Page 136 of What We Burn

“I know. I’m sorry. We were talking and then I fell asleep and then I woke up at three a.m. bleeding through my underwear. It’s been a whole thing since then.” She reaches for my hand. Her fingers are cold. “I should have texted. I wasn’t thinking.”

“You weren’t thinking.” I repeat it, not as an accusation. Just letting the words exist so she can hear how they sound from this side. Twelve hours of silence. No check-in. The woman I’m trying to keep alive went dark for twelve hours and my first thought wasn’t she’s on a date with the guy who put her in danger in the first place—it was she’s dead in a ditch and I’m going to have to be the one who finds her.

She sees it in my face. The things I’m not saying.

“Hey.” She tugs my hand until I look at her. “I’m here. I’m okay. I’m just bleeding and miserable and I want to die, but only in the period way, not the actual way.”

“That’s not funny.”

“It’s a little funny.”

It’s not. But her mouth is twitching, and I can’t hold on to any of it. I’ve interrogated suspects who couldn’t crack my composure with a crowbar, and this woman dismantles me with a half-smile and cold fingers.

“What do you need?” I say.

“What?”

“Right now. What do you need?”

“Ugh. I could do with a refresh of my hot water bottle.” She pulls it out from under the covers and hands it to me.

“You want tea while I’m up?” I ask.

She blinks. “Sure. But only if you put that gross honey in it. The one Knox hates.”

“Orange blossom?”

“That’s the one.”

I nod. The discipline of being useful settles me, shaves off the anger and the worry with each new task. I fill the kettle. Empty the water bottle. Prepare the tea.

Jamie watches me measure out the honey with a kind of morbid fascination. “I know you and I only really met briefly at the hospital. But is everything okay?” he asks, chin tucked down so his hair hangs in his eyes.

I nod. “I’m fine.” My voice sounds like someone else’s. “Do you know how long ago Eli left?”

“I sure do. He left about ten minutes before you got here. I assure you, our girl was not without supervision at any point.”

My eyes roam over him. He looks like the kind of person who could take a punch if it came to that, but right now he sips his tea and watches the hallway like he expects a SWAT team to breach at any moment.

“Thank you,” I say. “For watching over her.”

“She’s my best friend,” he says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the universe. “I’d run into traffic for her. Or hide a body. Oop. Pretend I didn’t mention that last part, detective.”

I almost smile. The kettle whistles. And I go back to preparing the tea and hot water bottle for Sage.

“Move over,” I say when I return to the bedroom.

“What?”

“Move over. I’m getting in.”

The tea is cooling on the bedside table, and the hot water bottle is already pressed to her lower belly. She scoots slightly, and I toe off my shoes and slide in behind her, back against the headboard, pulling her into my chest. She makes a small, grateful sound and melts into me, her head finding the spot below my collarbone that she always gravitates toward when we share a bed. Which we do, often. More than the others. She says it’s because I run warm and don’t move in the night. I think it’s because she feels safe enough to close her eyes around me.

Amy appears in the doorway a minute later and knocks lightly against the frame.

“Everything okay, Amy?” I ask, assessing her as she takes in the scene—me in the bed, Sage curled against my chest, the rope-marked wrists, the general domestic chaos—and just nods, like this is all perfectly normal. Which for Sage’s life, I suppose it is.

“I know you have tea, but Jamie’s making toast. Do you want toast?”