Page 77 of What We Bury

Except for the man eating an obscene amount of pie.

Milo picks up his tea watching me over the rim. “Friday night was your origin story, kitten.”

The words land in the middle of me and spread outward.

Origin story.

Like this is a comic book and not my actual life. Like I didn’t spend the last five days trying not to flay my own skin off every time I remember the sound Brock made when the knife went in.

I set the spoon down beside the silverware tray because I don’t trust my hand not to slip.

“My origin story,” I repeat.

Milo nods, like we’re discussing weather patterns. “Yep. Tragic catalyst, inciting incident, latent darkness unlocked, costume pending.”

“I don’t have a costume.”

He looks me up and down. “Apron’s not bad. Needs more menace.”

I huff a laugh despite myself, then it dies quick. “And what, exactly, does that mean?”

His expression shifts. Not completely—Milo’s face seems physically incapable of staying solemn for long—but enough that I feel it. The joking peels back a layer. Underneath is something sharper. Smarter. Watching.

“It means,” he says, putting his fork down, “that there’s a before and there’s an after. And in the after, you become one of us.”

I stare at him. “What if I don’t want to become one of you?”

He laughs. “Sure. Likethat’sever going to happen.” Then he stabs another bite of pie, moaning at the taste. I continue staring at him, completely bamboozled by how he can be cute and amusing, and a complete sociopath at the same time.

“Can I get another slice?” he asks around a mouthful. “This is sooooo good.”

It takes me a minute, but slowly, I turn, moving automatically to the pie case. “Coming right up.”

TWENTY-ONE

ELI

Itake the long way to Westlake by way of hell.

Instead of taking Main straight up and over like a sane person, I cut inland through the older part of Hunter Harbor where the roads narrow and twist and every stop sign sits at a bad angle. Past the boarded laundromat, the cracked basketball courts where the nets have been stolen again. It adds twelve minutes if I catch the lights wrong.

That’s the point.

The direct route is too easy. Too much empty space. My mind fills it with things I don’t want. Sage in my bed if I were stupid enough to let that happen. Sage in hers with Micah’s mouth on her. Micah shoved against a stairwell wall with my hands around his wrists and my own self-control hanging by threads. The whole mess of it—need braided through duty, guilt threaded through want, all of us pretending we’re not already in deeper than we are.

So I make myself work for every mile.

I run a yellow on Broadhurst. The light goes red while I’m under it, and I check the rearview out of habit even thoughthere’s nothing back there but empty road and the glow of streetlights.

Compartmentalization. That’s the word for it. I’m a pro at compartmentalization, at locking thoughts and feelings behind the mental architecture I’ve spent years building.

Everything has a place. Everything is contained.

Except Micah.

Micah’s the crack I’ve learned to live with. A draft slipping under one specific door, a hairline fracture I’ve accepted for two years and worked around. I can hold Micah. I built a room for him eventually—small, locked, load-bearing—and most days I can walk past it without putting my hand on the knob. He’s a problem I’ve solved. Inconvenient. Contained. Safe, even, in the way a thing is safe once you’ve measured exactly how much it can hurt you.

Sage is not contained.