Chapter 22 #2
“It is country,” Blayze insists.
“It is not,” Red fires back, stabbing the playlist button again. “That is a man crying into a barrel of whiskey. We’re listening to Pearl Jam.”
Capone stands in the doorway, hands on his hips. “If I hear one more argument about the damn playlist, I am throwing both speakers into traffic.”
Red and Blayze shut up immediately.
Syvannah smiles into Peanut’s fur.
Trigger notices the curl of her smile before I do, his expression softening when he sees it. He walks past me, a coil of wire slung over one shoulder, and pauses just long enough to wipe sweat from his brow.
“She’s coming back to herself,” he says quietly.
I follow his gaze. Syvannah’s eyes meet mine for a moment. There is a softness there, something steady, something hopeful. She looks at these men like they are not chaos, but home.
“Piece by piece,” I answer.
Trigger bumps my arm with the side of his fist. The gesture is light, but it carries meaning. “So are you,” he says.
I look away before he can see how right he is. Something in me is loosening. Something is warming. Something is healing in the same uneven rhythm as she is.
As the brothers shout, weld, argue, drag beams, and rebuild the broken heart of our compound, Syvannah watches it all as if her world is knitting itself back together. For the first time in a long time, I think Trigger might be right. I’m coming back to myself, too.
Syvannah does not hide from the world or shrink from it.
She leans into it at her own pace, even as memories pull her backward.
Most days, her voice drifts down the hall as she talks with Nadia and Exleigh, the three of them weaving strength out of shared scars.
I hear their laughter drift through the hallway, followed by quiet moments when voices soften and break.
They remind one another that surviving does not erase scars and that scars do not mean weakness.
Most afternoons, when I walk past the bench outside the garage, she reaches out a hand without looking up from whatever she is drawing. My fingers find hers without thinking. The moment our hands meet, something inside me settles and goes still.
Today, the sun dips lower, brushing everything in warm amber. Syvannah sets Peanut aside and pats the bench.
“You have been somewhere else all day,” she says. Her voice is gentle, but her eyes search mine like she already knows the answer.
“Just thinking.”
“About what?”
I look at her and see the same softness she had that first morning in the infirmary, the one where she whispered that I did not save her, I found her. The memory loosens something in my chest.
“I need to deal with something,” I say. “Something I left behind a long time ago.”
Her brows knit with quiet concern. “Go if you need to. Just do not stay gone too long.”
I brush my thumb over her cheek, and she leans into the touch. “I will always come back to you.”
“Good,” she murmurs, a faint smile warming her features. “Because I am not done with you yet.”
Her smile warms a part of me I thought the past had ruined for good.
The ride takes me out of the city, toward roads lined with trees that have seen more winters than I can count.
The house sits at the end of a narrow dirt path where the branches twist overhead like skeletal fingers.
I haven’t been here in over fifteen years, yet the moment I stop my bike, the air smells exactly the same.
It smells like abandonment.
The house sags under its own weight. A place meant to shelter kids like me but hurt them instead still stands, stubborn and broken, even after the world tried to burn it out.
A flashlight flickers inside, and I stop moving. The front door creaks open, and Creed steps out like a ghost that never learned to stay dead.
He’s older and not as tough, but his eyes haven’t changed. They’re still sharp, still mean, still calculating how much he can take from whoever’s standing in front of him.
“Well,” Creed says, his voice rough with age and smoke. “Thought I recognized that bike.”
I don’t answer. Instead, I walk toward him slowly, my boots crunching over gravel and broken glass. He shifts his weight, and his hand twitches like he’s thinking about running.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve coming back here,” Creed snarls. “After what you…”
My fist connects with his jaw before he can finish the sentence. He hits the ground hard, wheezing and scrambling like an animal that finally realizes the cage door is locked shut.
I grab him by the collar and drag him inside.
I shove Creed against the wall. Images of the bunk bed, where I tried to make myself small enough to go unnoticed, flash through my mind.
The kitchen, the yelling turned to fists.
And the patch of dirt in the yard where I buried the stray dog I could not save, the one that taught me what failure feels like when it has a heartbeat.
“You ruined a lot of things,” I say, my voice low and steady. “A lot of lives.”
Creed laughs. It’s weak, cracked, and afraid. “You think killing me fixes that?” he spits.
I lean in close enough that he can see himself reflected in my eyes. “No,” I say. “It just ends it.”
The knife is already in my hand. With one clean motion, Creed crumples to the floor, choking on the sound of his own ending.
I watch until there’s nothing left to watch. Then I step over him.
Memory doesn’t come all at once. It comes in jagged flashes as I move through the house. The bunk bed. The corner where yelling turned into fists. The walls that learned to keep secrets.
I crouch and pick up a piece of charred wood. It crumbles instantly, turning to dust between my fingers, like it’s been waiting to fall apart.
I walk to my bike and pull a gas can from my saddlebag. Heading back inside, I spread the liquid across the floorboards in a slow, deliberate line. It seeps into the cracks, soaking into the bones of the place. I circle back to the room where Creed lies and splash the last of it there.
I strike a match. The flame wavers for a second before rising, eager for release.
I drop it.
Fire races along the trail, climbing the walls, curling around beams like it is reclaiming something that belonged to it all along. For a moment, I stand and watch memories burn.
I step into the yard as the roof collapses inward with a groan. Embers float upward, drifting against the darkening sky like orange fireflies. When the flames finally settle into glowing ash, I crouch again and gather a small handful.
“You were never home,” I say into the settling ash. “I can finally put you down.”
I open my hand and let the wind take the ash. It scatters across the dead grass until there is nothing left
By the time I ride back into the compound, darkness has settled across the lot like deep blue velvet.
The garage is quieter now, the earlier chaos replaced with low music and the murmur of brothers packing away tools.
Torch wipes down his welding table. Trigger rolls up extension cords.
Bones and Dagger lean against a half-built frame as they argue about torque ratios. It feels like a living thing again.
Syvannah is still on the bench, wrapped in one of my hoodies. Peanut sleeps curled on her stomach, one paw twitching as if she dreams of chasing something. Syvannah looks up the second my engine cuts, her smile warm enough to meet me halfway across the lot.
“Feel better?” she asks.
“Lighter,” I say, and I mean it.
She pats the bench beside her. When I sit, she threads her fingers through mine without hesitation.
“Good,” she murmurs. “You can let someone else carry things now.”
I rest my forehead lightly against hers. The scent of her hair, the warmth of her skin, and the steady certainty in her voice sink deep enough to steady everything inside me.
She leans close, her voice barely above a breath. “Welcome back.”
My fingers tighten around hers. “I’m home.”