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I don’t know if he means Russ, Russ’s dad, the whole cruel, rotten universe, or all of it.

My vision blurs, and suddenly I’m seventeen again, sitting across from Russ’s parents at their dining room table while his mother refused to meet my eyes and his father asked what I expected Russ to do about my “situation.” Their house had smelled like lemon cleaner and money. Everything polished. Everything quiet. Every sharp thing hidden under manners.

I had thought they were cold. I had thought they were cruel.

I hadn’t known they were monsters.

Sickness rolls through me, hot and bitter. I was tied to that family. I shared holidays with them. Sat at their table. Let them look at my baby like she was a mistake with my eyes and their son’s name. All that time, Leon was carrying a wound their family made. All that time, they knew.

Russ smiles up at Leon through swollen, bloody lips, satisfied because he thinks he finally found the blade deep enough to cut.

“Dad panicked,” Russ says, voice rasping around the damage Leon has already done. “He came home with the front end smashed in.”

His laugh turns into a wet cough.

The mall shifts around us. Even some of the crowd goes quiet.

Poppy lifts her head a little. “Mom?”

“Don’t listen,” I whisper, pulling her closer. “Don’t listen to him.”

But Leon has to.

Leon hears every word.

Russ knows it.

His eyes glitter. “I was there with a hose and a bucket while he scrubbed your parents off his car.”

Something in me goes cold enough to hurt.

Leon still doesn’t move. His face has emptied. The man I love has spent years blaming fate, the road, the accident, the dark, the wrong place at the wrong time.

Around us, the crowd grows restless. They lean closer, grinning, muttering, waiting to see which way Leon breaks. The upper level creaks under the weight of bodies pressing against the railing. Lyla keeps her rifle trained on Bryant, but her jaw is clenched tight. Joanie’s gun dips before she snaps it back into position.

Jacob stands beside me, pale with fury. “Leon,” he says, low.

Leon doesn’t acknowledge him.

Russ tips his chin, daring him. “Come on. Do it.”

I expect Leon to destroy him. To unleash every year of grief that has been trapped inside him since he was thirteen.

Instead, Leon releases him.

Just lets go.

Russ sucks in a ragged breath and rolls to his side, coughing, one hand at his throat. Blood strings from his mouth to the tile. Leon rises slowly, and the movement sends a ripple through the crowd.

He doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t look at Jacob. He doesn’t look at Bryant or the people on the second level with guns trained on a crowd one bad twitch away from chaos.

He only looks at Russ.

Leon’s arms hang loose at his sides. His hands are open. For one terrifying second, he looks almost calm.

He doesn’t raise his hands. Doesn’t sign. Doesn’t write. He only curls two fingers once, low near his thigh.

Come on.