Page 135 of What We Burn

Sage’s building looks the same as always—paint peeling off the fire escape, a kid on a scooter doing lazy loops in the parking lot. Eli’s car is there. That’s something. At least I know they genuinely came here. The question is what state I’m going to find them in.

I take the stairs two at a time. The door is unlocked, which boils my blood. I scan the room the way I always do—entry points, sight lines, anything out of place. The kitchen counter has a duffel bag on it, unzipped.

My blood pressure spikes.

Voices carry from the living room. I round the corner and find Jamie cross-legged on the floor with a mug of tea, and Amy on the couch in pajamas.

“Holden,” Jamie says, eyes going wide.

Amy jumps up from the couch. “Oh, hey. Everything okay? We weren’t expecting⁠—”

“Where’s Sage?”

“Bedroom. She’s⁠—”

I’m already moving. Past the bathroom, down the hall. Her door’s cracked open. I push it wider and stop.

Sage is curled on her side, blankets pulled up to her chin, face pale and sheened with sweat, hair matted to her forehead. She hasn’t slept. The room smells like sex and sweat, with a touch of something metallic underneath.

Then I see her wrists. Red marks, circling both, the unmistakable imprint of ligature.

Don’t wait up.

Every molecule in my body rearranges into a single, clean intention.

Eli is dead.

“Wildcat.” My voice comes out rough. “What did he do to you?”

She opens one eye. Squints at me like I’m a light source she didn’t ask for. “What?”

“Your wrists.” I’m at the bedside now, taking her hand, turning it over. The marks are symmetrical. Rope, not hands. A deliberate binding, not a struggle. The detective in me is processing this even as the rest of me is calculating how far Eli could have gotten without his car. “What did he do to you?”

“Holden.” She pulls her hand back and presses it against her lower abdomen with a wince. “Calm down.”

“I’m calm. I’m extremely calm. I’m the calmest person in this building, and I’m asking you what happened.”

“He didn’t hurt me. Well—” She almost smiles. “He did. But I asked him to. Enthusiastically. Multiple times.”

My brain recalibrates. Slower than it should.

“Your wrists⁠—”

“Silk rope. Consensual. Very, very consensual.” She shifts and grimaces, curling tighter. “What you’re looking at right now isn’t Eli damage. It’s my uterus staging a military coup.”

“Your—”

“My period, Holden. I got my period.” She says it with the exhausted patience of a woman who does not have the energy to manage my reaction. “First one since everything happened. To be honest, it’s probably the stress that shut it down. And now it’s back and it’s furious. I feel like Aunt Flo decided to wring out my organs like a wet towel.”

I stand there, trying to reconcile what I thought with what she’s telling me. The rope marks. Her wrists. The metallic smell. All clicking into a different configuration than the one I’d assembled on the way in.

“So Eli⁠—?”

“Is at the store buying tampons like a good boyfriend.”

I close my eyes. Open them. Sit on the edge of the bed.

“You didn’t come home,” I say.