Page 242 of What We Burn

The bathroom door is cracked an inch. Heat leaks through the gap, carrying the smell of soap and blood.

I push it open.

The shower curtain is drawn and the water is blasting at full. Milo is folded into the far end of the tub, knees to his chest, body shuddering, his hands white-knuckled in his own hair. Water beats against him, washing pale pink into the drain.

Sage is wedged behind him, still fully dressed. She holds him, arms wrapped around his ribcage, pulling him in tight every time his shaking threatens to rattle him apart.

Her eyes find mine immediately. “He won’t move. I don’t know what to do.”

I look at Milo. The loudest man I know, folded up small enough to fit in the end of a tub. This isn’t right.

This isn’t right.

Micah moves past me—smooth, calm. He crouches at the edge of the tub, one hand steady on Milo’s knee and the other on Sage’s shoulder. “It’s Micah, Milo. I’m right here.”

Milo shakes his head, his face streaked with blood and snot. Sage’s shirt is soaked, her knees pressed up to the enamel, fingers curled over Milo’s heart like she could forcibly restart it if she needed to.

I take the space beside Micah—close enough to be there if needed, not so close as to crowd him—and clear my throat. “What happened?”

Sage looks up at me, her face pale and calm. She cradles Milo tighter, rocking him, and speaks so softly I almost miss it.

“He killed them,” she says. “A bunch of Kennel members. Fourteen in total—Tyler’s friends included.”

“Holy fuck.”

Milo lets out an unholy wail, the sound bubbling up out of him like air from a punctured lung. He claws at the shower wall, then at Sage’s forearm, scrabbling for purchase on anything solid.

“I had to,” Milo chokes out, staring at the space between his knuckles so intently it’s like he wants to tunnel through the world and out the other side. “I had to keep her safe. Had to make it stop. I did it for—” He swallows every word after that, looping back to the beginning. “I had to.”

Sage holds him closer, like she could buffer every reactive surge with her own weight. “I know,” she whispers, voice as steady as his is shattered. “I know, Milo. And it’s over now. They can’t hurt me. You protected me.”

He starts rocking, making sharp, jerky inhales that turn into sobs and dry heaves. The shower beats down, endlessly hot, hissing across his back and turning the air to soup. Micah tries to wedge himself closer, running his palm up Milo’s shin and into the joint of his knee, doing what he always does—shoring up the edges, knitting people together where they’ve splintered.

But it’s not enough. Milo doesn’t even register him.

I move to the faucet, kill the water. The silence crashes down, punctuated by the muffled sobs and the tremor that runs through Milo’s spine.

“Milo,” I say, as gently as I can. “Can you look at me?”

He doesn’t look up. He keeps his eyes locked on the blinding white of the tub, and the next sound out of his mouth is a joyless little laugh, wrung clean of humor.

“It’s never over,” he says, voice almost a whisper. “Never, never, never, never⁠—”

Sage glances up at me, her hair plastered wet to her scalp, her eyes wide and hollow in a way I’ve never seen before. She shakes her head. “I don’t know what to do,” she whispers again.

“How long has he been like this?” I ask.

“Forever! Always!” Milo shouts before he starts muttering again under his breath.

“Since we got home,” Sage says. “He was covered in blood and crying. I brought him home in Eli’s car—he’s still at the funeral home with Knox—and I thought a shower would calm him down. But . . . ”

We all exchange worried glances. Then I grab a towel and drape it over his shoulders.

“We need to get you out of this tub.”

He doesn’t resist when Micah and I lift him. He doesn’t help either. His head lolls against my shoulder, arms floppy at his sides. It takes all the strength Micah and I have to get him out of the tub and onto the bathmat. Micah sits behind him, arms around his chest, holding him the way you hold someone who’s hypothermic. Body heat and contact and the steady rhythm of another person’s breathing.

My chest seizes.