Page 228 of What We Become

Eli and I look at each other.

“Ready?” I ask.

“No.” He opens the door anyway.

FIFTY-FIVE

SAGE

“If anyone sings, I’m going back upstairs.”

I’m standing in the kitchen doorway, hair still damp, wearing Knox’s hoodie and a pair of Eli’s sweatpants that I had to roll four times at the waist. My body is a topographic map of damage—bruises, rope burns, a cut along my hairline held together with butterfly strips, and a deep ache in my ribs that makes breathing feel like a negotiation. But I’m clean. I smell like my own shampoo instead of hay and copper. And in front of me, my five battered, bandaged, barely functional boyfriends are sitting around the kitchen table with a multi-layered strawberry cream cake and a truly alarming number of wrapped boxes.

“No singing,” Micah promises from behind the cake. He’s got bandages around his wrists and a bruise across his cheekbone that makes him look like a painting of a saint who lost a fight. “Just cake. And presents. And an aggressive celebration of the fact that we’re all still breathing.”

“That’s a low bar.”

“It’s been a low-bar kind of year.”

Milo presses a hand to his chest like I’ve wounded him personally. “Wow. Rude. Here I was, one half-step away from delivering a haunting a cappella rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ for your listening pleasure.”

“We’ve all heard you singing in the shower,” Eli says. “And none of us got any pleasure out of it.”

I push off the doorway and shuffle into the kitchen. The world feels quiet in that strange, soft way it gets after violence—like the house is holding its breath with us. The kitchen lights shine over polished counters and a table full of men who look almost as bad as I feel.

Micah’s wrists are wrapped in fresh gauze. Eli’s sleeves are rolled back from matching bandages. Holden’s side is bandaged under a clean black T-shirt, posture tilted in the way that means he’s in enough pain to be furious about it. Milo has his injured leg stretched out under the table, supported on another chair. Knox is beside him, huge and silent, his splinted leg held straight and two fingers resting against the edge of the table like he’s ready to stand if I so much as sway.

“This all looks so amazing,” I say as I pull out the empty chair at the head of the table and lower myself into it. Pain lances through my body, and I let out a hiss that I try to hide and fail. Knox plants both hands on the table and starts hauling himself up before the sound fully leaves me.

“Fury?”

“Sit down,” I say, looking up at him. “I’m okay.”

He stares a second longer, then settles back into his chair with visible reluctance. But he reaches out and hooks two fingers under my chair, dragging me closer until my thigh presses to his. The contact is possessive as hell, and I love it.

I settle against his side and look down at the single candle stuck crookedly into the top layer.

“I already made my birthday wish,” I say. “I don’t know if I get another—especially since my birthday’s well and truly over.”

“Well, none of us have gone to bed yet,” Milo says. “So technically your birthday hasn’t stopped.”

“If we’re being technical,” Micah starts. “We did sleep.”

Milo shoots him a glare. “Being unconscious while hanging from the ceiling of a barn does not constitute a nap, Micah.”

Micah lifts his hands in surrender. “I stand corrected.”

“How about we just light this thing so Sage can open her gifts and we can all get some rest,” Holden says, producing a lighter.

“Agreed.” Eli nods. “And, little savage, I think you’ve earned a second wish after what you’ve been through.”

I grin, catching my lower lip between my teeth. “Even if the first one already came true?”

“It did?” Milo asks, eyes bright and delighted.

I nod. “At the club, I wished Stephen dead.”

The table goes still for half a beat.