Page 280 of What We Bury

He doesn’t. He stares at me, chest heaving.

I close the distance and drive my fist into his gut.

All the air leaves him in one brutal sound. He folds hard, glass clattering from his hand to the counter before bouncing to the floor and rolling under the table.

I spare a single moment to be impressed it doesn’t shatter, then grab the back of his neck and the front of his shirt, haul him across the room and dump him into the chair I kicked out.

“Sit.”

He lands heavy, one arm wrapping around his stomach, face gone gray around the mouth. Sweat beads at his temples. He looks up at me with watering eyes and enough fury to make me respect him a little, if I wasn’t already here to hurt him.

“That,” he grits out, breath thin, “was unnecessary.”

I lean over him, both hands braced on the table. “No. That was me saying hello.”

He laughs once. Ugly sound. “Feel better?”

“No.” I straighten and drag the other chair back, turning it around before I straddle it. Slow. “I’m gonna talk. And you’re gonna listen.”

He heaves a breath and gestures for me to go on.

“We’ve been friends since we were fifteen, Eli,” I start. “I’ve known you longer than I’ve known how to be a person.” I keep my voice level. “You and I have seen a lot of shit together. Been through a hell of a lot more.”

The muscle in his cheek is jumping.

“I’ve watched you put men in the ground. I’ve helped you carry them. I’ve looked you in the eye, listened to you lie about how fine you were, because you needed me to. Fifteen years, Eli. There is nothing you have ever done that I have judged you for.” I lean closer. “Until today.”

“Knox—”

“Today, for the first time in my life, I’m disappointed in you.”

It goes in deeper than a fist could. I watch the word find the soft place under all that armor. His eyes go glassy.

“You don’t understand,” he says, and his voice splits down the middle. “I’m trying to keep her?—”

I jump to my feet and hit him again.

My fist sinks into his gut just under the ribs and folds him clean in half, the air going out of him in a sound that isn’t a word, and he drops back into the chair gasping, one hand splayed over his stomach, mouth working for breath that won’t come.

“Fuck,” he gasps. “Stop?—”

His words cut off as a coughing fit takes over.

“No, Eli.” I crouch so we’re level. So he has to see me. “You stop. You don’t get to hurt her. Not anymore.” I tilt my head when he lowers his eyes. “I don’t care what you call it. Protection. Sacrifice. The hard thing nobody else has the guts to do. I held her today while she said your words back to me—easy,fun, passed around—and choked on every one. You did that. You looked at the best thing that ever walked into any of our lives and you took a blade to her on purpose.”

He’s still fighting for air. Good.

“So here’s how it works now. Fury is off-limits. Not just to whoever hung that rope. Toyou. You don’t get to be the thing that hurts her. If you can love her—all the way, whole heart, no walls, no running, no scripts you wrote in your head to make her leave—then you’d better grovel like a motherfucker before I even think about letting you near her again. If you can’t love her, Eli, pack a bag, vanish, let her heal without your face in the room. Both of those she survives. What you did today does not happen a second time.”

I stand.

“You’re my brother. Have been since before either of us owned anything worth protecting. I’d still step in front of a bullet for you without thinking.” I look down at him, folded over, eyes streaming, finally silent. “But you put her through that again—any shape, any excuse—and you’ll learn that the man who kept watch for you is the same man who’ll dig the hole. I don’t want that. Don’t make me choose between the two of you.” I’m already turning for the door. “Because you won’t like my decision.”

I don’t wait for him to get his breath back. There’s nothing he could say I need to hear, and anything he managed right now would just be him climbing back behind the wall.

I let myself out the way I came in.

In the truck I sit a second with my hands on the wheel and let what I just did to the man who’s been at my shoulder for half my life sink into my bones. Something in my chest feels torn. I breathe through it. Hating that it’s come to this.