73. Sage
SEVENTY-THREE
SAGE
The only other person in the bar is one very still security person who doesn’t even make eye contact, let alone conversation.
When the backroom door opens and Milo, Micah, Holden, and Knox walk out, I’m practically giddy for the company—not something I would have thought a few weeks ago when they first started tailing me.
Holden’s face is bricked up and unreadable, which means he’s processing.
Micah’s smile is tight. Milo’s trying for casual, but the frantic energy in the way he walks makes me think he didn’t get everything he wanted out of that meeting.
Knox gives me a slight nod. And they all do a quick inventory of me and converge around the bar.
Milo drapes himself onto the stool next to me, leaning in like I’m the best thing he’s seen all year. “Kitten! I missed your face. Did you eat your donut?”
I hold up the half-eaten donut and he grins, satisfied.
“Good. You know carbs ward off evil spirits, right?”
“I don’t remember reading that in the Bible.”
He grins and shrugs.
Goofball.
Holden steps in front of me, checking his watch. “I need to head back to the station. You good?”
“Of course. Go.”
He cups the back of my neck and pulls me in, pressing his mouth to mine—firm, warm, unhurried despite the fact that he’s got somewhere to be. When he pulls back, his thumb strokes the hinge of my jaw.
“I’ll be home by six. Call me if anything changes.”
“I will.”
He slips his jacket on, points at Micah. “Don’t let her skip lunch.” And then he’s heading out. The door swings behind him and seals itself shut.
“And then there were four,” Milo says. Then he spins my stool so I’m facing him and plants both hands on the bar on either side of me, caging me in. His face is close enough that I can see the gold flecks in his brown eyes and the tiny scar on his chin he’s never explained.
“You look pretty today, kitten.”
“I look like I woke up at five-thirty and put on whatever was closest to the bed.”
“Exactly. Pretty.” He dips his head and kisses my neck—just below my ear, light, the kind of contact that’s more promise than delivery. I shiver. His mouth curves against my skin. “I’ve missed having you to myself.”
“You had me to yourself yesterday. In the shower. For forty-five minutes.”
“That was pure necessity.”
“It was not.”
Micah snorts into his now-cold coffee. Knox makes a sound that might be a laugh or a grunt. It’s hard to tell.
Milo pulls back, grinning, and runs his fingers through my hair.
“I’m serious though. This whole situation—the noose, the threat, everyone on high alert—it’s making me crazy.
And not the fun kind of crazy. The kind where I lie awake at night staring at the ceiling and thinking about every single thing that could go wrong.
” His voice drops, the humor bleeding out.
“I don’t do well with things I can’t fix, kitten.
And right now I can’t fix this. It’s eating me alive. ”
I reach up and touch his face. He leans into it immediately, eyes closing, and for a second the bravado falls away and I see what’s underneath—a man who covers fear with chaos and devotion with jokes.
A man who’s currently running on fumes because the person he loves is in danger and the best he can do is bring donuts.
“We’re going to figure this out,” I say.
“I know.”
“And in the meantime, I’m safe. I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”
He opens his eyes. Looks at me with an intensity that doesn’t match the grin sliding back into place. “Damn right you’re not. I haven’t even shown you my best moves yet.”
“God help us all,” Micah mutters.
Milo flips him off without breaking eye contact with me, and I laugh. Milo’s face lights up like he just won something, and he kisses me again, long and slow.
“That’s what I needed,” he says softly. “That laugh. Keep doing that.”
I intend to. I intend to laugh and eat donuts and sit in this bar surrounded by men who love me and pretend that everything is fine until everything actually is fine. It’s a coping strategy. Not a great one, but it’s mine.
Knox refills my latte without being asked—another heart in the foam, which makes Milo gasp dramatically and demand one too.
Knox ignores him. Micah steals the last donut hole.
We settle into a comfortable lull, the kind of easy silence that happens when people know each other well enough that words become optional.
“Oh, hey—do you think Holden will let us get a dog?” Milo pulls out his phone. “I know I’m a cat person. But I saw the saddest looking puppy on my way to work yesterday. I wanted to rescue it. But his owner was right there and I couldn’t find a clear opening.”
He shows me photos of a basset hound with ears that drag on the ground and an expression that reads “existence is suffering.” I dissolve laughing and, next to me, Micah gives a fond shake of his head.
“A dog?” I ask. “Of all the things you could add to the chaos right now, you want a dog.”
“Not just any dog. This one,” Milo insists. He holds the phone for Knox’s inspection.
Knox tips his head, analyzing. “That dog wouldn’t survive a week in our house. We need a Shepherd.”
“Okay, rude,” says Milo, but you can tell he agrees. “I’m just saying, maybe what we need is a house pet. For morale. For anxiety. For, like, snuggling when you’re too tired to get it from your emotionally stunted boyfriend.” This last aimed directly at Knox.
“I’m emotionally available,” Knox says, stone-faced. “I just don’t like you.”
It cracks me up—a spasm of giggles, which feels so unfamiliar after the week we’ve had. Out of nowhere, I’m light and giddy and so full of love for these idiots I could break in half. Micah leans over and pets my hair, gentle and steady.
“You’d be a good dog mom,” he says. “You already keep the rest of us from chewing the furniture.”
“That’s not what it sounded like over the weekend,” Milo says, waggling his eyebrows. “Seemed like you were the biter in that—”
Knox leans across the mahogany bar and clamps over Milo’s mouth, effortless. “Shouldn’t you be leaving for work, Milo?”
Milo licks him and Knox smiles, slow and predatory. He doesn’t move his hand. Neither of them looks away for a beat, and then the backroom door opens.
Odin steps out.
Knox immediately pulls his hand back and Milo sits up straight. The easy warmth in the room snaps to full attention.
His eyes find me.
“Miss Adams,” he says. “A word?”
The formal address lands like a cold hand at the base of my spine. Miss Adams. It’s the name a stranger uses, or a lawyer, a doctor who’s delivering bad news.
I glance at Milo. His grin has vanished. He looks at Odin, then at me, then at the backroom door.
“It’s okay,” I say, squeezing his knee as I slide off the stool.
“Want me to come with?” Micah asks, already half-standing.
“Gentlemen, you’re dismissed,” Odin says, and there’s nothing in his tone that invites discussion. “Knox, lock up the bar. Milo, Micah—I believe you both have places to be.”
It’s not a suggestion. Milo’s mouth opens, but Micah grabs his arm and shakes his head once. Knox is already clearing away the coffee mess, even though you can tell he doesn’t like this.
I follow Odin through the stage door and down the corridor. My heart beats with a heaviness that I feel in my temples. When we step into the backroom, Eli is still there.
He’s standing by the far wall, arms crossed, jaw tight. He doesn’t look at me when I walk in.
“What’s going on?” I ask, looking between the two men. “If this is about my request to join the Hangmen, I want the chance to plead my case before you make your decision. I’ve been working on my—”
“This is not about that, Miss Adams.” Odin gestures toward the couch. “Please. Sit.”
I sit. Odin takes the couch across from me, settling into it with composed ease. Eli stays standing, which puts him at the periphery of my vision, a presence I can feel but can’t see enough to read.
“Sage,” Odin begins. “I’m going to be direct with you, because I respect you enough not to waste your time with preamble.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Good.” He leans forward slightly, elbows on his knees, hands clasped.
“I have resources. Considerable ones. The kind that can make a person disappear—not in the way my men make people disappear, but in a way that gives them a new start. New name, new city, new history. A life with no connection to this town, to Brock Davis, or to the men in the other room.”
The words land one by one, and each one takes something from me.
“I can have you relocated by morning,” he continues.
“Somewhere warm, if you like. Cold if you prefer. I’ll set you up with enough money to get established—six months of living expenses, minimum.
A job reference that will hold up under scrutiny.
A clean break. No one from this world follows you. No one from this world finds you.”
I stare at him.
“You want me to run?”
“I want you to survive.”
I stiffen. “You’re asking me to leave? To disappear? To walk away from everything—from them—because some coward snuck into my home and hung a rope from my ceiling?”
“I’m asking you to consider that staying might cost you more than leaving.”
My mouth opens and closes. I shoot a glance at Eli, but he’s looking at his feet.
Why isn’t he saying anything? Why isn’t he telling Odin to back off? Why isn’t he—
“No. I won’t do it. Those men”—I gesture at the door, at the world beyond it—“they’re worth more than anything you can offer me. I would rather die than walk away.”
Odin regards me. He doesn’t seem surprised by my answer. He expected it. Which means this is a test, or a formality, or the prelude to something worse.
My stomach aches, my chest growing tight.
“The men who care about you,” he says slowly, “are compromised by that care. Their judgment is affected. Their operational security is weakened. Every moment they spend protecting you is a moment they’re not spending on the work—and their work matters, Miss Adams. It’s essential. You understand that, surely?”
“I do.”
He waits, letting the logic do its work.
“You want me to feel guilty about making your Hangmen love me,” I say.
“I want you to consider the consequences of being loved by monsters,” Odin corrects gently. “No one can keep you safe forever, Sage. The damage will taint you. The only question is how—by your choice or someone else’s?”
“I’m not leaving them.” I don’t look away. “I can’t.”
He lets out a slow exhale then looks at Eli.
“Perhaps you could help Sage understand the situation from your perspective?”
My stomach drops. I turn to look at Eli, and the expression on his face—or rather, the absence of expression, the careful, constructed blankness—makes my blood go cold.
“Eli?”
He pushes off the wall and walks to the center of the room. He doesn’t sit. He stands there with his hands in his pockets and looks at me with eyes that are flat and distant in a way I haven’t seen since that day in my kitchen, when he couldn’t bring himself to touch me.
“You should take the offer, Sage.”
I recoil. “What?”
“Odin’s right. You should go. Start fresh. Get as far from this as you can.”
“Eli, what are you—?”
“This.” He gestures between us. Between me and the door, the room, everything.
“Whatever you think this is—you’re wrong.
We’re not your boyfriends. We’re not your family.
We’re a group of men who kill people, and you’re—” He stops.
Swallows. Starts again, and his voice is harder this time, deliberate, like he’s reading from a script he wrote to destroy me.
“You’re the girl who happened to be on the beach that night.
Wrong place, wrong time. We got attached because proximity does that—because you were there and you were willing and it was easy. You were easy.”
Every word is a blade. I feel them go in, one after another, precise and cold.
“Easy?” I repeat.
“Easy,” he confirms. “You think this is love? Five men passing around the same woman? Come on, Sage. You’re smarter than that.
This is adrenaline. Shared trauma. A fucked-up situation that made us all feel something intense, and we confused it for something real.
” He shrugs, and the casualness of it is so wrong, so manufactured, that it makes my vision blur.
“It was fun. You were fun. But it can’t go anywhere.
Do you seriously think we’re all going to live in Holden’s house together?
Our own happily-ever-after orgy? You think that’s a life? ”
“Stop it,” I whisper.
“No. You need to hear this.”
“I don’t need to hear anything from you.
” My voice cracks, and I hate it—hate that he’s doing this, hate that it’s working, hate that the tears are already building behind my eyes because some stupid, wounded part of me is listening to the words instead of the actions of the man saying them.
“You told me you wanted me. You said you wanted me so much it was making you sick. Were you lying then, or are you lying now?”
“People say a lot of things to get what they want,” he says, teeth clenched. “Doesn’t make them true.”
The tears come. I can’t stop them. They spill down my cheeks and I swipe at them furiously, angrily, because I will not give him the satisfaction of seeing me break. Not when I was stupid enough to believe I meant something to him.
“Fuck you, Eli.” My voice shakes, but the words don’t. “Fuck. You.”
I stand. My legs are trembling, but they hold. I look at Odin—composed, watching, revealing nothing—and something in my chest hardens into stone.
“Thank you for the offer,” I say, and my voice is ice and acid and every ugly thing I’ve ever swallowed. “But no, thank you. I’d rather stay here and continue being the whore they pass around than run away because a man who doesn’t have the guts to love me thinks I should.”
I turn to Eli. He’s standing rigid, hands still in his pockets, jaw clenched so hard I can see the muscle jumping. His eyes are red-rimmed. He won’t look at me.
“I never picked you for a fucking coward, Eli Ward.”
I step close enough to spit at his feet and walk out.
The corridor is a blur. The door slams behind me and I’m in the bar, bright and empty. But Knox is there wiping a glass that’s been clean for twenty minutes—and Micah’s beside him, leaning against the bar with his jacket on, waiting.
They didn’t leave. Of course they didn’t leave.
Both of them straighten the second they see my face.
“Sage.” Knox sets the glass down. “What happened?”
“What’s wrong?” Micah is already moving toward me, hands reaching. “What did he say to you?”
I shake my head. If I open my mouth, I’m going to scream or sob or both, and I can’t do that here, not in this building, not where the walls remember every sound.
“Take me home,” I manage. “Please. Just take me home.”