Epilogue
Brendon
The cottage is too quiet without him.
People always talk about silence as if it were peaceful, soft, a gentle thing that lets your mind settle.
The silence here is no longer like that.
It’s heavy and waiting for my brain to fill it with the sound of his laugh, his footsteps, his stupid, filthy commentary echoing down the hall.
When the sound doesn’t come, it bites instead.
Jericho does his best to fill it with drama. He stalks from room to room like a little shadow with an attitude problem, muttering at dust particles and attacking the same patch of couch he has been “killing” for months. The new addition to the family is less subtle about it.
“Samson,” I say, as the Doberman puppy trots across the living room with one of Dom’s socks hanging out of his mouth, oversized paws thumping on the wood floor. “If you even think about chewing that, he will fly back from Los Angeles just to yell at both of us.”
Samson pauses, head tilting, sock dangling. His eyes shine dark and bright, too intelligent for something that still sometimes trips over his own feet. His tail twitches once, then he drops the sock, trots over to me, and shoves his nose under my hand in apology.
Jericho watches from the back of the couch, tail flicking, ears flat.
He hated Samson on sight. I honestly thought he might try to murder him the first week, but after enough supervision and hissing and strategic bribery with treats, they have reached some kind of détente.
He has decided the dog is beneath him, which means he tolerates his existence as long as Samson remembers the hierarchy: cat, then me, then demon boyfriend, then everyone else, then dog.
The cat has learned that if he stays just out of reach and hisses in a dignified way, the dog will give him a wide berth. Samson has learned that if he wants attention from me, all he has to do is sit on my feet while I’m grading and stare at me until I cave.
We’ve all learned the sound of Dominic’s voice through the TV speakers when the LA Kingsmen play, and the commentators can’t shut up about his completion percentage.
“He’s going to be home this weekend,” I tell Samson, because talking to my animals is apparently my main personality trait now. “You can show him how big your paws are and how you haven’t eaten Jericho yet. He’ll be impressed.”
Samson licks my wrist and huffs, then wanders back to flop dramatically at the foot of the couch, all limbs and earnestness. Jericho jumps down and curls up on my thighs instead, digging his claws in just enough to remind me who owns me.
He left six months ago, almost to the day.
Draft day blurred into flights and media days and a whirlwind that swept him out of our town and dropped him onto a bigger stage.
We talked about it, we planned, and we knew it was coming.
It still felt like someone took a crowbar to my ribs when I watched him walk through security at the airport with just a duffel and that calm killer look he uses to hide when he is scared.
“Come with me,” he said, more than once, before it happened. “Fuck law school, we’ll figure it out.”
“I can’t,” I tell him every time. “I need to finish this. I need something that’s mine. You go and be the star. I’ll keep the light on here.”
He hated it, but he respected it. Which might be the most annoying thing he does, honestly.
So I moved fully into the cottage instead of just living half the time between here and my apartment.
We cleaned out the ghosts together before he left.
Seth—whom I finally met— helped with the practical parts that no one can ever know about.
Kyra came by with boxes, sarcasm, and a new doormat that says “Bless This Home And All Who Enter (Unless You’re A Dick). ”
The week before he left, Dom handed me a wriggling black and tan puppy who immediately licked my face and peed on my shirt.
“Samson,” Dom said, dead serious, while I spluttered. “Biblical guard dog to watch your back when I can’t be here. He’s going to be big enough to eat anyone who looks at you wrong.”
“Jericho is going to smother you in your sleep for this,” I said, but my heart clenched around the warm bundle in my arms.
The first couple of weeks after he left, the cottage felt wrong.
His hoodie still hung on the chair. His mug still sat by the sink.
The knife he loved still rested in its slot in the block, as familiar as his voice.
I kept expecting him to walk in sweaty from practice, drop his bag, kiss me, and complain about Keller.
Instead, I got nightly phone calls and bad, blurry selfies of hotel rooms and practice fields.
This is my life now. I’ll be twenty-four in two months, in my final year of undergrad, living in a murder cottage in the woods with a cat who hates everyone and a Doberman named Samson.
My tuition is paid, the fridge is always full, the utilities magically take care of themselves, and my biggest financial decision this week was whether to splurge on the expensive coffee or stick with the cheap stuff.
I am, for all intents and purposes, a sugar baby to a serial killer who plays professional football in Los Angeles.
If my parents could see me now, they’d probably burst into flames on the spot.
The thought makes my chest ache and my lips twitch at the same time. That’s been happening a lot the last few months. Everything is layered now. Loss under comfort, fear under safety, old shame under new want.
My life used to be neat and sorted into boxes: church, school, family, sin. Dominic kicked the wall down, poured gasoline over the boxes, and decided we were going to dance in the ashes instead.
His jersey hangs on the back of the bedroom door, the black and red of the Los Angeles Kingsmen bright even in the dim light.
Number thirteen. Volkov. I’ve watched every snap he’s taken in that uniform.
I’ve watched analysts lose their minds over his arm, over his composure, over the way he stares down defensive lines like he’s daring them to come closer.
They talk about his “killer instinct” and have no idea how on the nose that is.
The first time they showed my boy in his jersey, I ugly cried on this same couch.
Kyra was there that night, sitting cross-legged on the rug with a bowl of popcorn that Samson tried to steal out of sheer greed.
She didn’t even laugh at me. She just leaned back against my legs and said, “He used to dream about this when we were kids, you know. You’re part of why he can enjoy it now. ”
Kyra comes by a lot now. She started at Lakehaven this semester and has adopted me as her unofficial big brother.
Which is both comforting and terrifying, given her last name.
We watch games together, cook, fight over the remote, and talk about everything except the parts of our lives that are built on blood.
It’s good. It’s better than anything I thought I would have.
But it is not the same as having him here.
He’s supposed to be visiting this weekend.
Officially, it is a “bye week” for his team, which means no game, fewer practices, and just enough freedom for him to hop a red-eye back to the wrong coast and fall into my bed.
He told me he plans to spend the whole weekend “on you or in you,” which made me choke so hard he laughed for a full minute straight.
We have been counting down in our texts like teenagers.
Daddy: Three more sleeps, Little Sin. Try not to get stabbed again before I get there.
Me: Fuck you, you’re the one in a city full of lunatics, I’m in farm country.
Daddy: You say that like you’re not in a murder cottage in the woods.
Me: Touché.
Tonight, though, it’s just me and the animals and the soft tick of the cheap wall clock.
I finish marking the last sad essay, and rub my eyes.
Samson sighs and rolls onto his back, paws in the air.
Jericho jumps down from the couch, stretches in that boneless way only cats can pull off, and pads toward the bedroom like he is done with today and everyone in it.
I’d planned to stay up late tonight and mark essays, but my body has other ideas. My eyes burn every time I blink. The clock on the nightstand reads 01:17 in hazy red digits. I fall asleep counting down the hours until I can press my face into his neck again and breathe.
I don’t know how long I’m out before the growl wakes me.
It’s low at first, a vibration more than a sound, like distant thunder. For a heartbeat, I think it’s part of a dream. Then Samson’s weight shifts on the rug, claws scraping softly against the floor, and he growls again, deeper this time.
My eyes snap open in the dark.
The cottage is quiet—too quiet. No hum from the fridge, no tick of the hallway clock. Power’s out. Storm, maybe. The air feels heavy. My heart starts pounding, adrenaline hitting before conscious thought catches up.
“Samson?” My voice is a harsh whisper. “What’s wrong?”
Jericho bolts off the bed and disappears under it, fur puffed up, low hiss slipping out. Samson stands, body taut, ears perked, staring at the closed bedroom door. The growl builds in his chest, rumbling through the floorboards into my bare feet when I swing them over the side.
I strain my ears.
There it is—another sound. A faint scrape at the front of the cottage. Metal on wood. Then the soft, unmistakable rattle of a doorknob being tested.
My stomach drops.
Dominic’s face flashes through my head for half a second, ridiculous and hopeful, but the hair on the back of my neck tells me instantly it’s not him.
He wouldn’t fumble the lock. He wouldn’t drag metal over wood like that.
He wouldn’t have Samson growling like he’s about to launch himself at a threat.
“Stay,” I whisper to Samson, as if he’s going to listen to me now when smelling a threat.