Page 256 of What We Burn

She pulls the blanket down enough to show her face. Her eyes are red and raw and furious and terrified all at once.

“I killed him,” she says, like she’s confessing.

“You did.”

“I killed him and then I watched your boyfriends unload⁠—”

The tears come again, harder this time, and she curls forward until her forehead is on her knees. I pull her into me, blanket and all, and hold her while she falls apart. She grabs fistfuls of my shirt and holds on like I’m the only solid thing in a world that’s gone liquid.

I know this feeling. The metal taste. The body that won’t stop shaking. The person in the mirror who knows things she can never unknow.

“I want to go home,” she whispers against my chest. “But it doesn’t feel like home anymore. It feels like a place where something happened and I can’t go back there.”

I hold her tighter. My own eyes are burning. The rope scar under my choker throbs beneath the new bruising, because my body remembers too, and proximity to someone else’s pain makes the memory louder.

We stay like that for a long time. The muted TV flickers. The dark apartment hums. Amy’s breathing goes from ragged to uneven to something approaching steady, and I keep my arms around her and don’t let go.

When she finally pulls back, her face is wrecked. She looks like she hasn’t slept at all. She probably hasn’t.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“Don’t.”

“I’m being dramatic.”

“You killed a man to save my life last night. You’re allowed to fall apart.”

She wipes her face with the hem of Dean’s T-shirt. “Dean keeps bringing me food.” She picks at the hoodie. “And clothes.”

“That’s because he’s a good man.”

“I know he’s a good man. That’s the problem. Good men shouldn’t have to deal with this.”

“Amy. You’re not a problem someone has to deal with. You’re a good person too. And good people deserve other good people who are willing to keep them safe.”

She’s quiet. The blanket is pulled up to her chin. She looks about twelve years old.

“Will you stay?” she asks. “For a bit?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

I make her tea. I make her toast. She eats half a slice and drinks the tea in small sips while we sit on the couch together, staring at the muted TV. I hold her hand and don’t let go.

When she falls asleep—finally, mercifully, her head on the arm of the couch and the blanket pulled up to her ears—I slide my hand free and step into the hallway.

Eli is on the stairs.

He’s sitting on the top step, back against the wall, phone in his hand. He looks up when I come out and reads my face in a second.

“How is she?”

“Bad.” My voice cracks. “She’s not eating. She’s not sleeping. She’s living in a blanket fort. She cried for twenty minutes because she thinks killing Tyler makes her a bad person.”

Eli is quiet for a beat. Then he stands, pockets his phone, and puts both hands on my shoulders.

“We’ll get her through it.”

“You don’t know that.”