21. Sage #2
“Okay.” I put both hands on the bar. “Since everyone’s here. I think it’s a good time to let you know that I want in.”
Micah blinks. “In?”
“The Hangmen. The operations. Whatever you call what you do. I want to be a part of it. Officially. Starting today.”
Silence meets my pronouncement. They exchange glances in that infuriating silent language they’ve built over years of hanging people together.
“She’s been making this case since we left home,” Holden says, taking up a position against the end of the bar with his arms folded. He looks pointedly at Milo. “Among other things.”
“I was multitasking.” Milo hops onto a stool and spins once. “Advocating for her rights and giving her an orgasm. I’m an efficient man.”
Knox’s eyebrow lifts a fraction. Micah looks between us, reads the situation in about two seconds, and has the decency not to comment. Eli stares very hard at his pastry.
“Can we focus?” I say. “I want to be part of the operations. Real ops. Not sitting at home twiddling my thumbs waiting for you to get back and pat me on the head like I’m a good little girl.”
“Nobody pats you on the head.”
“Metaphorically, Micah. You metaphorically pat me on the head and then go hang people without me. Even Knox had to miss out last time.”
“I didn’t mind,” he rumbles. The look he gives me is hot as fuck.
Down, boy.
“That’s not the point.”
Micah leans on the bar, both arms flat, giving me the steady, open look that means he’s taking me seriously even if he’s about to disappoint me.
“You know I respect what you did on the beach to Brock. We all do. But there’s a difference between what happened with Brock—which was in the heat of the moment—versus a planned operation. ”
“Sure, what I did was instinct. But imagine what I could do with a plan.”
“Kitten’s planning ability is elite,” Milo says, folding a napkin on the bar top.
“Milo, your judgment is compromised,” Holden says flatly. “You just came inside her ten minutes ago.”
“My judgment is enhanced. Post-nut clarity is a documented phenomenon. I’m operating at peak rationality right now.”
“Jesus Christ,” Eli mutters into his mug.
“Look.” I spread my arms wide, making myself as big as possible.
“I’m not asking to lead a mission. I’m asking to be in the room.
To know what’s happening. To have a say in the plan, especially if the plan involves me in any way.
And yes, maybe I want to help hang the next asshole who needs to be killed.
I’m going crazy sitting around waiting for someone to try and kill me again.
I want to feel useful, and I don’t think that’s unreasonable. ”
Knox shifts against the wall.
“It’s not about what you can do,” Eli says quietly.
It’s the first thing he’s said directly to me in days, and his voice is careful, low, like he’s bracing for impact.
“Then what’s it about?” I ask.
He meets my eyes.
“It’s about what happens to the rest of us if something happens to you.”
I want to tell him he doesn’t get to use my safety as a leash when he’s the reason it was threatened in the first place.
But the thing is—and I hate this—he’s not saying it to control me.
He’s saying it because it’s true, and because it’s the one argument I can’t dismantle with logic or stubbornness or grinding on Milo in the back seat.
“That’s not fair,” I protest.
“No, it’s not.”
The quiet stretches, and I let them all think they’ve won, let the relief start settling into their shoulders, and then I open my mouth again because I’m not done.
“You know what else isn’t fair?” I say. “Every time something needs deciding, I get sent to the bar. Stuck out here with a babysitter while the five of you go behind that door and figure out my life without me in the room. The cover story you built for Brock—the one you built for me while I was in a coma. You decide where I sleep, who watches me, what I’m allowed to know—all of it decided on the other side of a door I’m not allowed through.
” I plant my hands on the bar. “You want to talk about what happens to you if something happens to me? Then let me in the room where you talk about it. Because right now the only thing I’m trusted to do is sit on a stool and wait to be told what you decided. ”
Nobody speaks.
“I’m not some civilian you’re protecting from the scary truth.
I’m in this. I’ve been in this since the beach.
I’m in your beds, in your lives, in love with every single one of you, and that means I worry about you the same way you worry about me.
The only difference is you get to do something about it and I get to sit on a barstool. ”
Eli’s jaw tightens. Micah’s thumb has gone still on the bar top.
“You’re describing a crew,” Holden says. “We’re not a crew, we’re five men and a body count, and every person who’s ever been in that room has—”
“Has what? Chosen it?” I talk straight over the end of his sentence. “So am I.”
“Here’s the thing none of you want to hear.
” I look at each of them in turn. “We’re stronger together.
All of us. Not me tucked away somewhere safe while you go off and risk your lives, but together.
Watching each other’s backs because that is what we do.
You protect Micah. Micah protects Holden.
Holden protects Milo. Knox protects everyone.
It’s a chain. And right now I’m the missing link in that chain because you won’t let me be part of it. ”
“Sage—” Holden starts.
“I’m not finished.” I hold up a hand. “You’re all connected.
Everything you do affects everyone else.
When Eli left, it didn’t just hurt me—it destabilized the whole group.
When I got attacked, it wasn’t just my trauma—it was all of ours.
We’re interconnected. Every single one of us.
So this idea that you can separate me out, put me in a box marked ‘protect,’ and carry on like I’m not part of the organism?
It doesn’t work. It’s never worked. And deep down, you all know that. ”
The silence this time is different.
Milo is the first to crack. “She’s right. She’s annoyingly, devastatingly, inconveniently right.”
“Milo—”
“No, Holden. She is. We operate as a unit. That’s the whole point. That’s what makes us good. She’s part of the unit now. Keeping her out doesn’t make her safer. It just means we’re operating with a blind spot.”
Micah nods. “We all know she can handle a knife.”
“She killed a man and didn’t hesitate,” Knox adds.
Everyone looks at Eli.
He’s staring at his mug. The muscle in his jaw is working. I can see him fighting it—the instinct to shield, to control, to be the one who carries the heaviest thing so no one else has to.
He looks up. “You’re right. Keeping you out hasn’t kept you safe. It kept you alone.”
My throat tightens at his words. I grip the edge of the bar.
Holden pushes off the wall. His arms unfold. He looks at me for a long time.
“I’ve gotta be honest with you, wildcat,” he says. “This isn’t our decision to make.”
I bite the inside of my cheek. “But you can put in a good word for me, right?”
“We can. But you’re not getting a yes today. Not while there’s an active threat.”
“Holden—”
“But when this is over.” He doesn’t blink. “You’re in. All the way in. We’ll all fight for it if we have to. I swear it to you. I’ll even stand there and hand you the knife.”
“Okay,” I say, smiling as the tension drains from my shoulders.
“Don’t celebrate yet,” Milo says, half-smirk. “We still have to survive the meeting with Odin. And if you badger him like you did Holden, there’s a real chance he’ll have you killed.”
Holden chuckles. “If she uses the same tactics as she did in the car, he’ll more likely send her to Lilith and get her on stage.”
“You know, I probably wouldn’t hate that,” I say, laughing as Holden rolls his eyes dramatically.
Micah reaches across the bar and takes my hand. “You okay?”
“Yeah. I’m fine.”
“We know what you are, baby girl. That’s why we’re saying not yet instead of no.”
I look down at his hand on mine. His thumb traces a slow circle on my knuckle.
“I know,” I say.
Knox straightens off the wall. “Meeting room. Odin’s waiting.” He looks at me. “Let us speak to Odin. Get his okay. It’s his gig, after all. Are you okay to wait—”
“At the bar?” I nod with a wry smile. “Yeah. That’ll be fine.” I waggle a finger at all of them. “But I expect each of you to make the argument that this should be the last time.”
The men start moving. Milo sliding off his stool with a wink, Micah coming around the bar and pressing a kiss to my temple as he passes, Eli standing and walking past me without looking, though his hand brushes the back of mine in a way that could be accidental but I’m betting isn’t.
Holden leads the way toward the door behind the stage.
Knox is the last to move. He waits until the others have entered the meeting room then stops beside me.
“I’m sorry, Fury.”
I fold my arms. “It’s fine. Whatever.”
He reaches into his pocket and pulls something out. He holds it between us, handle first.
It’s a knife.
The knife—the one from the beach, the one I pulled from his boot when the world went red and my hands stopped waiting for someone else to save me.
“It’s yours,” Knox says. “Has been since that night.”
I take it. It fits my hand like a missing finger. The memory of how it felt sinking into flesh, the resistance and then the give, the sound Brock made and the way Eli’s jacket smelled when he wrapped me in it after—all of that lives in this handle.
“You’re giving it to me?”
“Keep it on you,” he says. “All the time.”
I look up at him. Six foot seven of quiet, steady, unbreakable man.
“In case I get strung up again?” I joke, but it falls flat.
Knox’s answer is to lean down and kiss the side of my head before walking past me through the door.
I stand at the bar alone. The knife warm in my hand. The club silent around me.
I tuck it into my waistband, pull my shirt down over it, and sit on the stool to wait.