Page 194 of What We Bury

Fuckity fuck.

I pick up my knife again. “Let’s get the belly done before Hank comes back and judges us.”

Sage pulls her goggles down and leans over the table. Her shoulder brushes mine as she reaches for the rib cage, and she meets my eyes.

“Thank you.”

I nudge my body against hers. “Don’t thank me yet. We haven’t even gotten close to the offal.”

She huffs a laugh, then turns back to the carcass and sets the blade where Hank showed her.

Find the seam.

Apply pressure.

Watch it come apart.

FIFTY-THREE

SAGE

“Ihope there aren’t any stray dogs around,” I say as we head toward my apartment building. “We smell like sausages and minced pork.”

Milo lifts his hand to his face and inhales deeply. “Mm. Meat.”

Micah shakes his head.

I need a shower. We all do. Even after changing out of the white coats and scrubbing at Hank’s industrial sink, the scent clings—fat, cold metal, and blood.

I don’t care. I’m buzzing. My arms ache from the work and my fingers are stiff and there’s a bruise forming on my palm from where I leaned on the knife too hard. But I feelalive.

Milo is still recounting the intestine incident as we climb the stairs, each version more dramatic than the last.

“It was barely a nick,” he says. “If that intestine didn’t want to be punctured, it should’ve been thicker.”

“That’s victim-blaming a pig organ,” Micah says behind me.

I laugh so hard I have to stop on the landing, bent over with my hands on my knees. Milo watches me like making me laugh is the best thing he’s done all day.

“You good?” he asks, grinning.

“No.” I wipe my eyes. “I spent my Saturday learning how to dismember a pig from a man who may or may not think we’re serial killers. I’m unhinged.”

“I love that you’re unhinged.” Milo steps closer. “Makes me feel closer to you.” He’s on the step below me, which puts us almost eye to eye, and his hand comes up to brush a strand of hair off my face—slow, deliberate, his fingers trailing along my jaw.

“You had fun today,” he states.

“I did.”

“You’re good with a knife.”

“I’m okay with a knife.”

“You’re sexy with a knife,” he murmurs.

The words hit somewhere low and bright. I should probably be horrified by that. Instead, I fist a hand in his shirt and drag him down to me.

He kisses me rough, pressing me against the stairwell wall. One hand rests on my jaw and the other grips my hip, and he tastes like the gas station coffee we grabbed on the way back and that dizzying thing that’s just him. He makes a sound against my mouth that vibrates all the way down to my toes.