Page 230 of What We Burn

“Love you too. Goodnight, Jamie.”

I hang up. Stand in our living room holding my phone, looking at the blanket-covered shape on the carpet, the blood soaking through the fabric, the Cosmic Brownie wrapper stuck to the edge of the spreading stain. Amy on the floor. Holden already on his phone, making the necessary calls.

I slide down the wall and sit beside Amy. My legs don’t want to hold me, not right now. I wrap my arms around her shoulders and try to fold her in, but she’s rigid, staring at her fists, knuckles white as bone. She’s stone in my embrace, eyes glassy, mascara running in tracks down her cheeks, fake eyelashes hanging loose. I don’t bother with words. What words could you possibly offer a woman who just stabbed her ex-boyfriend to death in her own home, minutes after joking about spray tans and Cosmic Brownies?

She starts shaking. A tiny vibration at first. Then bigger. It’s like every nerve has remembered what it’s for and decided its sole function is to riot. I pull her to my chest and rock her, the way people rock children, slow and idiotically hopeful.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispers. “I’m so sorry.” She keeps saying it, over and over, like this is the only plank in the ocean and she’s grabbing hold with both hands. I don’t let her go.

Holden gives us a worried look, his phone pressed to his ear. He’s talking to someone—quiet, rapid, urgent. Then he covers the mouthpiece.

“You should take her out of here,” he says, nodding toward the bedrooms, so I do. I help Amy to her feet, and as gently as I can, I guide her past the blood and the blanket and the part of the room that’s already stopped being real. The door to her bedroom closes on us, but she’s still shivering, her hands knotted together like she’s holding someone else’s pain.

I wrap her in two comforters and pull her to the bed, just the two of us, Amy shuddering uncontrollably and me still not sure if my lungs are going to work all the way through the night. I keep her tucked against my body, spooned up tight and rocking back and forth. Amy keeps saying she’s sorry. Sometimes in a whisper, sometimes in a full-bodied sob, then back to whispers. She tucks her face against my neck, sobbing so hard I feel every piece of her rip into my bones.

“I’m here,” I keep saying, into her hair, to her forehead, her temple, to both of us at once. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You saved me, Amy. You saved us.” She doesn’t believe me, but that’s okay. I just keep saying it until her sobs lose their edges and finally taper down to hiccups and silent shakes.

I hold her through all of it. Every tremor, every apology, every ragged breath. I hold her the way Micah holds me—not trying to fix it, just making sure there’s something solid on the other side of the fall.

But the thing I don’t say, the thing lodged in my chest, is that I’m sorry too.

Amy didn’t choose this. She’s a teacher. She supervises bus lines and grades spelling tests and keeps a chore chart on the fridge with gold stars. She brings Dunkaroos to pajama parties because she wants her friend to remember what it felt like to be eleven and safe.

Now there’s a dead man in our living room and she knows what it feels like to push a knife between someone’s ribs.

Tyler put his hand around my throat. Amy stopped him. I know whose fault this is.

She still should never have needed to.

I brought the Hangmen into my life and told myself the people I loved would be safe as long as they didn’t know. But not knowing didn’t protect Amy. It only left her unprepared when my world reached hers.

She’s quiet now. Not asleep—I can tell by the way her fingers still grip the comforter—but quiet. The shaking has stopped. Her breathing has found a rhythm, and I match mine to it, the way Micah taught me without ever saying the words.

Through the closed door, I hear Holden. The low murmur of a man who knows exactly what to do with a body and a crime scene and the kind of mess that would destroy a normal person’s life.

I chose this life—the kills, the masks, the knife—with my eyes open. I don’t regret it.

Amy never got that choice.

The front door opens. Closes. Voices, low, urgent, familiar. The sound of boots and bags and men who move through disaster the way other people move through rooms.

My family is here.

“We’re gonna fix this.” I press my lips to Amy’s hair. “We’re gonna make it all go away. You’ll see.”

FIFTY-EIGHT

ELI

“Itold you.” Milo’s voice is quiet, which is worse than shouting. “I told every single one of you. From the beginning. From day fucking one.”

He’s standing in the middle of Sage and Amy’s living room, kit bag at his feet, staring at the blanket-covered body on the carpet. The rest of us are arranged around the room in our various crisis positions—Knox by the broken door, Holden against the kitchen counter, Micah at the sink where he’s filling the kettle on autopilot. I’m crouched beside the body, close enough that the carpet under me is wet.

“I said Tyler was a threat,” Milo continues. “I said he’d come back. I said the beating wasn’t enough—that all we did was give him a grudge and a timeline.” He turns in a slow circle, taking in the apartment. The snacks on the coffee table. The nail polish bottles. The movie paused on the TV. The lash kit and wine glasses and every piece of a night that was supposed to be safe. “And every one of you told me to stand down. To wait. To get more information.”

Nobody answers. Because he’s right.

“Milo,” Holden starts.