Page 246 of What We Burn

Milo.

The house should never be this quiet with him in it.

There should be music. Keyboard clatter. A running commentary on whatever thought has caught fire inside his head. Something should be breaking. Someone should be laughing.

Instead, there’s nothing.

I can deal with the bodies. I can deal with the inevitable fallout from Odin. I can even find out how much of the Kennel survived Milo’s purge and build a plan around what remains.

What I can’t seem to file away is Sage’s gray face in that bathtub.

Or Milo hanging between Micah and me as if the part of him that made him Milo had already left.

We almost lost her.

Again.

And for one sick second tonight, I thought we might have lost him too.

“Fuck. Fuck, fucking, fuck.”

The hiccup catches in my chest. Painful. Then I’m bent over the sink, silent and hollowed as one soundless sob tears through me. I press my fists hard against my eyes.

No.

No. You do not get to fall apart, detective.

I pinch the next sob off before it can escape.

Take a deep breath.

Open my eyes.

I’m okay.

I straighten, open the cabinet, and put Milo’s medication away. Then I pour the coffee, take it upstairs, and sit across from Milo’s doorway until morning.

SIXTY-TWO

SAGE

Iwake up on two mattresses pushed together on a bedroom floor, which at this point in my life is less a situation and more a lifestyle.

Milo is between us. Facing me, his breath shallow and warm against my collarbone, his body curled inward like he’s trying to protect his center. Micah is behind him, chest to Milo’s back, one arm slung over his ribs—the same position he held all night, anchoring Milo between us and refusing to let go even in sleep. At some point Micah’s hand found mine across Milo’s hip, our fingers loosely tangled, keeping the circuit closed.

It’s so Micah it makes my chest hurt.

The sunlight coming through the window is peach, almost syrupy, and it softens everything—the sharp angles of Milo’s face, the chaos of bedding, Micah’s sleep-mussed curls. The air smells like skin and bedding and the burnt-sugar memory of last night.

Outside, the world is carrying on. A dog barks. A garbage truck clatters somewhere down the block. But in here it’s just breath and thrum and the slow, animal warmth of us, pressed together like spoons in a drawer nobody bothered to organize.

I watch Milo’s eyes beneath their lids. His REM twitches are frenetic, urgent, like someone rewinding movie reels too fast. His lashes are still wet in places—probably from a bad dream, or just the leftovers from the world he burned to the ground last night. I wonder if, in his dreams, he’s haunted or if he’s at peace. Knowing Milo, it’s never simple.

He looks so young asleep. I have to resist the urge to lift my hand and brush the hair off his forehead, or run my fingertips over his stubbled chin.

Without the jokes and the energy and the relentless, dazzling noise of being Milo, what’s left is just a man. A tired, beautiful man who killed fourteen men last night because he loves me, then broke apart in my arms because the cost of loving me that hard finally exceeded what his mind could handle.

I don’t move. I simply watch him breathe and match my rhythm to his, the way he’s matched his to mine a hundred times—in cars, in beds, on couches, in the quiet spaces between the chaos where Milo becomes something softer than the world expects him to be.