19. Sage
NINETEEN
SAGE
“Here’s your patty melt,” I say, setting the plate in front of Frank. He grunts his thanks without looking up from the sports section, and I slide the ketchup bottle closer to his elbow before turning away.
The dinner rush has thinned from chaos to manageable irritation, the diner settling into that weird close-to-closing hum where the booths are half full, the coffee is always half empty, and the fryers never stop hissing.
I’ve been on since noon, and my feet are aching in that dull, familiar way that usually feels grounding.
Usually.
Today everything feels two degrees off, and I know exactly why.
It’s Wednesday, and I haven’t laid eyes on Eli since he stood in my bedroom doorway Monday morning looking like I’d reached into his chest and come back with a fistful of nerves.
No coffee at the counter. No amber eyes tracking me across the room while pretending not to. Nothing.
Not that I’m short on company. Micah came by an hour ago with a smoothie he claimed he “accidentally” bought extra.
Knox was parked outside my window this morning, and I’m fairly sure Holden did a silent drive-by around ten.
Only Milo’s stayed away—giving me space, Micah says—which is probably for the best, since I don’t think I’m emotionally equipped for whatever flavor of chaos he brings.
So I have a whole roster of devastating men accounted for. Just not the one I keep checking the door for.
I hate that I care. I have survived worse things than one broody man going radio silent after watching another man get me off.
But every time the bell jingles, some stubborn part of me expects him to walk in wearing that careful, devastating look he gets right before he says something that lodges under my skin.
“Sage,” Rosa snaps from behind the counter, “table four wants more ranch.”
“Of course they do,” I mutter.
I grab the bottle and head over. The bell over the door jingles, and a hint of awareness prickles over my skin as a man with dark curls slides onto a stool four seats down from Frank.
By the time I’ve made my way over to him, he’s already settled in, elbows planted on the counter, leaning forward in a way that suggests we’re mid-conversation and have been for some time.
“Thai food,” he says without preamble. “Thoughts?”
I stop with the coffee pot halfway to his mug.
“What?”
“Thai food. Quick, don’t think about it.” He snaps his fingers at me. “Spicy or sweet?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Spicy or sweet, Sage. Hurry, this is time sensitive.”
That’s when the recognition hits.
It dawns all at once. I know his face. I’ve seen his face. In the moonlight under the jetty when the skull masks came off and five men stood around me in the sand, looking at what I’d done.
He’s the one who cracked the joke about the pinata then went on a rant about the swirls in Brock’s ‘g’s.
My pulse goes up as I remember exactly how bright his eyes were. How strange it felt, that much humor standing next to that much blood.
He grins at me like we’re old friends and not two strangers linked by homicide.
“Spicy,” I say automatically, because apparently my survival instinct has clocked out for lunch.
His whole face lights up. “Excellent answer, full marks. I knew we’d be a perfect match.” He taps the counter twice, triumphant. “How about squirrels?”
“What?”
“Squirrels. Opinions? Thoughts? Facts? Don’t think, just speak.”
He’s wearing a well-worn jacket and a T-shirt that’s been washed so many times the color is more of a suggestion than anything else.
His hair is dark, curly, and chaotic. There’s a piece of it falling into his eye that he isn’t bothering to push back.
He’s unshaven, his scruff deliciously perfect against his tanned skin.
The jacket is dark olive, and beat up at the cuffs.
His eyes are brown and far lighter than I would have guessed.
He is, I’m realizing with a kind of slow horror, cute.
Distractingly so. Seriously? How are they ALL attractive???
I pour him a mug then set the coffee pot down very carefully on the warmer.
“I am so confused right now.”
“Squirrels, Sage. Are you pro? Anti? Neutral?” He leans in closer. “This is a vibe check, I need to know who I’m dealing with.”
This guy is the human equivalent of whiplash. I’m not sure I can keep up.
“Pro,” I say, because the alternative is silence, and silence is clearly going to make this worse. “I guess. They’re fine. They’re—”
“Pro squirrels!” He smacks the counter hard enough that the napkin dispenser jumps.
Frank, four stools down, just bites into his patty melt like nothing is happening.
“Outstanding. Truly, that’s the right answer, we’re going to get along.
Last one, last one, then I’ll order, I promise—if you had to commit a crime and get away with it, what would it be? ”
The breath I’d been about to take stops somewhere in my chest.
It’s the most careful question I’ve ever heard, slipped into the run of nonsense like a card palmed into a magician’s deck. Same cadence as the squirrels. No pause, no weight on it. The only reason I notice it at all is because of how violently my body reacted to it.
Because this is a man who watched me commit a crime under a jetty. Who helped clean it up so I’d get away with it. And here he is asking it again over a lunch counter like it’s small talk.
Milo can be a lot, Micah had said. I’m starting to think that was him being kind.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Small crimes, Sage. No one gets hurt. Misdemeanor at worst. Quick.”
The sick pressure in my gut lightens a little.
“Milo, I’m not—”
“Oh my god. Kitten!” The grin he gives me is the most delighted thing I have ever seen on a human face. It’s the kind of grin you’d give a dog who has just learned to shake.
I blink at him.
I have no fucking clue what’s going on.
“Hallelujah, she knows my name!” He spreads his arms, taking up about three stools’ worth of space in the process. “This is the best day of my life, I want you to know that. This is going in the journal!”
“You journal?”
He doesn’t strike me as the contemplative type.
“Yep. It’s important to have a clear and focused mind so you can manifest what you want.” He leans in, dropping his voice to a whisper. “Even if that includes unaliving a bunch of grape-ists.”
Whatever protocol exists for serving men like this—and there must be one somewhere, in some manual the diner hasn’t provided me—I haven’t been trained for it.
The goal at this point is to give him coffee and a menu and hope that’ll make his mouth so full he sits in silence and looks at his phone like a normal customer.
Though I can already tell he has the kind of energy that requires medication before silence can even enter the building.
I wonder if his mother had to drug him to get him to sleep.
Though God knows he probably sleepwalks and talks.
“You want a menu?” I ask, holding one out to him.
He waves me off. “What’ve you got in terms of pie?”
“You don’t want a meal first?”
He shakes his head. “Pies, kitten, please focus, I’m working with a tight window here.”
I exhale through my nose. Kitten?
“We’ve got pumpkin, cherry, pecan, blueberry, and a peanut butter chocolate.”
“Sounds great.”
I wait for him to clarify but he looks at me with the expectation of a man who’s placed an order and is now waiting for it to materialize.
“Which one did you want?”
“All of them. With ice cream. Thanks.”
I stare at him. He stares back.
“All?”
“All.”
“You’re seriously going to eat that much pie?”
“I’ll have you know this is merely a snack to tide me over until dinner.”
I quirk an eyebrow. Not sure if this guy is crazy or legit. “In that case, are you sure five slices will be enough?”
He considers this, tilts his head. He does a tiny, theatrical frown like he’s working something out and then his face clears.
“You’re right. Give me two really big pieces of the peanut butter chocolate and an extra large side of cream. That’d be great, thanks.”
“That’s a lot of pie.”
“Sage.” He puts his hand over his heart in a gesture of genuine, wounded sincerity. “I’m a growing boy. I need all the sustenance sugar can give me.”
I’m fighting to hold back a laugh.
A few nights ago, I killed a man under a jetty.
It’s been the longest stretch of my life.
Five days of pretending my hands are steady, of being passed between a rotation of dangerous men who each make me feel a little less insane right up until they say the thing that pushes me back to the edge.
Holden and his threats. Knox and his silence. Eli and whatever Monday morning was.
Micah’s the exception. He held me while I came apart, and he’s the only one who’s made the inside of my own skin feel survivable—though being seen that completely has a weight all its own.
And then there’s Milo. Squirrels and pie and felonies, no history pressing down on any of it. The first person since the sand who’s made me feel lighter. Like I’m a functioning human instead of a crime scene in an apron.
I like him already.
“A stupid amount of pie it is then,” I say, turning around so he can’t see my face. I pull the peanut butter chocolate from the case and set the knife to it, aiming for a standard slice.
“Bigger,” Milo says behind me.
I move the knife out a little.
“Bigger.”
I move it again.
“Sage. Bigger. That’s a child’s portion. That’s a slice for a man who’s given up.”
I slide the knife out another inch, fighting my face.
“There. No—you know what, just keep going. Commit. Oh, that’s it. That’s a big old slice of that rich chocolate. Mmm, yeah. Now the cream. More cream. Drown it. Ooooh, yes. Just like that. Now swirl it.” His voice drops into something obscene. “Oh yeah, baby. That’s it.”
By the time I look down, I’ve cut him roughly two-thirds of the pie in one monstrous wedge, with a snowdrift of whipped cream collapsing off the side. What’s left in the case is a sad little crescent that wouldn’t feed a toddler.
I’m shaking so hard with held-in laughter I can barely lift the plate. It takes me a minute to gather myself, then I walk over and slide it in front of him.
“Thank you,” he says, with both hands on his heart, like I have handed him a child to baptize. “This is the best moment of my week, Sage, I want you to understand that.”
I roll my eyes. “Try it first, then I’ll get your other pieces.”
He picks up the fork and cuts a bite. He puts it in his mouth, and his eyes close. His lips move and he makes a sound from somewhere deep enough in his chest that I can feel it across the counter.
“Mmmmmh.”
“Stop it!” I laugh, glancing around. “You’re making a scene!”
“Sage. This is the best pie I have ever had in my life. I’m going to write a poem about it. I’m going to call my mother. It’ll be tattooed on my chest. I’m going to name a child after it.”
“It’s frozen wholesale, Milo. We get them from a warehouse in Bakersfield. They come in stacks of twelve.”
“And I will treasure it always.”
He takes another bite and hums, and then he sets the fork down and gestures at the pie with both hands, like a sommelier presenting a vintage to a table of dignitaries.
“Notes of sugar and spice,” he tells me seriously. “A finish of butter and salt. It has a backbone that lingers on the palate and reminds me of triumph over adversity, like an aftertaste of Rocky two through five. This pie has found its purpose.”
That’s the moment I lose it.
It happens before I can stop it—I snort.
I slap a hand over my mouth, but it’s already gone, escaped, irretrievable, and the second half comes out through my fingers as a hiccupping gulp.
It’s so undignified that I laugh again, harder, and then I’m leaning on the counter with my hand over my mouth and my eyes are wet and my shoulders are shaking and Frank is, finally, looking up from his patty melt to assess the situation.
I haven’t laughed like this in months. Possibly years. Possibly ever.
The strangest part—the part that is making my brain stutter—is that the man making me do it is the same man who watched me turn another man into mincemeat.
What is happening right now?
“I love your laugh, kitten,” Milo says, grinning as he leans back in his seat.
“Kitten?” I roll my eyes. I’m not sure about this as a nickname.
“Because you’re stabby and adorable. My murder kitten.”
I shoot a glance down the counter at Frank who has returned to his melt. “Don’t! Someone might hear.”
“But it’s a term of endearment. Knox came up with it.”
I give him a look. “Knox? Really?”
“You’re right. He would never. It was me. I came up with it.” He stabs another bite of pie. “Why? Don’t you like Murder Kitten?”
“No.”
“What would you prefer? Sage the Slayer? Lady Carve? The Notorious C-O-G?”
“C-O-G?” I ask, almost afraid of the answer.
“Cutter of Genitals.”
“Milo!”
“Stabby McQueen Face?”
“No.”
“Pinata Princess?”
“Milo!”
“Cherry Bomb.” He gestures at the pie case with the fork, taking in the whole tableau like a man unveiling a monument. “This is destiny, Sage, you can feel it, I can feel it, the pie can feel it.”
I am laughing so hard now that I have to turn my back on him entirely and brace both hands on the counter behind me, breathing slowly through a laugh I don’t know how to stop. My ribs hurt. My face hurts.
“Please don’t call me Cherry Bomb.”
“Okay. Murder Kitten it is, then. Kitten for short, of course.”
I roll my eyes, but I’m smiling. It feels like he just spun me in circles to convince me I was traveling when I never went anywhere at all.
Kitten, it is.
“Why are you really here, Milo?”
He waves his fork as he shrugs. “I’m on shift.”
“I know you’re on shift.”
“Then you know why I’m here.”
“Why are you inside?” I gesture at the road. “Normally you all skulk about outside looking like wannabe stalkers.”
He points his fork at his plate. “Pie.”
I shake my head. “Be serious.”
“I am being serious. I’ve stood in alleys and shadows for the better part of a week. I came in because I was tired of being the only one you hadn’t met yet.” He bats his eyelashes at me. “Aren’t you glad I did?”
“You’re definitely a lot,” I say, mostly to buy myself a second.
“I am a great quantity, yes.”
I snort, turning back to the pies to cut the other pieces he ordered. “I don’t know what to make of you.”
“Most people don’t.”