wherever the hell you want."

"And then what? What happens after I sit there, Knox? People bring me plates I don't eat and coffee I don't drink. They tell me I need rest. They tell me not to be alone. They tell me Raven wouldn't want this."

His flinch is small. I see it anyway.

"She wouldn't," he says.

The words leave him raw.

I laugh once.

It’s a horrible sound. Thin and cracked and nothing like humor.

"Yeah. Everyone seems real damn sure about what she wants today."

Knox's eyes flash then. "Careful."

"Or what?"

He takes a breath through his nose, slow enough that I know he’s counting the seconds between what he wants to do and what he should do. There was a time, not long enough ago, when he would’ve hit me for less. There was a time when I would’ve let him.

Today, I almost want him to. Something physical would make sense. A fist has a beginning and an end. Pain blooms, peaks, fades.

This pain does not.

Jon appears beside us before Knox can answer.

I don’t hear him approach. One second he’s somewhere behind me with the grave and the flowers and the last of the people pretending not to stare. The next, he’s here, his face pale beneath the hard set of his expression.

"Let him breathe," Jon says.

Knox turns on him. "He's talking about leaving."

"I heard him."

"And you're fine with that?"

Jon's gaze moves to me. "No," he says. "I'm not fine with anything."

The sentence empties the fight from Knox faster than anger would’ve. His shoulders drop half an inch, and suddenly he looks less like the president of Blackwater and more like a man who buried his sister this morning and has no idea what to do next.

Jon looks back at the grave.

For a second, none of us speak.

The cemetery’s too quiet now. Most of the cars are gone. Snow sits thin and dirty along the edges of the path. The flowers at Raven's grave look out of place against all that brown grass and dark earth.

Jon clears his throat. "They're waiting for us at the house."

Not the clubhouse. His house. The Sutter house with the porch and the kitchen table and the stairs Raven used to sit on when she was a kid, listening to conversations she wasn’t supposed to hear. The house where she first saw me leaning against a counter. The house where Jon caught us in the blast radius of every choice we thought we could hide.

I close my eyes.

That’s worse than the clubhouse.

Behind my lids, I see her younger. Sixteen. Barefoot on the stairs. Too quiet for once. Big eyes watching me like some part of her had already decided something the rest of us were going to spend years catching up to.