57. Sage
FIFTY-SEVEN
SAGE
“Tyler?” Amy’s voice comes from behind me. “What is— Why are you here? A-are you okay?”
He doesn’t look okay. His nose is flattened at the bridge, pushed slightly left and crooked enough to change the whole geography of his features.
A pale scar cuts across his right cheekbone.
Each injury is small, but together they rearrange the face I remember.
This version isn’t the polished frat boy I knew.
His eyes are bloodshot, his clothes rumpled like he hasn’t slept in days, and there’s a wildness in his stance that makes my skin crawl.
I’ve read Tyler’s posts inside The Kennel—step-by-step instructions for cutting a woman off from her friends and family, all of it drawn from what he’d been doing to Amy.
He knows exactly how to trap a woman.
“Surprise,” he sneers, stepping forward before I can slam the door.
“Tyler, you need to leave,” I say. My voice is way steadier than I expect. “Right now.”
“Or what?” He takes a step toward me. “You’ll call your boyfriends? The ones who grabbed me off the street? The ones who took me to some warehouse and did this?” He gestures at his face. “Don’t say it wasn’t them. They might have been wearing masks, but I’m not an idiot.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Bullshit.” Another step. He’s between me and Amy now, and I can see her behind him, her face white, her hands at her sides.
“Brock disappears. You move in with five guys. I get my face broken by men in skull masks asking about almost everyone I know. About you, Sage. About what happened at your apartment.” He stabs a finger toward me.
“Somehow, every fucking question comes back to you.”
“I . . . ” I shake my head and take a step back. “I think you need to leave.”
He laughs, and the sound is wrong—wet and slurred with drink. “You, Sage. Somehow, it’s always fucking you. Everything. Always. Always about YOU.”
I flinch at the boom in his voice. “You’re drunk.”
“I’m not drunk.”
He is. I can smell it—the sour, rancid heat of a man who’s been drinking all day.
His hands are clenching and unclenching at his sides.
Dangerous in the way wild animals are dangerous—no threat at all until you’re close enough to matter.
I could run, but he would chase. I could scream, but he would lunge first.
“Tyler.” Amy moves. Just a half-step, but it breaks the spell. “This isn’t okay. You need to go home.”
“Home.” He spits the word. “What’s the point? I’m alone. You left me. And she—” He points at me without looking away. “She ruined everything. My relationship. My face. My best friend is gone because of her and nobody will tell me what happened to him.”
“Brock left,” I say. “That’s all anyone knows.”
“Brock didn’t leave.” He’s close enough now that I can see the bend in his nose and the pale scar across his cheek. Up close, the beating he took is a roadmap of controlled violence. Evidence of what my boyfriends are capable of.
And it’s standing in my living room.
“He didn’t leave,” Tyler says again, and his voice cracks on the word leave.
“You all packed up his shit. Took his car. Made it look real neat, like he just decided to start over somewhere. But I knew Brock. I knew him better than any of you.” His hand jabs toward his own chest. “He would never have left that dog. You understand me? He loved that dog more than he loved any person on this planet. He would’ve slept in his truck before he left without her.
And you want me to believe he just—what—drove off into the sunset and didn’t take his dog? ”
Underneath the rage, I hear the grief. Raw, unprocessed, the kind that curdles into violence when it doesn’t have anywhere else to go.
“He was my best friend. Why won’t you tell me what happened to him?”
“Tyler—”
“TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED TO brOCK!”
The roar fills the apartment. Amy flinches. I don’t—I’ve been roared at by scarier men than Tyler. But my hand is on the door frame and the light switch is on the other side.
My phone is on the coffee table.
Holden is in the parking lot. And Tyler doesn’t look like Tyler anymore. Fuck.
“I’m going to ask you one more time to leave,” I say.
“I’m not going anywhere.” He’s vibrating now, winding himself up toward whatever comes after asking. “Not until someone tells me the truth. Not until someone looks me in the fucking eye and starts telling me why!”
“Get away from her!” Amy screams.
Tyler doesn’t turn around. His eyes are locked on mine and his hand comes up fast.
His fingers close around my throat.
“AMY—FLICK THE LIGHTS!”
It comes out of me before his hand clamps off the sound. I see Amy lunge for the switch by the kitchen. The overhead flickers, on, off, on, off—the signal we agreed on, the one that means something’s wrong, get up here now.
My back hits the wall. I get my hands between us and claw at his wrist, but his grip is an iron band, driving the pendant that’s supposed to protect me into my windpipe.
My vision bursts with static. He drives me backward, slamming my skull into drywall; the edge of a picture frame skims my cheek and drops to the floor with a shatter.
Amy is screaming. Tyler’s face is inches from mine, his teeth bared like an animal, spit flying with every venom-loaded word.
“Fucking tell me,” he seethes. “What did you do to him? What the fuck did you do?”
I try to knee him, go for the groin, but my balance is shot and he just laughs, spit in the back of his throat.
I hear Amy scrabbling behind us, something clattering to the floor.
Then all of a sudden Tyler’s eyes go wide and a wet, staccato sound splits the air.
He jerks backward, his hand falling away from my throat, and I gulp in a breath of air.
For a half-second he stands there, sway-legged and slack-jawed, like he doesn’t understand what’s happening. I don’t understand what’s happening.
But then his mouth opens in a foam of rage and confusion, and his gaze rolls, twisting to look at Amy, who’s standing behind him holding the biggest knife from our set—the one we only use when all the others are in the dishwasher.
She looks stunned. Haunted. Her hand is shaking so hard the point wavers.
She aims it at Tyler’s ribs anyway and shoves it in, lower this time.
This time he screams, high and sharp, and staggers toward me with murder in his eyes.
I get my foot up and kick, hard, right at the spot where the knife hilt is sticking out of his side.
He goes down to his knees and collapses on his side.
The knife shifts with the impact and he makes a sound—a gurgling, choking thing that comes from somewhere deeper than his throat.
His eyes find Amy’s face and stay there.
“Amy,” he manages.
She doesn’t answer. She’s too busy looking at her hands.
The front door explodes inward.
Holden fills the frame—gun drawn, eyes sweeping the room in one practiced arc. He takes in the scene. Tyler on the floor, the blood spreading across the carpet, Amy standing over him with empty hands and a face like cracked porcelain, me against the wall with red marks blooming on my throat.
“Jesus Christ,” he says. The gun lowers. His eyes find mine. “Wildcat. You hurt?”
I cough, dragging air back into my lungs. My throat is on fire and my voice comes out shredded. “I’m fine. But Jamie’s on his way here.”
“Fuck.” Holden holsters his gun, his eyes cutting between me, Amy, and the body on the floor. “He can’t see this.”
He crouches beside Tyler, two fingers on his neck. His face doesn’t change, but the way he pulls his hand back tells me everything.
“He’s gone.” He grabs my phone, then catches my chin and angles my face toward the light. His eyes track over my pupils and the red marks crossing the damaged skin on my throat. “Did you black out?”
“No.”
“Okay.” He presses the phone into my hand. “Now call Jamie. Keep him out.”
My hands are shaking but they work. Everything works. I’m bruised and my throat is raw and there’s a dead man on my carpet, but I’m upright and breathing and none of my systems shut down, and right now that feels like the biggest victory of my life.
I dial Jamie. He picks up on the second ring.
“I’m right out front!” he says. “I brought rosé and a rotisserie chicken because I’m an overachiever. Also I found a vintage copy of—”
“Jamie. Don’t come up.”
Silence. “What?”
“We had a—” I glance around, hunting for an excuse. My eyes lock on the spray tent. “Amy had too much wine and she’s—there’s been a spray tan incident.”
“A spray tan incident?”
“The spray tan booth exploded. There’s tanner everywhere. The walls. The ceiling. Amy. She looks like a sweet potato and she’s crying about it. It’s bad.”
Behind me, Holden is pulling the blanket off the couch and covering Tyler’s body. Amy is on the floor now. I didn’t see her go down. She’s staring at a point somewhere past the coffee table.
“I’m sorry—the booth exploded?” Jamie sounds like he’s trying not to laugh. “How does a spray tan booth explode?”
“I don’t know, Jamie. It’s rented equipment from a woman named Darlene on Facebook Marketplace. Does that sound like quality engineering to you?”
“Fair point. But I brought chicken. An entire chicken. I can’t eat a whole chicken by myself, Sage. I mean, I could, but it would be a dark moment.”
“Take it home. Eat it in bed. Watch something trashy. We’ll reschedule. I promise.”
“Is Amy okay? Should I come in and—”
“No!” Too fast. Too sharp. I force my voice down. “She’s embarrassed. She doesn’t want anyone to see her. You know how she gets. Just—give us tonight. I’ll send pictures of the damage tomorrow.”
“Pictures of Amy looking like a sweet potato?”
“Of the apartment. There’s tanner on the ceiling, Jamie.”
“God. Okay. Fine. But tell Amy I love her and that bronze is her color regardless of the application method.” A pause. “You sure you’re okay? You sound weird.”
“I’m fine. Too much wine. The fumes from the booth. It’s a whole thing.”
“Okay. Love you. Tell Amy I’m saving her a drumstick.”
“Love you too. Goodnight, Jamie.”
I hang up. Stand in our living room holding my phone, looking at the blanket-covered shape on the carpet, the blood soaking through the fabric, the Cosmic Brownie wrapper stuck to the edge of the spreading stain. Amy on the floor. Holden already on his phone, making the necessary calls.
I slide down the wall and sit beside Amy.
My legs don’t want to hold me, not right now.
I wrap my arms around her shoulders and try to fold her in, but she’s rigid, staring at her fists, knuckles white as bone.
She’s stone in my embrace, eyes glassy, mascara running in tracks down her cheeks, fake eyelashes hanging loose.
I don’t bother with words. What words could you possibly offer a woman who just stabbed her ex-boyfriend to death in her own home, minutes after joking about spray tans and Cosmic Brownies?
She starts shaking. A tiny vibration at first. Then bigger. It’s like every nerve has remembered what it’s for and decided its sole function is to riot. I pull her to my chest and rock her, the way people rock children, slow and idiotically hopeful.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispers. “I’m so sorry.” She keeps saying it, over and over, like this is the only plank in the ocean and she’s grabbing hold with both hands. I don’t let her go.
Holden gives us a worried look, his phone pressed to his ear. He’s talking to someone—quiet, rapid, urgent. Then he covers the mouthpiece.
“You should take her out of here,” he says, nodding toward the bedrooms, so I do.
I help Amy to her feet, and as gently as I can, I guide her past the blood and the blanket and the part of the room that’s already stopped being real.
The door to her bedroom closes on us, but she’s still shivering, her hands knotted together like she’s holding someone else’s pain.
I wrap her in two comforters and pull her to the bed, just the two of us, Amy shuddering uncontrollably and me still not sure if my lungs are going to work all the way through the night.
I keep her tucked against my body, spooned up tight and rocking back and forth.
Amy keeps saying she’s sorry. Sometimes in a whisper, sometimes in a full-bodied sob, then back to whispers.
She tucks her face against my neck, sobbing so hard I feel every piece of her rip into my bones.
“I’m here,” I keep saying, into her hair, to her forehead, her temple, to both of us at once.
“You didn’t do anything wrong. You saved me, Amy.
You saved us.” She doesn’t believe me, but that’s okay.
I just keep saying it until her sobs lose their edges and finally taper down to hiccups and silent shakes.
I hold her through all of it. Every tremor, every apology, every ragged breath. I hold her the way Micah holds me—not trying to fix it, just making sure there’s something solid on the other side of the fall.
But the thing I don’t say, the thing lodged in my chest, is that I’m sorry too.
Amy didn’t choose this. She’s a teacher. She supervises bus lines and grades spelling tests and keeps a chore chart on the fridge with gold stars. She brings Dunkaroos to pajama parties because she wants her friend to remember what it felt like to be eleven and safe.
Now there’s a dead man in our living room and she knows what it feels like to push a knife between someone’s ribs.
Tyler put his hand around my throat. Amy stopped him. I know whose fault this is.
She still should never have needed to.
I brought the Hangmen into my life and told myself the people I loved would be safe as long as they didn’t know. But not knowing didn’t protect Amy. It only left her unprepared when my world reached hers.
She’s quiet now. Not asleep—I can tell by the way her fingers still grip the comforter—but quiet. The shaking has stopped. Her breathing has found a rhythm, and I match mine to it, the way Micah taught me without ever saying the words.
Through the closed door, I hear Holden. The low murmur of a man who knows exactly what to do with a body and a crime scene and the kind of mess that would destroy a normal person’s life.
I chose this life—the kills, the masks, the knife—with my eyes open. I don’t regret it.
Amy never got that choice.
The front door opens. Closes. Voices, low, urgent, familiar. The sound of boots and bags and men who move through disaster the way other people move through rooms.
My family is here.
“We’re gonna fix this.” I press my lips to Amy’s hair. “We’re gonna make it all go away. You’ll see.”