34. Sage
THIRTY-FOUR
SAGE
Istiffen. “You bugged me?”
“Yes.”
I let out a sigh. Of course they fucking did.
I rack my brains to work out where it would be. “It’s in the choker, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” he whispers. “Don’t ever take it off, okay?”
I trace the cameo with my fingertip.
I should be furious. Ten minutes ago I would have been. But something about the way he said don’t ever take it off disarms me. He’s not defending it. He’s not spinning it as reasonable or necessary. He’s just sitting in the ugly truth of what they did and asking me to let them keep doing it.
“I’m not okay with it,” I say. “For the record.”
“I know.”
“We’re having a conversation about this. All of us. And Milo is going to explain exactly what that tracker does and what data it collects and who has access. I’m going to decide whether it stays or goes. Not any of you. Me.”
“Fair.”
“If I find out there’s one in the knife handle too, I’m using it on all of you.”
The ghost of a smile crosses his face. Gone before it lands. His hand is still in my hair, slow strokes that feel less like a man comforting a woman and more like a man making sure she’s real.
“I had to cut you down, Sage,” he says.
My breath catches. We don’t talk about that night. Not directly. It’s the before and after. Everything that came before the noose, and everything since.
“I heard you choking,” he continues. His voice is low, stripped back, like he’s pulling the words out of somewhere deep and they’re leaving marks on the way up.
“Through the bushes. And I found you and you were—your lips were blue, Sage. You weren’t breathing.
I cut the rope and you dropped into my arms and I put my mouth on yours and I breathed for you.
I screamed for Micah and said your name over and over because I didn’t know what else to do.
And the whole time, all I could think was—this is what I get.
This is what happens when I find something worth living for, and become the thing that destroys it. ”
I don’t know what to say. His voice is breaking and his chest is shaking and he’s clinging to me like if he lets go I’ll vanish. I wrap my arms around him, tighter, hating myself a little for not seeing that this is what he’s been holding behind the walls for weeks.
“You didn’t destroy me,” I whisper.
“Didn’t I?”
I shift so I can see his face. It’s raw and red-eyed and almost beautiful in its honesty.
“Eli.”
“I rode in the ambulance holding your hand. Sat in that hospital for days, just watching you breathe. And I swore that if you woke up, I would never—” His voice fractures. “I’d never be that coward again. I’d find a way to deserve you, even if it took me the rest of my life.”
“Eli—”
His thumb traces my cheekbone. “I watched you today. At the mall. Getting your nails done, throwing fries at Jamie, laughing so hard you bent double. And I kept waiting for it to look like a performance. Like the version of you that kills, and the version that waits tables, and the one who loves five men couldn’t all be the same person standing there.
” He shakes his head, slow. “But they are. You don’t keep yourself in pieces, Sage.
You never have. You just hold all of it at once like it’s the most natural thing in the world. ”
“It’s not natural,” I whisper. “It’s exhausting. I’m terrified half the time.”
“But you do it anyway. You hold all of it and you don’t break.” His hand stills on my face. “I’ve spent my whole life convinced there wasn’t enough of me to do that. That if any of it touched, it’d all come down.” A breath. “I want to learn how you do it. I don’t know if I can. But I want to try.”
I cover his hand with mine. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted you to do. Try.”
“I’ve been so scared,” he says, and his voice drops on the last word like he’s never said it out loud before.
“Not of the threat. Or Stephen. Or whoever’s out there.
I’m scared of this. Of loving you this much and not being able to control the size of it.
I don’t know how to be that person, Sage.
The one who lets things happen—lets go.”
“You just did. Five minutes ago. Inside me.”
He exhales and it’s almost a laugh. “That’s different.”
“It’s not, though. It’s the same thing. You letting go.
Trusting that I can take it. That I’ll use the safe word if it gets too much.
” I press my palm flat against his chest, over his heart.
It’s still racing. “You don’t have to be the container for everyone else’s shit, Eli. You’re allowed to put stuff down.”
He’s quiet for a long time. Long enough that I start to wonder if he’s retreated back behind the walls. But when I look up, his eyes are open, fixed on the ceiling, and there’s something different in his face. Not softer, exactly. Just lighter.
Eli tips his head forward, brow furrowed, mouth a line. “Do you still want to kill again?” he asks, so quietly it’s almost a thought.
“Does it make you hate me?” I ask instead.
He shakes his head—the denial is so fast it leaves no room for doubt.
“I want it,” I say. “Not all the time. Not like . . .” I move my hand on his chest, trying to find the right words.
“It’s not that I’m looking for excuses to hurt people.
I just—after Brock, after the noose, I can’t imagine a world where stopping someone like him isn’t a kindness. For everyone else. For me, too.”
He doesn’t say anything. But his fingers spread along my waist, anchoring me to him in a way that makes it impossible to look away or pretend it’s not true.
“I was raped before,” I say. “Before Brock. Before I moved here.”
Eli’s breath goes quiet.
“My uncle. By marriage, not blood—not that it makes it any better.” I trace a line down Eli’s chest, focusing on the movement of my finger so I don’t have to look at his face.
“He started when I was fifteen. My mom was gone a lot—nursing shifts, doubles, then triples when the bills piled too high. He’d show up to check on me so she didn’t have to worry.
Uncle Rick, being a hero.” The name tastes like rust. “He’d sit too close on the couch.
Run his hands through my hair. Tell me I was pretty.
Then one night it wasn’t the couch, and there was a hand over my mouth and his voice at my ear telling me not to scream—the TV still going in the other room, some late-night rerun with a laugh track.
It escalated so slow I didn’t even know it was happening until it already had. ”
Eli’s hand tightens on my hip.
“And when I told my mom—when I finally found the words—she didn’t believe me.”
Silence. His chest rises and falls under my cheek, but the rhythm has changed. Faster.
“She said he was just being nice. That I always had to turn everything into drama. That if I wanted boys to leave me alone, I should stop wearing tank tops at the dinner table.” I close my eyes.
“That was it. One conversation. The whole thing—months of it, the fear and the shame and the courage it took to say the words out loud—dismissed in thirty seconds over microwaved lasagna.”
I press my face into him. He’s shaking.
“I stopped telling her things after that. Stopped telling anyone anything.” My voice has gone flat in that way it does when I’m talking about the parts of myself I’ve buried deepest. “Because what’s the point when the person who’s supposed to keep you safe would rather keep her life tidy?”
Eli’s arm tightens around me. Like his body is trying to protect me from the memories.
“The second I could, I left. Waited out the last six months of high school in my best friend’s basement.
Got into a college two thousand miles away.
” I pause. “But even that didn’t last. I went to one party.
Got a little too drunk and . . . ” I let out a shuddering breath.
“I got really hurt that time. The cops who took my statement swore they’d find him.
But how? I didn’t even know who he was.” My voice trails off and I swallow it all down.
“That’s the one in the file Holden pulled. The one you all know about.”
Eli’s hand stops moving on my back. Just stops, mid-stroke, like his body forgot the instruction.
I swipe the tears from my face. “Anyway, I dropped out not long after. I never went back home. I never saw my mom again.” My voice breaks, but I force it out.
“I changed my last name officially, and got as far away as I could. I thought . . . if I started over, built something new, it wouldn’t be there anymore.
I wouldn’t have to be the person I used to be.
That I could leave it all behind, like a bad dream.
The sick part is, it worked for a while.
” I snort, a rough, ugly thing. “Until it didn’t. ”
He doesn’t interrupt. Doesn’t try to fill the silence or fix it or tell me he’s sorry. He holds me, and in the quiet, I can finally say the rest.
“So, yeah. I want to kill again, Eli. I want to kill them all. All the time.”
He pulls me closer. Buries his face in my neck. I feel him inhale—deep, jagged, like he’s trying to breathe the pain out of me so I don’t have to carry it anymore.
I don’t know if I want him to. I don’t know if I’d recognize myself without it.
“You shouldn’t have had to survive that alone,” he says against my skin.
“It’s done now.”
“It’s not.” He means it. I feel the coiled rage inside him, the violence that’s always waiting for some direction.
“I won’t try to stop you,” he says, pulling away far enough that I see his face—open and raw and so beautiful. “When this is over, when you’re safe again, I’ll fucking help you. I’ll make sure it’s done right. Not just for you but for every fucking girl who had to live what you lived.”
“That’s the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me,” I tell him. “Which probably says something about me.”
“It says something about me too.”
I should peel away, get up and pace, shake this off before I start to cry, but I don’t move. I let myself be gathered in for a few seconds more. Let him thread his fingers in my hair, draw circles on my back, put his mouth at my temple and stay very, very quiet.
“I love you, Eli,” I whisper.
“I love you too,” he says. “With everything I am, little savage. I’m yours.”