Page 105 of What We Burn

I smirk, recalling the first night I made her dinner—I offered to eat her out while she cried watching The Notebook. I fucking love that she remembers.

My thumbs fly across the screen as I text back.

Me:

Fuck yes! Will I have to share?

Kitten :

Only if you want to. <3

I pocket the phone. “Sage’s done with her shift. We should wrap this.”

Holden stands, tossing cash on the table. “I’ll loop Odin in on the group theory. See if his people can toss a wider rope.”

“And I’ll get started on Webster’s penmanship.” I tuck the folder under my arm. “By Friday you’ll have a confession letter that’d make his own mother weep as she reads it.”

Eli nods, still chewing. He’s got that faraway look he gets when he’s running scenarios in his head. I clap him on the shoulder as I pass. “Brighten up a little, Eli. You’re starting to look like a Winnie-the-Pooh character.” He looks at me, confused as I walk backward toward the door. “It’s all right,” I say, in my best Eeyore voice. “I’ll just sit here and eat by myself.”

“The fuck?” he grunts, taking another bite.

I salute him. “Thanks for picking up the tab!”

He stiffens. “Wait. What⁠—?”

I let the door slide closed behind me, and head to my truck, tossing the folder on the passenger seat. I pull out my phone.

Me:

Kitten, ETA 25 min. So hungry for you.

She replies instantly

Kitten :

Showered & ready. I want popcorn and you in that order.

Me:

Wait for me in my room. Panties optional.

The engine turns over and I pull out of the lot, heading for Holden’s place, which has turned into some kind of unofficial barracks since the first threat against Sage. Nobody’s officially moved in but nobody’s left, either. Everyone’s claimed a room except Eli, who sleeps on the couch or occasionally the guest bed, depending on his level of self-flagellation that day.

Though, I know he’s also occasionally in Micah’s room because I can hear him through the wall and those two are not quiet. I’d offer to join, but I’m more of a hobby-dickist than an active collector. Supportive from a distance. Enthusiastic spectator. Occasional admirer when a dick is particularly good-looking. It doesn’t need to go any further than that . . . probably.

I’m happy with the living arrangement so far. And I think everyone else is enjoying it too. Holden hasn’t complained about any of us living there yet, but I’m pretty sure he’d kick us all out in a heartbeat if he wasn’t so worried about Sage’s safety.

I’m half hard thinking of what I’m going to do to her. But my brain is at war with itself as I drive—it’s split between planning how to track down a ring of dog-metaphor-using dumbasses, how to get Sage to come on my face multiple times before the end credits of the greatest tragic love movie of all time, what I need to do to deal with Webster, and whether I should raise the possibility of us all moving in with Holden full-time.

Track one: the group theory. If I’m right, and Brock had a pack, then the texts from his number aren’t some jilted lover’s grief—they’re a coordinated campaign. Which means whoever strung Sage up in that noose had backup. They had people watching her long enough to know her patterns, her shifts, her walking route home. That she liked dogs. That they could set up the rope next to her apartment and just wait for the right moment.

Track two: The Notebook. Sage wearing nothing but one of my T-shirts, popcorn bowl balanced on her chest, sobbing while I lie under the blankets and feast on her delicious cunt while Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams find their way back to each other through the rain. I am a man of simple pleasures, and this is my favorite.

I stop at a red light. I drum my fingers on the steering wheel.

The first time we did this—movie night, just the two of us—she was living in that apartment with Amy, and Tyler had shown up and acted like a dick. I’d been waiting for her when she got home from work, grocery bags and zero plan, made pasta on a stove that had one decent burner, and somehow talked her into letting me stay. She’d been stiff at first, sitting on the opposite end of the couch with a throw pillow between us, but before we’d gotten through a single episode of Bridgerton, she’d been straddling my lap and dry-humping me like the horny queen she is.

I didn’t let it go any further than that—not on our first night together. So I gathered her in my arms, set up a Lord of the Rings marathon and just held her. Before the first movie was even close to finished, she was asleep on my shoulder and I sat there for forty-five minutes without moving because I didn’t want to wake her up and I didn’t want to stop feeling what I was feeling, which was something so big and unfamiliar it scared the shit out of me.