73. Sage
SEVENTY-THREE
SAGE
Five weeks after the Kennel goes dark, I let myself through the side entrance of the funeral home and climb the narrow stairs to Dean’s apartment.
I’m not expecting to find Amy painting his toenails, but there she is—cross-legged on the couch with Dean’s enormous bare foot in her lap, a bottle of Electric Coral balanced on her knee, her tongue poking out in concentration as she works the brush along his big toe.
Dean is reading. A paperback, spine cracked, held in one hand while his other arm stretches along the back of the couch behind Amy’s head.
Not touching her. Just there. Available.
He’s in sweats and a faded T-shirt and he looks relaxed—which, given that his day job involves preparing corpses and his side job involves incinerating people my boyfriends have murdered, is another thing I didn’t expect.
“Hey,” I say from the doorway.
Amy looks up and grins. My eyes sting before I can stop them. The last time I saw her smile was the night of the pajama party. Since then she’s sported the cracked-porcelain version that never reaches her eyes.
She pops the cap closed, careful not to smudge the wet polish, and says, “You’re early.”
“I brought donuts,” I say, holding up the box. “Please tell me you still eat carbs.”
Amy snorts. “Carbs are my emotional support animal, babe. Put them on the table.”
Dean glances up from his book with a slow smile that’s all gentle crow’s feet and faintly amused domesticity. “Hey, Sage.”
“Dean.”
I set the donuts on the table as Amy jumps up and starts for the kitchen. But then she pauses and wraps her arms around me in a hug that’s all ribs and apology, and I feel her chest hitch once before she lets go.
“Sorry,” she says, blinking fast. “My emotions are on a trampoline lately.”
I hug her back, hard. “I get it. It takes time.”
“Speaking from experience?” she asks as she pulls away and dabs at her eyes, and I shrug.
“A little.”
Dean closes his book and stands, stretching.
“I’m going to head downstairs for a bit.
Check on some things.” He says it casually, but the look he gives me over Amy’s head is deliberate—she needs her friend, take your time.
Then he squeezes Amy’s shoulder as he passes, balancing on his heels as he disappears down the stairs, his footsteps fading into the hum of the building below.
Amy watches him go. Something soft crosses her face before she catches it and rearranges.
“He’s good to you,” I say.
“He’s good to everyone. I think it’s pathological.” She grabs a donut—chocolate glazed, her default—and takes a bite. “Okay. So. I know you didn’t just come here to bring me donuts.”
“I did come here to bring you donuts.”
“You came here to check on me. You and your guys are regularly checking on me—which I love. But you also keep coming here because you’re all worried I’m going to crack and start telling everyone what happened—what I saw.
” She delivers the sentence the way people say the name of a disease they’ve been diagnosed with—direct, unflinching, like saying it sideways would give it more power than it deserves.
She’s not wrong. I take a donut for myself, and for a second, the room is only the sound of both of us chewing, the frosting on our lips, the faint solvent tang of fresh polish.
“I don’t think you’ll crack,” I say when I finish my mouthful.
“If you were going to, you probably would have by now. But you’re still processing—learning to live with what you know now.
And that’s . . . ” I search for the right word, then settle on, “normal. Everything about this is unmanageable. You’re allowed to feel weird about it. ”
She rolls her eyes, but not at me—at the universe.
“Yeah, well, I had a plan. I was going to work through my trauma with a balanced schedule of overpriced therapy, Pilates, and venting to you over drinks. But then you decided to move in with the cast of Deadliest Catch: Homicide Edition, and now I’m not even sure what counts as normal. ”
“That’s my brand,” I say, only a little bitter. “I fuck up the local averages.”
We end up in the kitchen, Amy perched on the counter, donut in one hand and coffee in the other, and before I can overthink it I say, “I’m sorry.”
Amy frowns around a bite of donut. “For what?”
“For moving out when I did. For making it weird. For just . . . disappearing into House Boyfriend.”
Her face softens immediately. “Sage, no. Don’t do that.” She sets the donut aside and nudges my knee with hers. “You’ve basically been living with them for months. This is just making it official.”
I let out the breath I was definitely holding.
She shrugs, but there’s a little strain under it.
“And honestly? I don’t even want to go back there.
” Her mouth twists. “I know they cleaned everything and painted and replaced stuff and whatever, but I can still see it. Every time I think about walking into that apartment my skin starts trying to leave my body.”
“Amy—”
“I’m serious.” She wraps both hands around her coffee mug like it’s a hand warmer and a weapon. “I can’t go back there and just be fine. I can’t pretend it’s normal that my throw pillows and my murder trauma are in the same room.”
“I know.” And I do. God, I do.
Her eyes flick to mine, searching for any hint that I’m about to minimize it, make it tidy, tell her healing is linear and brave women bounce back by brunch.
I don’t.
So she keeps going.
“I keep having these stupid little moments,” she says.
“Like I’ll be doing something completely regular—washing my face, looking for a hair tie, whatever—and then it hits me that I killed someone.
” Her voice drops on the last word. “And not in a metaphorical girl boss way. In a very literal, very bad, very prison-worthy way.”
I set my coffee down. “You saved me.”
“I know that,” she says quickly, with a hand that says don’t interrupt, I’ve already argued with myself about this. “I know why I did it. I know if I hadn’t, Tyler would’ve killed you. I know all the logic. I just . . .” She stares into her coffee. “I didn’t know I was capable of doing that.”
The words land between us and ring.
I lean my hip against the counter. “Yeah.”
Amy gives a short, humorless laugh. “Cool. Great. Love that for us.”
I watch the expression on her face drop until her eyes lose focus, and I can tell she’s back in the memory, the night replaying right in front of her.
“Do you remember much from after?” I ask, watching the focus snap back to the present as her eyes meet mine and a furrow creases her brow.
“You mean when Milo got here?”
“Yeah,” I say, my voice a whisper.
Amy nods slowly. “Yeah. I remember that part.”
She takes a drink of coffee. It gives her something to do with her hands.
“He was . . . ” She exhales through her nose.
“Upset? Which somehow made it weirder. Kind of like when one of my sunshine students absolutely loses it. Except he was covered in blood, and—” She presses her lips into a thin line.
“Then you left and they started unloading the truck—Tyler’s friends, a bunch of other dudes.
I lost count. But I . . . I sat there and watched the whole thing. ”
I don’t say anything for a second, because there isn’t a version of that memory that feels survivable from the outside.
I can still see Milo that night too clearly—wild-eyed and incandescent, smiling with blood on his face like his body had mistaken catastrophe for fuel.
“He does that sometimes,” I say finally. “When things get too intense. He turns it into motion. Noise. Action. If he stops moving, he has to feel all of it.”
Amy studies me. “And what’s your excuse?”
I blink. “For what?”
“For how calm you were during all of it.”
“About that . . . ” I look down at my coffee. It’s gone lukewarm. “Amy, I have something I need to tell you.”
The silence that follows is different from the others. Less brittle. More dangerous.
Amy nods, wiping her fingers on a napkin slowly. Like she’s buying herself time.
“What happened to Brock, Sage?” she asks. “The real version.”
I look at my hands.
For a second I consider lying. Sticking to the cover story because I’ve said it so often it feels like truth now. But instead, I take a breath and meet her eyes.
“I killed him,” I say.