Page 274 of What We Burn

“Fenrir owns the Kennel investigation right now,” Holden says. “You spin up anything that even sniffs in that direction, he’ll take it as you going off script again. You’re locked out for a reason. Poke the bear and the lockout becomes permanent.”

“He’s right,” Eli says. “You don’t get to freelance this one.”

I look to Micah, because Micah is my emotional support human and he always finds the compromise. Micah winces apologetically. “Holden’s not wrong. But neither are you. You need something to do with your hands that isn’t a homicide.”

I fold my arms across my chest and pout. There isn’t even a live route left for me to touch.

I want to tear something apart. A server. A wall. My own skull, just to see if the part that thought fourteen bodies would fix this can be removed with pliers.

Sage covers my hand with hers.

“We can wait together,” she says.

I hate waiting. But I love her. Compromise is hard.

“Fine,” I say. “I won’t do anything.”

“You’ll wait for Odin?” Holden asks, and I nod, holding up my hand like I’m making an oath.

“Promise on my love of group sex.”

Knox signs off with a nod that somehow contains an entire paragraph of emotional support, and Holden’s phone goes dark. Eli squeezes Micah’s shoulder and the two of them drift toward the stairs—probably to go be disgustingly in love some more, which, good for them, truly, the walls are thin and my heart is full.

And then it’s just the three of us and approximately nine bags of groceries sweating onto the counter.

“Okay,” I say, clapping once, because if I don’t narrate this I’ll vibrate out of my skin. “Welcome to Unpacking With Milo, the show where we put food away while processing the collapse of everything. I’m your host. I have not slept normally in two weeks.”

“You’ve been sleeping almost eight hours every night,” Sage points out.

“Exactly, kitten. Most of my day is getting wasted.”

Holden stares at me. “Frozen stuff first,” he says, already reaching for a bag, because of course he unpacks groceries the way he runs ops—priority triage, cold-chain integrity, no waffle left behind.

Sage bumps my hip with hers. “You take pantry. I’ll do fridge.”

Holden unpacks like it’s a competitive sport. I’m putting things where they go and calling it done, but Sage is deliberately putting things in the wrong places just to watch the vein in Holden’s temple pulse. She’s put the cereal with the canned goods and the dish soap next to the pasta, and Holden is rearranging everything behind her with the tight-jawed focus of a man whose love language is alphabetical order.

“The cheese goes on the top shelf,” Holden grinds out.

“I put it on the second shelf.”

“The top shelf is for dairy.”

“The second shelf is also for dairy if you believe in it hard enough.”

He takes the cheese off the second shelf and puts it on the top shelf. She waits until he turns around and puts it back. He notices. She grins. He closes his eyes and counts to three.

I love them. I love every stupid, mundane, domestic moment of this ridiculous household. But right now, standing at the kitchen island putting the correct pasta shapes into the correct container, I’m feeling something I don’t usually feel.

Left out.

Don’t worry. I’m not about to spiral-into-the-bathtub again. I just have this quiet, dull ache in my gut because while I was trying to figure myself out, I inadvertently kicked open the door to the greatest love confession of all time, got a front-row seat to the aftermath, made toast and delivered electrolytes, and then sat alone on a couch watching people argue about shiplap while my two best friends discovered they were soulmates in the room above my head.

Watching Eli crack open for Micah was like watching a safe door swing wide after years of everyone trying the wrong combination. But the part of me that asked the question in the first place—the part that wondered what Micah’s mouth would feel like—is still sitting here, unanswered and a little deflated, like a balloon someone blew up and then forgot to tie.

“You’re quiet,” Sage says.

She’s leaning against the counter, an apple in her hand, watching me with those eyes that miss nothing. She looks good—hair down, Holden’s flannel over a tank top, bare feet on the tile. She also looks like she’s been having sex for the last several hours, which tracks because Holden has a bite mark on his collarbone that his shirt isn’t quite covering.