Page 218 of What We Burn

Eli:

Focus, Milo!

I put the phone down and lean my head against Knox’s shoulder. He shifts to accommodate me without taking his eyes off the road, his hand finding my knee in the dark.

“Thank you,” I murmur. “For tonight.”

His thumb presses into my knee once. His version of you’re welcome and I love you and I’d do it every day if you’d let me, all compressed into one silent gesture.

I close my eyes. Gerald the penguin and Bear watch over us from the back seat. Frank the fish circles his bag. The carnival lights fade in the mirror, replaced by the steady glow of street lamps and the dark line of the coast.

Saturday is four days away. Pajama night. Amy and Jamie and face masks and bad movies and the kind of ordinary, stupid fun that I used to think was all there was. Now I know better. Now I know there’s this too—murder and love and stuffed penguins and five men who will do anything, and I mean anything, to make me happy.

I wouldn’t trade any of it. Not for anything. Beside me, Knox checks the rearview again. Third time since we left the lot.

FIFTY-FIVE

ELI

“new questions tonight about the district attorney’s decision not to prosecute two men accused of gang rape after a break in the chain of custody. The woman says their matching confessions prove what she reported all along⁠—”

I turn the volume down a notch. Just low enough that it won’t carry upstairs.

Tuesday became Wednesday almost two hours ago, but the coverage is still running.

The anchor is young, trying to look grave about something she has a prepared script for. Behind her, a graphic shows Dave and Andrew beside the words DOUBLE SUICIDE REOPENS FAILED INVESTIGATION.

The report has spent half the night circling the same facts: the suicides, the compromised rape kit, and the prosecution that never happened. Dave’s ex-wife spent months being called a liar. Now the two men are dead and their matching notes say she told the truth.

Milo’s forgeries really are art.

I watch for another moment, glad their sins are finally out in the open and their corpses are rotting. Sometimes I think these guys get it too easy—that we should take their lives as violently as they harmed their victim. But at the end of the day, the goal is to make the world safer with every kill. If that means doing it quietly and cleanly to keep the heat away from us, that’s a compromise I can accept.

I much prefer it when we get to see the fear in their eyes, though.

The front door opens as I lean back on the couch.

I know who it is without looking. The latch has a particular give, and the way Micah handles it is different from anyone else’s entry. Careful. Deliberate. He’s aware the house is sleeping.

He comes around the corner of the living room and stops. Sees me on the couch in the dark, TV lighting the room.

“You’re still awake,” he says.

“And you’re just getting home.” We left the carnival hours ago and he went straight to his shift at Unholy Desires. He’s still in his work clothes—black jeans, black shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbow, collar open. He looks tired in the way that’s different from my tired. His is physical, earned, the good kind. Mine is the kind that doesn’t know how to stop.

He drops onto the other end of the couch, eyes going to the TV. “These our guys?”

I nod. “Everyone around them is doing the ‘no one had any idea’ routine. Dave’s ex-wife released a statement. The matching confessions have put the rape kit and the decision not to prosecute back under a microscope.”

Micah’s face hardens. “I hope they’re rotting in hell.”

We watch for a bit—not because we need to, but because neither of us wants to move. The dynamic between us has changed a lot lately. Before it was just sex—somewhere to put the pain and the wanting. Now it’s something I don’t have a name for.

Micah tips his head back against the cushion and exhales through his nose. On the screen, a field reporter stands on the courthouse steps where Dave and Andrew once laughed for the cameras. I mute the TV.

“How was the shift?” I ask.

“Odin came through the club with Thor around midnight. They didn’t stay.” He rolls his head toward me. “How’s our girl?”