Page 66 of What We Become

Because the bit isn’t an audition.

I don’t run it so they’ll keep me around. I run it because there are two settings in my head and only one of them is habitable. When I’m talking, I’m a guy. An extremely irritating guy with strong opinions about thread count and a working knowledge of Norse afterlife logistics. When I stop talking for long enough, I’m the thing that killed fourteen men in four minutes, helped clean up the evidence, and didn’t feel any of it until Sage touched me at the funeral home.

So I keep the noise up. Constantly. Like a generator. Like one of those machines that beeps in a hospital room so everybody knows the person is still in there.

“That’s a really shitty thing to say to a man while you’re lying on top of me and we’re both covered in jizz,” I manage, trying to deflect. But it comes out wrong. Too quiet. My voice wobbles a little because sincerity is the one kink I’ve never been able to get into.

Holden doesn’t move. Just waits me out, because he’s a cop and waiting people out is literally his whole skill set.

“I wasn’t auditioning,” I say.

“Then what were you doing?”

Ah . . . he wants the truth that’s standing in the doorway of my mouth like an awkward party guest.

“If I stop, he’s what’s left.”

Holden goes very still above me.

“He?” he says.

“Yeah.” I look at the ceiling instead of at him, because this is significantly easier said to plaster. “The one who showed up at the warehouse. It’s me. I’m still driving the bus. But that me doesn’t have a personality, Holden. He doesn’t have a bit. He’s what I am when all the bad stuff leaks out.” My hands won’t stay still. “Everybody thinks the jokes are the mask. They’re not. They’re the lid.”

For a long moment there’s nothing but his breathing and my deepest regret over letting out even a shred of honesty. Then he clears his throat.

“That night. In the bathtub.” His thumb hasn’t stopped moving at the back of my neck. “You were folded up at the end of it with the shower still running. I reached over you and shut the water off. Micah took your top half, I took your legs, and we got you onto the mat. Then I was so fucking scared for you that I called your mother for help.”

“Bet that made you even more scared,” I quip, and a tear drops on my chest.

Holden Cross is crying on me.

Not, like, a lot. It’s one tear. Maybe two. But this is a man whose emotional range runs from “grouchy” to “slightly less grouchy,” and there is currently water falling out of his face onto my pecs, and I’m watching it happen with the same awe I’d have witnessing a solar eclipse.

“Hey.” My hands find his face before my brain approves the mission. “Detective Cross doesn’t leak. This is a design flaw. I’m calling the manufacturer.”

“Shut up, Milo.” But he doesn’t pull away. His forehead drops to mine and stays there, eyes shut, breathing.

“You want to know what she said to me?” His voice is wrecked in a register I’ve never heard before. “Your mother. When I called her in the early hours of the morning because you wouldn’t talk and I didn’t know what to do. She said, ‘My son had better be breathing.’ I told her you were. But you needed help. There was this silence. Then she just said, ‘How bad?’ and then she showed up to sedate you.”

I don’t want to hear this. I want to hear it more than I’ve ever wanted anything.

“She told us the warehouse wasn’t your first break. That your brain moves so fast that sometimes there’s a crash and a reset. That the humor and the chaos are your coping mechanism. That when you crash you think you’re a burden.” His thumb drags through the tear on my chest, smearing it into my skin like he’s working it in. “She also said that you trust me. More than the others.”

My throat closes around all of my jokes and swallows them.

“She needs to stop reading my diary.”

Holden huffs—one short, ruined laugh—and it shakes loose something in my chest I was keeping on a high shelf.

“She doesn’t read your diary,” he says.

“You’re right. I don’t keep a diary.”

“She reads you. Because she knows you. Better than the rest of us.”

“Well . . . she is my mom.”

“And we’re your family,” he counters. “We should know you, Milo. All of you. The good, the bad, the noisy, and the quiet.”