24. Milo
TWENTY-FOUR
MILO
Istart laughing before I’m even out of the car.
“Oh, no,” Holden says, delighted, moving to stand next to where Eli is looking through the window. “You sure about this?”
Eli’s jaw sets. “If it’s a step toward earning her back, yes.”
“You’re not worried what she’ll choose?”
“She can tattoo a dick and balls on me if that’s what it takes.”
Inside, the place smells like antiseptic and green soap. Flash art covers the walls. A woman in her twenties with a shaved undercut and a sleeve of botanical tattoos comes out from the back, takes one look at the five of us crowding her doorway, and raises an eyebrow.
“Appointment?”
“Nope,” Sage says, swaying.
The artist—RAVEN, says the tag on her chest—looks Sage up and down. “We don’t tattoo drunk people.”
“It’s not for me.” Sage jerks a thumb at Eli. “Him. But I’m designing it. He doesn’t get to see it till it’s done.”
Raven looks at Eli. “Is this a punishment?”
“It’s a trust exercise.”
“Same thing.” Raven shrugs. “You sober, big guy? Consenting?”
Eli nods.
“Then it’s your skin.” She waves us toward the back. “Come on.”
Sage pulls Raven aside to the counter, and they bend over a sheet of paper together, Sage sketching and whispering, Raven nodding, snorting once. Eli waits across the room with the face of a man who’s made peace with the firing squad.
“You’re gonna be fine,” I tell him.
“She’s drunk.”
“She’s inspired. Big difference.”
He exhales through his nose.
“That’s it!” Sage stage-whispers, jabbing the paper. “That one.”
Raven nods. “Cute. Let’s go.”
Eli peels his shirt off, and Sage’s whole face changes when she sees his bare back—the playfulness still there, but there’s warmth and hunger underneath it. She trails one finger down his spine and he goes rigid.
“Here,” she tells Raven, flattening her palm between his shoulder blades. “About this big.”
“Easy.” Raven preps the area and sets the stencil. Then she gets to work.
Eli lies facedown on the table. Sage settles on the stool by his head, her hand resting on his nape. Holden leans on the wall. Knox fills the doorway. I hop up on the counter by the sink and crane to see the stencil.
A cage. A birdcage, the bars broken open on one side, bent outward like something has forced its way through. And rising up out of the wreckage—
I bite the inside of my cheek.
“That’s . . . interesting.”
“Milo,” Eli says, not lifting his head. “What does that even mean?”
The needle starts. Raven lays the first lines—the broken cage, the buckled bars, and then the shape climbing out of it, low and hunched and clawed.
“It means . . . ” I press my lips together and tilt my head, searching for the right words.
“Means what?”
It’s a monster. She’s tattooing a monster crawling out of a broken cage onto his back, and for one glorious second the read is exactly as horrifying as Eli’s bracing for—drunk Sage branding the man who called himself a monster with a monster, his own ugliest word about himself made permanent.
“Is it bad?” Eli asks. “Tell me it’s not a dick.”
“I thought you said you were fine with a dick,” Holden says.
“I am. I just want to know what it isn’t.”
“It isn’t a dick,” I say.
“The tone you’re using is not reassuring.”
“It’s a beautiful expression of trust and personal growth,” I say, which it absolutely is, because the monster is escaping its cage. And the artwork is freaking cool. But the way I say it makes Holden put both hands over his face.
Eli just groans.
Raven keeps going. Above the cage, above the thing dragging itself free—six small birds. Wings open. Scattering upward and out, each one a little farther from the wreck than the last, like the cage broke and what came out wasn’t just the monster. The whole flock got free.
“I like it,” Micah says, reaching out and taking Eli’s hand. “Raven’s doing a great job.”
Knox shifts a little closer and inspects the line work. From the way his eyes move across it, I know he’s counting. Six birds. Six of us. His mouth twitches. He nods once. Then steps back.
The needle works. Nobody says anything for a while, which for me is a medical event.
When Raven finally wipes it down and waves Eli to the mirror, Sage is vibrating on her stool.
“Hope you like it,” she says, and there’s a wobble under the bravado.
Eli twists, looking at his own back in the glass.
A broken cage. A monster climbing out. And six birds going free above it.
He stares for a long time.
“You gave me a monster,” he says. Quiet.
“I gave you a monster breaking free,” Sage says.
She’s not swaying now. The drink’s still in her, but her eyes are clear on his in the mirror.
“You keep it locked up. You think if you let it out, it ruins everything, so you cage it, and you cage you, and you call that protecting us.” She nods at his reflection.
“But that’s not what happened. You let it out and the cage broke and”—she points at the birds—“we all got loose. All of us. Even you.”
The studio is dead quiet.
“I didn’t choose this as punishment,” she says, softer. “I chose it because I’m tired of hearing you talk about yourself like you’re something that has to be contained.”
Eli doesn’t move.
Neither do I.
There are moments when a room changes shape around what’s been said. This is one of those. Everyone stays still. Even Raven.
Sage wets her lips.
“I know what monsters look like,” she says.
Her voice is still a little blurred by alcohol, but only at the edges.
The center of it is razor sharp. “I’ve met them.
Escaped them. You are not that. You’re just .
. . ” She exhales, frustrated by the size of what she means.
“You’re a man who built himself a cage and then forgot the door could open. ”
Jesus Christ.
I am going to need to be sedated.
Eli’s throat works once.
“I can’t—” he starts, and stops. Tries again. “I don’t know what to do with that.”
“You don’t have to do anything.” Sage moves closer to him, not swaying anymore, and lightly touches the skin next to his fresh tattoo. “This is step one. Don’t screw up step two.”
“What’s step two?”
“Haven’t decided. Probably more needles.”
He huffs something that’s half a laugh and half not, and Sage smiles, and the worst comedian in the room—me—says absolutely nothing, because some things you don’t put a punchline on.
Raven puts a layer of Second Skin over the tattoo and charges him two hundred bucks. Eli tips her three hundred on top.
We pour out into the evening, Sage tilting to port, Eli’s arm coming up to steady her without thinking. She lets him. For three whole seconds, she lets him—and then she peels off and links back through my arm instead.
Eli hangs back and rides shotgun with Micah.
Knox drives my car again. Holden’s up front. I’m in the back, and Sage isn’t beside me.
She’s in my lap.
Climbed straight in, swung her legs across the seat, parked herself against my thighs, looped her arms around my neck like it’s the most natural thing in the world. This is my favorite way to go anywhere with her.
“I had fun today,” she says, her face an inch from mine, breath warm and beer-sweet.
“Yeah?”
“You’re fun.” Her finger traces the shell of my ear, down my jaw, along my throat. “You’re always fun, Milo. You’re the most fun person I’ve ever met. Did you know that?”
“I’ll have it added to my headstone.”
“Don’t encourage him,” Holden mutters. “He’ll actually do it.”
“Shush.” And she kisses me.
It starts soft—her mouth on mine, tasting, testing—and then her fingers curl in my hair and she makes a small, breathy sound and shifts until she’s straddling me, every part of her against every part of me, and my brain quietly evacuates the building.
“Kitten,” I manage. “Moving vehicle.”
“Knox is driving.”
“I’m aware Knox is driving. That’s the part that worries me.”
“Knox won’t crash.” She bites my lower lip and my higher functions go offline. “He’s very reliable.”
“I’m not worried about Knox. I’m worried about whether I can keep it together while you—”
She grinds down, slow, and I lose the sentence entirely.
From the front, Knox tilts the rearview mirror. Giving us privacy or improving his angle—genuinely impossible to say.
Holden glances back. “Seriously. Again?”
“Eyes forward, detective,” Sage says against my mouth, and I feel her grin.
She kisses me until I can’t remember what a bowl is. Until my hands are under her shirt and hers are in my hair and I’m making sounds I will deny under oath. Then she pulls back, climbs off—I make a noise of protest I’ll take to my grave—and slides across the seat to Knox.
The car’s stopped at a light. She leans between the seats, takes Knox’s jaw in her hand, turns his face to hers.
“Hi.”
“Fury.” Warning and welcome in one word.
She kisses him. He keeps one hand on the wheel and threads the other into her hair and kisses her slow. Thorough. She melts into it, fists his shirt, and the sound she makes has Holden staring very hard out the window.
The light goes green. Somebody behind us leans on the horn. Knox pulls back, returns both hands to the wheel, and drives.
Sage sits back, flushed and breathing hard and lip-bitten, and looks from me to Knox to Holden, who is studying the windshield like it’s about to be on a test.
“Your turn later,” she tells him.
“Christ,” Holden says. His ears go red.
We pull into the driveway and Micah pulls in seconds behind us.
Sage climbs out first, takes Knox’s hand and Holden’s arm, and heads for the door. She looks back at me over her shoulder.
“Coming?”
In every conceivable sense, kitten.
She pauses on the step. Looks past us to Eli, easing himself out of Micah’s car like a man carrying something fragile, which he is, in more ways than one.
“Eli.”
He stops.
“Thank you.”
He nods. “Whatever you need.”
She hesitates, weighing something heavy behind her eyes. “I don’t want to sleep with you. Not yet.”
He nods again. He expected that.
“But you can watch. If you want.”
His breath goes out of him. “Yeah,” he says, rough. “I want.”
Our girl grins, turns, and walks into the house, and like rats after the Pied Piper, we follow her toward what I am sincerely hoping is a glorious and filthy death.