19. Micah
NINETEEN
MICAH
Ican’t sleep. My body’s spent—wrung out, used up, every muscle loose—but my brain is running laps, circling the same thoughts like a dog that won’t lie down.
Sage is curled beside me, one hand tucked under her cheek, breathing in that slow, even rhythm that means the nightmares haven’t come yet.
Her hair is mussed and tangled, and I want to sweep it back, kiss the bare stretch of her shoulder, sweep my tongue between her thighs and lose myself in the taste of her yet again.
Instead, I lie on my back and listen to her breathe, keeping count of each inhale, exhale, the tiny sounds she makes at the edges of her sleep. The sound a comfort because it means she’s still here.
It’s been a month since the attack now. The bruising on her throat has gone from black to a yellow-green you’d have to be looking for.
I’m always looking for it. It’s the thought my brain circles whenever I close my eyes—how close.
It shudders through my muscles, kicks my heart into a sharp pulse in my wrists.
One minute longer and that rope would have claimed her. She’d be gone.
My stomach knots, my throat aches.
I force myself to swallow.
She’s not gone. She’s here.
She’s here.
As soon as my nervous system is convinced she’s okay, my mind jumps to Eli. I can’t let go of him either—of my hurt, my anger.
The longing.
Of the way we used to sleep, shoulder to shoulder after a job, his breath fan-warm in the crook of my arm—years of letting it be just what it was, never naming it out loud. Admitting it to Sage should have lanced the wound, drained the pressure, let me breathe.
It didn’t.
If anything, it’s worse. Because now my anger has company. Now there’s grief sitting next to it, and guilt sitting next to that, and underneath it all is a want so old and so stupid that I should have suffocated it years ago.
I ease out of bed. Sage doesn’t stir. I pull on my boxers, grab my phone off the nightstand out of habit, and pad downstairs barefoot, avoiding the creaking stairs.
The kitchen is dark except for the light over the stove—Holden and Knox are both still at work, and we leave this on until everyone is present and accounted for.
I fill the kettle. Pull out the chamomile.
I’m waiting for the water to boil when I realize I’m not alone.
There’s a shape at the kitchen island—curled, hunched, all of him drawn in like a wire wound too tight.
Eli, in a faded T-shirt and sweats. There’s a mug in front of him, both hands around it, but he’s not drinking.
Just sitting, eyes fixed on the dark window over the sink as though something might be staring back.
I don’t flip on the overhead. The island light is enough to cast both of us in half-shadow, blurring out the worst parts of our faces.
He glances up when I lock eyes with him, but doesn’t move.
The last time we were in this kitchen late at night, we were huddled over the counter eating Gloria’s banana bread and hoping it wasn’t poisoned.
The night before that, I stood in the garage watching the guys slap the hell out of him because he thought he deserved it.
The ache in my hand reminds me how close I came to joining in, how I almost let myself give in to the anger, the urge to make someone pay for what almost happened to her. But instead, I told him he wasn’t worth it.
That was over a week ago now. The cut on his face is healing. The others are starting to talk to and include him like he never tried to leave.
I tolerate him.
The kettle clicks off.
I fill my mug with steaming water, dunk the tea bag, and take a seat at the other end of the island.
For a while neither of us says anything.
My mind fizzes with all the things I want to say to him—real, savage things, not the gentle parsing I did for Sage.
All the versions of how-could-you, why-did-you, it-was-supposed-to-be-us at war in my throat.
But they don’t sound right, not even in my head.
Maybe because what I want is so complicated I couldn’t diagram it if my life depended on it.
Eli breaks first. “You smell like her.”
I don’t blink. “Suck my dick and I’ll taste like her too.”
The words come out before I can stop them—crude, defensive, designed to wound.
The look in his eyes goes dark, pupils inking out the lighter flecks around the center, and I realize he’s actually thinking about it.
The muscles in his jaw twitch like he’s working through the logistics of getting my mouth on his, or my mouth somewhere else, and for a second I’m not sure if he’s about to stand up and punch me or just climb over the countertop and ruin us both with his teeth.
It makes me mad. It also makes me hard, which makes me more mad. I curl my fingers around the mug and look at him across the space, the new truth hanging between us like a cut wire.
“That what you want?” he says, his voice empty of the scorn I expected, so gentle it almost tricks me into thinking I imagined the heat beneath it.
I laugh, but it comes out brittle and wrong. “No.” I set the mug down hard enough that tea sloshes over the rim. “Fuck off. You don’t get to do this.”
“Do what?”
“This.” I gesture between us. “The sad eyes. The two a.m. kitchen vigil. The thing where you sit in the dark looking wounded and wait for me to come fix it. I’m done, Eli. I’m done being the person who holds you together when you can’t be bothered to hold yourself.”
He doesn’t argue. Doesn’t defend. Just sits there with his hands around his untouched mug and takes it.
“I don’t want you to fix anything,” he says.
“Could’ve fooled me.”
He snorts. The sound is ugly and entirely without humor. “You really think that’s what I’m doing? Sitting here hoping you’ll pat me on the head or hold my fucking hand? Jesus, Micah.” He runs both hands through his hair and for a second looks so raw I almost reach for him, out of pure habit.
“Then what are you doing?”
He shrugs, but the movement is sharp. “Trying not to lose my shit while you’re upstairs fucking the only woman I’ve ever actually loved.”
And there it is. The thing I came down here to be furious about, and instead my body does the traitor thing it’s always done around him—heat pooling low, my pulse picking up, years of muscle memory waking the second he says something raw.
I hate it. I hate that I’m hard. I hate that some part of me has been waiting for this since the night he walked out.
I let out a hollow laugh. “Don’t bullshit yourself. You made it pretty clear she was just a side gig for you.”
His face goes cold. “That’s not true.”
“No?” I force a smile, though it feels like my mouth is breaking in half. “Because from where I’m standing, you set the whole thing on fire and then just left. You didn’t even look back.”
“You think I wanted to?”
“No, Eli. I think you never wanted any of this. You just wanted to know what it felt like to ruin something perfect.”
He looks at me like he wants to disagree, like there’s something in his throat he wants to cough up, but the words don’t make it out.
I watch his hands clench around the mug like he might shatter it. He’s shaking, just a little. I want so badly to keep being the person who cares, but right now all I want is to see him break in half the way he broke me.
Done.
I slide off the stool and head for the stairs, but before I clear the island Eli reaches out and catches my wrist. For a second, all my muscles tense, ready to pull away. But his hold isn’t hard—just enough to stop me, to make me turn and look at him again.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
I yank my wrist free, the touch burning like a brand. “No. You’re not getting off that easy. Sorry doesn’t cut it—not after you called me that night, pulled me away, and she almost died because of it. Because of you.”
“I’m sorry.” He stands, stepping closer, his eyes pleading, raw with regret.
“Stop.” My voice cracks, anger surging hot and bitter. “You think repeating it makes it true? You don’t get to apologize now, not when you broke her—broke us—like we were nothing. Like I was nothing to you.”
“I’m sorry.” His voice is softer, but he doesn’t back down, closing the distance until he’s right in front of me, his breath mingling with mine.
“No!” I shove him back, my chest heaving, fists clenched. “Fuck you, Eli. You don’t get to do this—act like you care after pushing everyone away. After making me choose between you and her safety. Sorry? That’s all you’ve got?”
“I’m sorry.” He reaches for me again, his hands framing my face, thumbs coming away wet.
“Stop saying that,” I choke out, and the sob that comes up out of me is raw and ugly and years old. The anger goes out all at once. What’s underneath is worse. “Stop.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, and then we’re kissing—desperate and filthy and overdue. He tastes like the salt off my own face. I shove him against the counter.
“You fucking wrecked me,” I growl against his lips, biting down. Hard. He hisses and I taste copper on my tongue.
Good.
I want him bleeding. I want him marked. I want him to hurt even a fraction of how much I do.
He grabs the back of my neck and yanks me closer, his mouth opening under mine, and it’s a fight more than a kiss—tongues and teeth and his fingers digging into my skull like he’s trying to hold on to something he already lost. I shove him backward into the island and the stool clatters to the floor. Neither of us flinches.
“Take your fucking shirt off,” I order.
He strips it over his head. In the dim stove light his chest is all shadow and ribs, thinner than I remember. He hasn’t been eating. The bruise from Holden’s fist in the garage has gone a sick purple-green across his lower ribs.
I put my hand flat over the bruise and press.
Eli sucks air through his teeth. He doesn’t pull back. His eyes find mine and hold—dark, steady, daring me.
“Does that hurt?”
“Yes.”