3. Sage
THREE
SAGE
Beep.
Something is—
Beep.
What is that?
Beep.
My eyelids weigh a thousand pounds each. I try to open them and get halfway before the light drives me back—white, blinding, wrong. That’s not my ceiling. My ceiling has a water stain shaped like a rabbit. This is just . . . white.
Beep.
My mouth is so dry. My tongue, thick and gummy, sticks to the roof of my mouth like it’s been glued there. I try to swallow and—
Oh.
Oh.
Pain.
Deep, burning, and alive.
Like something sharp and hot is lodged in my throat.
When my body tries to swallow around it, every muscle from my jaw to my collarbone seizes in revolt. I gag on nothing. My eyes fly open and stay open this time, because the pain won’t let them close.
White ceiling. Fluorescent tubes. A TV mounted in the corner. It’s turned off, its screen reflecting the room back at me in murky miniature. The girl trapped in it looks dead. Somebody should change the channel.
I try to laugh. My throat slams the door on it so hard my vision tunnels, and the joke dies where the sound should be.
Noted.
Beep.
A hospital.
I’m in a hospital.
Why am I in a hospital?
“Fury.” Knox is sitting by my bed, a mountain in a visitor’s chair that his frame was never meant to fit. He’s hunched forward, elbows on the edge of my bed, his big hand wrapped around mine.
Beep.
Knox’s grip tightens when my eyes lock on his and focus. “You’re okay, Fury. You’re in the hospital.”
I try to speak and what comes out is a dry, shredded croak.
His thumb moves over my wrist. He brings his head close, voice like thunder muffled under a quilt. “You’re good. Breathe slow.”
I am breathing. Too much, too hard. My body shakes with it, every breath a struggle. There’s a sour, chemical fog filling my nose. Plastic tubes run under it and over my ears like a bridle. I follow the line to the machine, watch the green waveform bounce with my panic.
I open my mouth to speak again, to ask what happened.
But what comes out is—nothing. Not even a whisper.
Just a broken rasp, like static from a radio that’s been smashed.
My throat seizes again and I cough, a hacking, tearing spasm that feels like swallowing razor blades, and my hands fly to my neck—
There’s a bandage. Thick gauze, taped edges, wrapped all the way around. My fingers press against it and even that light pressure sends pain spiking through me so hard my vision tunnels.
“Hey. Don’t touch.” Knox is on his feet, pulling my hands away from my throat with a gentleness that doesn’t match his size. “Leave it alone, Fury. You need to heal.”
I stare at him. My heart monitor is spiking, the beeping faster now, and the question is on my face even though my mouth can’t form it.
What happened to me?
He reads it.
“You’re at Hunter General. Been under the better part of three days,” he says, sitting back down but keeping hold of my hand.
“Doctors kept you sedated to let the swelling settle—started bringing you out of it this morning. Took the breathing tube out a few hours ago. You’re on oxygen now.
” A pause. His thumb moves across my knuckles.
“Someone attacked you, Fury. Outside the apartment. You were—” He stops.
Starts again, like he’s choosing his words with pliers.
“You were strangled. With a rope. You’ve got damage to your throat—bruising, swelling, abrasions.
They did a scan. Nothing’s fractured, but it’s gonna hurt a while. ”
Strangled. With a rope.
As in hanged?
But who? How?
I try to piece my memory back together.
I was with Micah.
We were waiting for the food . . .
There was a dog.
It comes back in a single, violent rush. Not piece by piece but all at once, like a wave crashing over the seawall. The little brown terrier in the bushes. Its paw all bent. The whimpering. Me crouching down, reaching in.
“Come here, baby, I’m not going to hurt you—”
The rope dropping over my head. The cinch. My feet leaving the ground.
Clawing at the cord. Fingers splitting. Can’t breathe, can’t scream, the world tilting and the pressure in my skull so massive I could feel my eyes bulging and my tongue going thick and—
And a face. Below me. Looking up through the narrowing tunnel of my vision.
Eli.
I start thrashing.
My body decides before my brain does. The same way it decided to claw at the rope, the same way it decided to fight when the dark closed in.
I’m pulling at the IV, trying to sit up, trying to move, because the last thing I saw before everything went black was Eli’s face and I don’t know what that means. I don’t know if he was saving me or—
“Sage. Sage!” Knox’s hands are on my shoulders, gentle but immovable. Pinning me without hurting me. “Stop. Look at me. Look at me!”
I look at him. I’m panting, each breath a jagged whistle through my wrecked throat. The heart monitor screams.
“Eli,” I force out, the word tasting like fire and blood.
“He saved you,” Knox says slowly, leaving no room for doubt.
“Eli was outside. He’d been keeping an eye on your building—on Amy—and he heard you.
Cut you down and gave you CPR until Micah called 911.
He even rode in the ambulance holding your hand.
” His dark eyes hold mine. “He’s the reason you’re alive, Fury. ”
I stare at him. My chest heaves. The monitor beeps too fast. My throat burns.
He’s the reason I’m alive.
Knox nods at the space past the foot of my bed. “He’s right there.”
I follow his gaze. Slowly, because my head is heavy and my neck feels packed with gravel. The room resolves in slow, grainy increments—a closed door, a rolling tray, a plastic pitcher. And in the corner, on a battered orange chair squeezed between the wall and a cabinet, is Eli.
He’s sitting forward, elbows on his knees, watching me with raw, unblinking focus. Days of stubble cover his jaw, dark against skin that’s paler than I’ve ever seen it. His shirt has blood on it—dried brown, streaked across the chest and sleeves. He looks like he’s been dragged through the streets.
“He hasn’t left since they brought you in,” Knox murmurs. “Hasn’t changed his clothes. Security tried to kick him out and he told them they’d have to arrest him. You’ve been surfacing on and off since this morning—he’s tracked every second of it.”
Our eyes meet, and the moment my gaze catches and holds his, his composure breaks.
“Hey, little savage.”
The corner of his mouth kicks up and pressure builds at the back of my eyes. All I can see is the beautiful face that grounded me in my panic that very first night. The face that looked down at me when I tried to run, when he’d cleaned the blood from my skin and given me his jacket.
The face that sat across from me and called me easy.
That said we were just passing you around.
I look away. Blink.
Breathe.
The monitor beeps. Somewhere in the hallway, a nurse is paging someone and a cart is rattling past. The world is doing its regular, indifferent thing, and none of it touches whatever is happening in the space between his chair and my bed.
He doesn’t say anything more. Doesn’t move toward me. Just . . . sits.
I turn my head back to Knox. Slowly, because my neck is a disaster. I let my eyes close. Knox’s hand tightens around mine as he leans in close.
“You need him gone?” he asks, right next to my ear in a voice so quiet I’m the only one who could possibly hear it.
I shake my head, force out a whispered, “No.”
He can stay.
It’s not forgiveness. Not yet, maybe not ever. But I don’t tell him to leave—that’s the closest thing to grace I can offer.