Page 29 of What We Burn

“I’m going to sit outside for a bit,” she says. “Get some air.”

Knox is already moving. He wipes his hands on a dish towel and follows her toward the back door without a word. He’s become her shadow.

The screen door swings shut behind them and I watch through the kitchen window as they settle on the porch steps. Knox sits close enough that their shoulders touch. Sage tips her face toward the sun and closes her eyes. Knox watches the tree line.

I turn back to the kitchen.

Eli’s at the sink. He’s washing Sage’s mug. I watch his hands as he turns it in tiny movements, methodically cleaning the ceramic as if it’s the most important task in the world.

Milo glances between us, reading the tension in the room.

He stands abruptly, lifting his laptop. “I’m going to go bother Knox about . . . something.”

Once the house is quiet, I lean against the counter. Arms folded. Watching Eli washing the mug that’s surely clean by now.

“Why are you here, Eli?”

He doesn’t look up. The water runs. His hands move the sponge over the ceramic.

My blood boils.

“Seriously, why are you in this house?”

“Same reason you are.” His voice is flat, dead.

You don’t get to check out, you bastard.

“No, you’re not. I’m here because I love her. I’m here because I need her to be okay, and if she isn’t, I don’t know what the fuck I’ll do. But you—you left. You broke her when she needed you most, and now you’re pretending to play the hero?” I take a step closer, feeling years of closeness folding in on itself, crumpling tight as a fist. “Answer me, Eli, and don’t lie. Why the fuck are you here?”

He turns the water off and sets the mug in the rack, drying his hands on a paper towel. I expect him to pivot, deflect. But he surprises me. He turns and meets my eyes.

“I’m here because I fucked up,” he says. “And because I don’t know what else to do.”

“Why were you at her apartment that night?”

He tosses the paper towel in the trash.

“You heard Knox in the hospital,” he says. “I was keeping an eye on the building. Helping Dean watch Amy in case Tyler did something.”

“So, after you walked away from all of us? After you told her she was easy? After you gutted her in front of an audience?” I let each question land before I send the next one. “You expect me to believe you broke her heart just so you could sit in the dark and watch her friend?”

His shoulders tighten. “Someone needed to.”

“Needed to what? Break her?”

“No.” His eyes flash. “Fuck, no.”

“Then why do it? Why hurt her at all?”

“Because we’re the reason she’s in danger!” His voice rises, but he quickly schools it. “We knew what Brock was. If we’d done things differently that night⁠—”

“But we didn’t. We can’t go back in time and change that now. And to be honest with you, Eli. I wouldn’t want to. My life is better with her in it. All of our lives are.”

Eli’s jaw works. He looks at the floor, at the window, anywhere but at me. “You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t lie on that couch every night and think about what I threw away?”

“I think you’re very good at suffering, Eli. You’ve turned it into an art form. But suffering isn’t the same as showing up, and making her freaking coffee doesn’t undo what you said to her.”

He flinches. “I don’t expect it to. But I have to do something. I have to . . . Fuck, Micah. I was trying to save her. All I wanted was for her to be safe.”