36. Micah #2
“You didn’t know me,” I snap back. “When I made a mess of murdering my rapist. You didn’t know me.
None of you did. But Holden handed me the card and you invited me in anyway.
The Hangmen have been my family ever since—you’ve sat with me when I couldn’t talk.
Driven me home when I was too fucked up to get behind the wheel.
You didn’t know me, Eli, but you decided I was worth showing up for anyway. ”
“That was different.”
Milo steps forward. “You didn’t know me, either.
I was a stranger when I showed up during one of your kills.
You had every reason not to trust me—could have killed me on the spot.
But you let me in. You let all of us in.
” He locks eyes with Eli. “So don’t stand there and tell us we don’t know her well enough.
You knew us for about five minutes before you decided we were yours. She’s no different.”
“She is different.”
“Why? Because you want to fuck her?” Milo shakes his head. “Because that’s the only variable that’s changed, and if that’s enough to make you pull away from someone who needs you, then you need to take a long, hard look at what kind of man you really are.”
The silence stretches. I can hear the fridge humming. Sage’s breathing, slow and steady, drifting down the hallway like proof that she trusts us enough to sleep while we’re here.
Eli looks toward the hallway like he can see through the walls into her room.
“We need to be careful,” he says finally, but all the fight has gone out of him.
“We will be,” I say. “But careful doesn’t mean absent. And it doesn’t mean punishing yourself for wanting something good inside all of this shit.”
He stands there a moment longer. Then he gives a slight nod and heads for the door.
“Eli.” Milo goes after him, stops him before he can get the door open. “You’re hurting our girl. You know that, right? You were the one who called her that first—our girl. So fucking own it. It’s what she wants too.”
Eli doesn’t respond. And as soon as Milo steps away, he opens the door and walks out.
Milo lets out a long breath, running his hand through his hair. “Why is he like this? He’s obviously in love with her.”
I don’t answer right away. I’m watching the door, the place where Eli stood thirty seconds ago.
I’ve spent over a week waiting for him to come back to himself.
Tonight he sat in his car and fell asleep outside her building.
He held her sleeping body like she was the only good thing he’d ever touched.
He hung his jacket on her chair like a man planting a flag.
And he walked out anyway.
This man is impossible.
“Yeah,” I say finally. “He is. I guess not everyone is as sure about their feelings after eleven days as you.”
Milo rolls his eyes. “Eleven days?” He scoffs. “Try immediately. It was love at first sight, Micah. And any of you denying that is a fucking liar.”
He’s quiet for a second.
“Also. Just so you know,” he starts carefully. “She asked me about you and Eli at dinner. Why he reacted the way he did to walking in on you with her. I gave her the abridged version.”
I look at him.
“How abridged?”
“Eli-and-Micah have a thing, on-and-off, mostly off. Eli is allergic to feelings. You want more than he can give. He rations himself and walls back up. Not pretty. Not healthy.” Milo pulls a face. “I called it the low-pressure front.”
“It’s fine,” I say. “It’s not a secret. We don’t talk about it because Eli can’t, not because I won’t.”
Milo nods, relief easing across his face.
“She’s not an idiot, Micah. She knows we’re all complicated.
I just . . . I wanted her to have context, not melodrama.
” He pauses. “And she needs to know people mean what they say to her. All the way. Or it’s just another performance.
Another fucking thing she doesn’t get to own. ”
I nod, because what else can I do? He’s right.
Sage has been hunted, handled, washed up and wrung out more in the last two weeks than most people would get in a lifetime.
If she’s going to have any of us, it can’t be as a fucking project or a pity party.
She needs somebody to want her for her. Not for the job, not for the mission, not for her trauma points. Just for her.
He picks up the sponge again, then puts it down. Picks up a dish towel, folds it, sets it on the counter. Picks it up again. His hands need something to do, the same way mine do after a hard shift when the adrenaline is hitting hard.
“He’ll come around,” I say, hoping more than believing.
“Yeah.” Milo leans against the counter and stares at the entrance to the hallway, toward the room where she’s sleeping. “I’m gonna head out. I’ve got an early shift tomorrow. Tell her I’ll see her later, okay?”
“Of course.”
He hangs up the dish towel and grabs a bag of trash, heading out into the night like the cleanest little psycho there ever was.
He pokes his head back in, a beat after closing the door. “By the way, your keys are on the counter.”
I glance over and sure enough, there are three shiny copies of keys to Sage’s new lock sitting there. One for me. One for Holden. The third one is Eli’s—he didn’t take it.
“Night, Milo.”
“Night.” The door clicks shut behind him.
I take a moment in the quiet. The TV has clicked itself off, the apartment settling into the hush of deep night.
I click the deadbolt behind Milo, check the windows, and then—because some habits die hard—run a paranoid scan of every possible breach point.
Kitchen window, bathroom window, both bedrooms.
All clear.
I linger in her doorway. The smell of her, layered with Eli’s cologne and traces of garlic from dinner, fills the tiny space. The covers are bundled around her, but one bare foot pokes from the cocoon. There’s something so innocent about it, so human and defenseless, that it makes my throat ache.
I want to tuck her in. I want to crawl in beside her. I want one million impossible things, all at once. All at a time in my life when I should probably know better.
I want to save her. I want to ruin her. I want to keep her safe from the world and show her every dark, hungry corner of it.
I tuck the foot back under the cover. I turn off the lamp. I close her bedroom door most of the way, leaving it cracked just enough so she won’t wake up to the panic of absolute dark. Then I go back to the living room, toe off my boots and drop onto the couch, trying to empty my head.
The same thought keeps coming to the surface, over and over.
What if Eli’s right?