54. Sage #2
“Then stop fighting it,” I whisper.
“I can’t—” He squeezes his eyes shut. “I can’t be like them. I can’t smile about this and high-five Milo in the fucking hallway. That’s not who I am.”
“Nobody’s asking you to be Milo.”
His breath hitches. “There’s no control. Before there was. But now there—”
“Eli.” I close the gap between us. My hands grip his chest, fist his shirt and pull. He’s shaking, his whole body vibrating with the effort of holding himself in check. His forehead drops to mine, his eyes still closed, and for a moment, we just breathe.
“You can’t control everything,” I whisper.
Then he kisses me.
It’s slow and aching and so full of want that it makes my chest cave in. His hands come up to cradle my face, thumbs tracing my cheekbones, and he kisses me like he’s been starving for this exact ruin.
“Eli,” I whisper against his mouth. My fingers slide into his hair, body arching into his—and he makes a sound. Low. Wrecked.
He kisses me harder. Like if he does it right, he can make the rest of the world go away. Like muscle memory is stronger than guilt or fear or a lifetime of failing to keep it together.
One hand tangles in my hair and the other flattens against the small of my back, hauling me up so hard I’m practically off my feet. He backs me into the counter, grinds his hips into me. The outline of him presses through his jeans—hard and desperate, as frantic as the mouth crashing into mine.
I kiss him back. I meet him, bruise for bruise, both of us taking every ounce of the ache and not pretending it’s anything but ugly and necessary.
Then he stops.
Sudden.
Abrupt.
His hands are still on my face. His forehead still against mine. But he’s pulled back just enough that the kiss breaks, and he stays there, breathing hard, eyes still closed.
“I can’t have this,” he says.
The words slice between my ribs and I try to pull from his grip. But he holds me steady.
“Don’t, little savage.” His thumbs stroke my cheekbones.
“Don’t pull away. I want you. I want you so fucking much I can’t think right.
That’s not the problem. That’s never been the problem.
” He opens his eyes, and they’re glassy and wrecked.
“But not like this. Not . . .” He swallows hard.
“I need my job. I can’t risk losing it so I can have this. ”
“Why? I don’t understand.”
“I don’t expect you to. I don’t—” He exhales and it washes over my skin. “I need my job. If I stop being a teacher—stop being something good and useful in this world, there’ll be nothing left to balance everything else.”
I blink, still not understanding.
Eli’s hand slips from my face. He takes a step back, shakes his head, hands up like he’s surrendering.
“I’m not . . . Fuck, Sage. This isn’t about you.
” He runs both hands through his hair, jaw flexing.
“It’s me. All my life, I’ve had to keep the lid on it.
The anger. The darkness. The part that—” He stops.
Looks at me. Forces the words out like they’re burning through him.
His voice drops to a whisper. “The part that wants to kill. To punish. To hurt.”
I want to tell him I get it. That the darkness isn’t only his. I’ve felt it in my own hands. In the part of me that knew exactly where to put the knife and didn’t want to stop. But I don’t say anything. I just wait for him to finish.
He paces once, twice. Stops and leans both hands on the counter, head bowed like he’s fighting gravity.
“That night—I’ve never felt so fucking alive, Sage.
” He’s picking his words carefully, like each one costs him something to let out.
“I should have stopped you. I was the only one with a clean shot and I waited. I wanted you to do it. I wanted to watch.”
The confession hangs in the air like smoke. He still won’t look at me.
“Teaching is the only thing that keeps me human.” His voice is barely above a whisper now, stripped of all the anger and heat.
“Every morning I walk into that classroom and twenty kids look at me like I’m safe.
Like I’m good. For six hours, I’m Mr. Ward.
I tie shoes and read stories and build butterfly gardens, and I believe them. ”
He turns around. Leans back against the counter and stares at the ceiling.
“Then I go home. And the other thing is waiting.” He taps his chest, right over his heart.
“It’s always waiting. It’s why I teach at the community center too.
It doesn’t sleep. It doesn’t get tired. It just sits there, clawing at my insides, and the only reason it stays down is because I have something worth protecting.
A version of myself that matters. That does something right. ”
“Eli—”
“If I give in to this—to you, to them, to whatever this is—and any part of it gets out?” He looks at me, and his eyes are dry but devastated.
“I lose the classroom. I lose the kids. I lose the only thing standing between me and the version of myself that wanted to watch you and felt nothing but joy.”
I suck in my breath and he flinches at his own honesty.
“You think the hangings keep it fed,” he continues, quieter.
“They don’t. They make it hungrier. Every time we do what we do, the line moves.
It gets easier. The justifications come faster.
” His mouth twists, like he can taste something bitter.
“The receipts pile up and I still wake up wanting more. The only thing that pulls me back is my job at that school, knowing I have kids and parents who count on me to be good.”
His voice breaks on the last word, and he presses the heels of his hands into his eyes.
“So it’s not about you. It was never about you.
It’s about the fact that if I lose that job—if some parent hears a rumor, if Amy says the wrong thing to the wrong person, if anyone looks too closely—then the anchor is gone.
And I don’t know who I am without it.” He drops his hands.
Looks at me with a rawness that makes my chest ache.
“I’m afraid of that, Sage. I’m afraid of what I’ll become if there’s nothing left to keep this inside me. ”
I don’t move. I don’t speak. I let it settle between us, because he’s earned that—the space to say the worst thing he’s ever thought out loud and not have someone rush to fill the silence with reassurance.
“You’re not a monster, Eli,” I say eventually.
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. Monsters don’t worry about becoming monsters. They just are.” I take a step toward him. Just one. “You feel joy when bad men die. So do I.” The admission tastes like metal. “I don’t know what that makes us. Broken, maybe. Dangerous, definitely. But not empty. Not nothing.”
He stares at me, jaw working. Abruptly he pushes off the counter and walks to the door.
“Eli.”
He stops, hand on the knob.
“For what it’s worth? Those kids are lucky. Whatever you think is inside you—they see through it to the real you. And so do I.”
He doesn’t turn around. But I see his shoulders rise and fall with a breath that shudders through him, and his knuckles go white on the doorknob before he twists it open and slips out without another word.
I stand in the kitchen and press my fingers to my lips where I can still feel him. The taste of his mouth. The way he shook. The sound he made when his wall came down.
I asked to be included, and he shut the door.
Then he shut himself out, too.
Tears slide down my face.
I don’t want this.
Fuck.