She holds my gaze for a beat longer than the sentence needs. Then she pulls on her jacket over the sweatshirt and steps out, and the door clicks shut between us, the sound final.
From the kitchen window her shape moves across the yard, boots crunching across salted snow, breath trailing white, and I stand there longer than I need to, watching until she disappears around the corner.
I grab the rag draped over the faucet from earlier and clean up the kitchen, rinsing cups, wiping the counter, stacking the empties by the recycling. The faucet drips into the silence. The counter still holds the ring from Dante's glass, the condensation already drying at the edges. The whole house smells like flat beer and the wet snow that came in every time the door opened all night. I wring out the rag and hang it back over the faucet, my hands moving on autopilot.
The fridge hums, a floorboard pops somewhere near the stairs, and the faucet drips twice before I tighten the handle. I know this quiet. I've stood inside it since I was twelve, my mother's car pulling out of the driveway, taillights cutting through the kitchen window, the house ticking around me while I stood at the sink washing my cereal bowl, alone.
And now it's one-thirty in the morning and I'm standing in the kitchen alone, wringing out a rag, and the familiarity of it fucking hurts.
My phone buzzes on the counter.
Maya: Home. Alive. Stop worrying.
I hold the phone, her contact photo filling the screen from sophomore year with her head thrown back laughing at something I said. I type one word and send it.
Me: Never.
My phone buzzes again.
Dad: Proud of the brief either way. You've got the mind for this, Cole.
I stare at the text—the mind for this—and set the phone facedown on the counter.
The house is quiet, and upstairs the floor creaks once, then settles. It's Dante. Tuesday night he came to my room, his hand closing around the back of my neck, his mouth on mine,You're mine.The moment after, my lungs filling and emptying before I answered, my fingers closing around his wrist, my thumb finding the place his pulse kicked hardest. Later, in the dark, my voice aimed at him across the pillow:You handed her a weapon tonight. And you're keeping her recorder like a trophy. Pick one.
I cross the kitchen and climb the stairs, Dante's door closed and the light under it gone, my room down the hall.
I stop between them.
My breathing goes shallow and my body goes still, every muscle locked. One ear is tuned for the slightest movement on the other side of his door because if I take another step he'll hear it—he knows I'm here, the bastard, he's waiting to hear which door opens, and the silence between us feels heavier than any fucking sound.
My hand hangs at my side. If I turn his knob, this plays the way it always plays, his hand at my neck and my mouth answering, his body against mine until I forget everything else. If I keep walking, he lies there listening, and the hardwood between us holds.
His half-step past the couch tonight, his eyes on her thigh against mine, my sweatshirt on her shoulders, the borrowed name he threw in her face.
I walk past his door. My door opens with a small click from the hinge. I close it behind me, and the latch catches.
Chapter 6
Maya
The wordssealed recordland on my desk on a Tuesday afternoon. Kenji drops into the chair across from me, his laptop already open, and he sets it down with the kind of care that belongs to evidence. I watch his hands, the tightness in his knuckles.
"You need to see this," he says.
The Chronicle office sits in its usual post-lunch quiet. I'm marking up the weekend hockey preview with my red pen, striking throughelectrifyingfor the third time in two pages, and the scratch of the pen is the only sound until Kenji speaks.
He rotates the laptop toward me. The Briarcliff Whisperer's latest post fills the screen.
WHISPERER: Gio Rossi's "sealed" juvenile record isn't as sealed as daddy's lawyers think. Ask around. Someone's talking. #BriarcliffWhisperer
Below it, another post follows:
Sealed records don't seal themselves. Who paid for the cleanup? Follow the money. #BriarcliffWhisperer #CleanUpCrew
I read the posts once. Then I force myself to read them again, each word digging under my skin. My hands flatten against the desk, the wood so cold it feels like it's leaching the heat right out of my palms.
Sealed.The word lodges in my chest before my brain can even start picking apart the sourcing. My press badge presses against my sternum, the name printed on it that a judge in New Hampshire made real when I was thirteen. Maya Maddox. A name that exists because someone sealed away the one that came before it. My pulse kicks once, hard, and I keep my face so still it hurts.
