Chapter Twenty-Five
Draygon
Three weeks later, the garage sounds almost normal again.
Engines run. Tools hit concrete. Andre has already threatened Revel twice before lunch, which is probably the closest thing this place has to a heartbeat.
Talon and Sayshen are arguing over something neither of them will give a shit about tomorrow, Reign is complaining about his setup like the bike is literally out to get him, and Thorne has started talking more than he did the first week home.
If someone walked in off the street, they might think we were fine.
We’re not.
We’ve just gotten better at functioning around the hole Wolfe left behind.
His section of the memorial wall still sits across from Bay Three.
I miss him in stupid ways more than the big ones. I miss knowing exactly what smart-ass comment would come out of his mouth when Andre started yelling. I miss the way he’d steal food off my plate without asking and act offended when I told him to fuck off.
I miss seeing his name light up my phone for something completely pointless.
Wolfe was one of my best friends.
My brother.
I know Echo and Thorne lost him in a different way than I did.
They lost someone they loved. Someone they’d built something with.
Wolfe knew Thorne better than most people did. He could tell when the jokes were bullshit, when to push him and when to leave him the fuck alone. Somehow, he got Thorne comfortable enough to stop running from parts of himself he’d spent years avoiding.
And Echo was the same in her own way.
Wolfe knew when she was hiding behind work, or jokes, or being useful because sitting still meant feeling too much. He saw through all of it without making a big deal out of it.
That kind of connection doesn’t just get replaced.
I know that.
Which is exactly why I haven’t tried.
I can’t be Wolfe for either of them, and I wouldn’t insult him by pretending I could.
All I can do is stay.
So that’s what I’ve been doing.
For Echo.
For Thorne.
For myself too, even if I’m slower to admit that part.
Around one, Andre finally tells everyone to get the fuck out of his face for lunch, which is probably less about giving us a break and more about preserving his last remaining shred of sanity.
I grab my keys and head out before Revel can convince anybody that gas-station taquitos count as nutrition.
Echo isn’t here today.
She texted the group this morning saying she was working from the cabin, which in Echo language probably means she’s been sitting with her guitar, forgetting food exists and calling it productivity.
I know her well enough now to know she’s probably eaten fuck all.
So I stop for lunch on the way over.
Nothing dramatic. Just something I know she’ll actually eat, plus coffee because I’m not stupid enough to show up empty-handed when she’s been writing.
Her bike is outside when I pull up.
Good.
At least she hasn’t disappeared somewhere.
I grab the food and knock once before letting myself in.
“Pretty girl?”
“Living room.”
Her voice sounds normal enough that I immediately don’t trust it.
I find her sitting cross-legged on the floor with Wolfe’s old hoodie hanging over her hands, the guitar across her lap and a notebook spread open beside her. The pages are covered in crossed-out lines, arrows, rewrites, words written so hard the pen nearly cut through the paper.
I hold up the takeout bag as I walk into the living room.
“I brought lunch.”
Echo glances at it, then back at the notebook in her lap.
“Thanks, but I already ate.”
I stop beside the coffee table and look at her.
She lasts maybe two seconds before her eyes flick up to mine.
“What?”
“What did you eat?”
Her mouth opens, then closes again.
I wait.
She sighs. “Coffee.”
“That is not food.”
“There was cream in it.”
I stare at her.
She gives me a completely straight face, like she genuinely expects that argument to hold up.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Echo.”
The corner of her mouth finally twitches, and I set the bag down in front of her before she can come up with another reason caffeine counts as a meal.
“I was texting you this morning, but you didn’t answer, you ignoring me now?”
Her eyes drop back to the page. “I was busy.”
“With what? Starting a war with that notebook?”
“The notebook started it.”
That almost gets a smile out of me.
Then I notice the melody she keeps picking through.
I know it.
Not well, but enough. I’ve heard her playing it a few times. She played it for Wolfe back in Ireland, when they thought the two of them were the only ones in the house who couldn’t sleep.
“The song?”
Her fingers stop on the strings and she looks at me properly this time. “How do you know about the song?”
I hesitate for half a second. “Wolfe hummed it once at the TT. And I might’ve heard some of it that night too, when you were playing for him.”
Her eyes narrow slightly. “You were listening?”
“Not intentionally.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I was passing by.”
“Convenient.”
I almost smile. “You gonna arrest me for unauthorized listening?”
Her mouth twitches, but the expression fades when she looks back down at the guitar.
“He was the first person I actually played it for.”
I move farther into the room and sit beside her on the floor, close enough that my shoulder nearly brushes hers.
“He clearly fucking liked it.”
She glances over.
“And I don’t blame him,” I add. “It’s a good song, Echo. Really fucking good.”
That catches her off guard more than I expect.
“You think?”
“Yeah.” I nod toward the guitar. “Wouldn’t say it if I didn’t.”
Her thumb runs slowly along the edge of the notebook.
“He told me not to force the missing parts. Said if I kept trying to make the song into something before I knew what it was supposed to be, it was just going to sound wrong.” She lets out a quiet breath.
“Which was annoyingly good advice from someone who lived mostly on cereal and whatever food he could steal off everybody else’s plates. ”
The quiet that settles between us isn’t uncomfortable. It just has weight.
“You been trying to finish it?”
“Every chance I can.”
That surprises me less than it should cause we all know she’s been doing that with everything lately. Working longer, checking everybody else instead of making sure she looks after herself.
Finding a task before there’s a second where she might have to sit still and feel any of this.
“And it’s not happening.”
“Nope.”
“Why?”
She shrugs, but it’s weak. “Because it used to be about finding home, and now every fucking line sounds like him.”
There it is.
I don’t rush to answer.
Echo’s fingers trace the strings without playing them.
“I keep trying to write around it. Make it about what it was before. Me finding the team. My brothers. Tampa. Whatever. But he’s in all of it now, so every time I try, it just sounds fake.”
“Then stop writing around him.”
She looks at me.
“I don’t want the whole song to become about someone dying.”
“It doesn’t have to.”
Her expression tightens.
I gesture toward the notebook. “It can still be about home. He was part of that.”
She looks away almost immediately.
Fuck.
There’s the wound.
“He was supposed to hear it finished.”
Her voice changes on that sentence, turning smaller.
Rougher almost.
I don’t say anything because there’s nothing useful I can say to that.
“He told me I had time.”
That one hurts worse.
Echo laughs under her breath, but there’s nothing funny in it.
“Pretty shit advice, apparently.”
“Echo.”
“He was supposed to fucking come home, Draygon.”
The words crack out of her before she can stop them.
She stares down at the guitar while her eyes fill.
“He was supposed to be sitting right there annoying me while I tried to finish this. He was supposed to tell me the lyrics were too dramatic and then ask me to play it again anyway. He was supposed to keep leaving his shit all over this place and forgetting to water that fucking plant.”
Her voice keeps climbing until it breaks.
“He was supposed to hear the whole fucking song.”
I reach over and take the guitar before it slips from her lap, setting it carefully against the couch.
Then she folds.
Not gracefully or quietly.
She just caves forward and I catch her before she hits the floor, pulling her into me while the first real sob tears out of her.
I hold her tighter.
“I know, pretty girl.”
“I’m so fucking angry.”
“I know.”
“At him.”
My chest tightens and she pulls back just enough to look at me, like she needs me to understand how fucked-up that makes her feel.
“I obviously know it wasn’t his fault. I know that. But I’m still angry he left. I’m angry that he’s not here. That I finally found something that felt like home and he became part of it and then he just—”
Her mouth twists.
“Left”
I brush my hand over the back of her neck.
“You’re allowed to be angry.”
She shakes her head.
“I’m tired of missing him this much, and I don’t want to stop missing him either.”
That one I understand too fucking well.
“You won’t.”
Her eyes lift to mine.
I take a breath before I keep going.
“I don’t think that part goes anywhere. I think eventually it just stops owning every second.”
She studies me like she’s trying to decide whether I actually believe that.
Truth is, I don’t know.
I just need to believe it.
For her and Thorne.
For me.
Echo looks back down at our hands, her thumb moving slowly over my knuckles.
“When my mom died, I thought I knew what grief was going to feel like.”
I stay quiet.
“She was sick for a while. I knew it was coming.” Her voice gets softer.
“You’re never ready to lose someone, obviously.
There’s no version of that where you’re like, cool, totally prepared for this person to disappear forever.
But with her, I had time to get closer to ready. As close as anyone probably can.”
Her fingers tighten around mine.
“I watched her get worse. I knew every appointment could be bad news. I knew eventually there was going to be a last conversation, a last day, a last time I walked into that hospital room and she was still there.”
She swallows hard.
“So when she died, it fucking destroyed me, but some part of me had already been grieving her before she was gone.”