Page 56 of Yours on the Canvas

They know about Hale. They’ve been watching.

Before I can lunge forward, before the scream building in my throat can tear free, Ray and Dad step out onto the porch, the heavy door clicking shut behind them with a definitive, chilling finality.

The silence they leave behind feels like a blade pressed to my spine.

It rushes back in, heavier and more suffocating than before, and panic swallows me whole.

Finn. I have to get to Finn. Ring the school. Make sure Hale is safe.

I turn and run. I don’t grab a jacket, or my keys. Hell, I don’t even think about putting shoes on my feet. I just bolt out the front door, cursing frantically as I throw myself down the porch steps and toward the street.

My lungs burn instantly. Every movement sends a jagged shard of fire tearing through my damaged ribs. The pain is blinding, white-hot, relentless — but I don’t stop. I can’t stop.

Ray’s threat echoes in my skull, looping over and over in my voice, in my mother’s voice, in the sound of a body hitting wood.

Accidents happen all the time.

I hit the open pavement, the afternoon air freezing against my sweat-slicked skin. I run. Down the street, legs pumping, vision blurring at the edges as exhaustion claws at my heels. My breath comes in ragged, shallow gasps, each one feeling like inhaling glass.

I make it two blocks toward the gym before my body simply rebels.

My legs turn to lead. The world tilts sideways, spinning out of focus. The pavement rushes up to meet me.

My knees hit the concrete hard, a shockwave of agony tearing through my ribs. The breath leaves my lungs in a wet, broken sob as the pavement rushes up, and the world finally goes black.

14

Silas

The ping hits my earpiece with a sharp, high-pitched noise that freezes the blood dead in my veins. I’m crouched behind a rusted, foul-smelling steel dumpster in a damp choking back-alley of a forgotten Middle Eastern border town, the steady, driving rain plastering my hair to my forehead and soaking through the layers of my gear.

The sheer weight of the mission presses down on every inch of my body. My torso locked inside a vest of heavy Kevlar meant to stop high-caliber rounds, but right now it feels less like protection and more like a lead shell crushing my lungs..

Sweat slides between my shoulder blades, hot and slick, the humidity and rain turning my gear into an oven, and there’s fuck all I can do about it, not out here, not on this mission.

Deadly, and necessary. CJ had said. I’d agreed months ago without thinking twice. Jack and I were casual– are casual? I actually don’t know what we are now. But with the rain hammering down and the alley closing in around me, all I can think about is being back in bed with him, his warmth pressed along my side, the quiet way he breathes when he’s finally safe.

But instead, here I am, sweating and overheating.

“God, this is hotter than Satan’s armpit,” I mutter to Mack and Callan, while quietly sending CJ a silent Fuck you.

Mack is crouched six feet to my left, and even over the rain I can hear his heavy gear groan as he shifts to whisper into his comms.

Callan scans the broken second-story windows opposite us with his suppressed sniper rifle, his knuckles stark white against the matte-black frame.

We’re deep in hostile territory, dead center in an asset retrieval that took three grueling months of digital surveillance and our most reliable informants running midnight recons just to map out.

CJ’s encrypted message cuts through the static of Mack’s comms, the channel we only use when something has gone very, very wrong.

I see Mack react first, a tiny shift in his posture, but then the transmission bleeds into my own feed. It wasn’t meant for me, I know I shouldn’t be hearing it. But I am.

I keep my eyes on Mack, rain hammering against my helmet, while the words breaking up, but filtering through, quiet, barely there, but enough to snap something inside me clean in half, detonating my world when I hear them.

Jack found unconscious… Hospital… okay… ribs re-fractured… Silas… flight.

I hear Mack speak, his voice barely audible under the rushing in my ears. “Shit. Silas…” He moves toward me, crouching low, kneeling in the mud beside me.

The world stops. Just… stops.