Page 3 of What We Burn

He comes around the side of the building at a dead sprint.

He heard me. Thank fuck, he heard me.

His face goes white as he takes in the scene—Sage in my arms, the rope on the ground—and I watch the horror reorganize itself into purpose. He drops to his knees beside us.

“Jesus. Jesus Christ. Is she⁠—?”

“She’s breathing. Call 911. Now.”

He pulls out his phone and dials with hands that are shaking almost as badly as mine.

I hear him talking. Giving the address. Saying words like strangulation and possible tracheal damage and conscious but nonverbal. His voice is steady because Micah can be steady when the world requires it, even when his eyes say he’s falling apart.

There’s a shout from the front of the building, muffled by distance and brick walls, but it’s unmistakably Knox. “Micah? Where are you?”

“We’re here!” I yell, throat raw.

“Behind the bushes, east side,” Micah calls, and there’s a commotion—a stampede on the sidewalk as two more sets of feet tear around the side of the building. Knox and Milo skid to a stop in the mulch, sneakers carving mud tracks, faces whiplashed into open terror.

“Fuck,” Milo breathes. “What⁠—?”

My arms are tight around Sage, but my hands are shaking so badly I nearly drop her. Knox crouches beside us and hovers, like Sage might break if he so much as grazes her shoulder.

“Don’t touch her,” I snap, my chest a bottomless, ugly pit of fear. “Let her breathe.”

“Fury,” Knox whispers.

She makes a sound. Not a word, but enough to signal she knows he’s here.

Milo stays behind Knox. Milo, who is never quiet, who always has something to say, stands at the edge of the scene with his arms at his sides and doesn’t speak. I’ve known him for three years and I have never seen him silent.

The ambulance arrives. Red and white lights strobing through the hedge, turning everything into a carnival of shadows. Micah runs to the street, leading the two paramedics to us. They come around the building with a stretcher, and I don’t want to let her go—my arms tighten involuntarily, animal-brain overriding everything else—but Micah puts his hand on my shoulder.

“Let them work, Eli.”

I loosen my grip. They take her. She makes a small, desperate protest when she leaves my arms, her hand reaching back, fingers grasping air. I catch them. Just for a second. Just long enough to feel the squeeze.

“I’m riding with her,” I tell the paramedic.

He looks at Micah, at me, at the blood on my hands and the look in my eyes, and nods like he’s decided this isn’t worth arguing.

I climb in. They’re working on her—oxygen mask, IV line. I sit on the bench, holding her hand.

I don’t let go.

Can’t.

Her eyes find mine over the oxygen mask. I watch the recognition land. She sees me. I’m the man who sat across from her four days ago and told her she was easy and fun and not worth a fucking dime. I’m the man who walked away because I’d convinced myself that cutting her out of our lives would make her safe.

Now she’s on a stretcher, half dead, rope burns around her neck, and the safety I tried to buy with cruelty was worth sweet fucking all.

Her mouth moves beneath the mask. I lean closer. I can’t hear her—but I can read her lips as they shape a word under the fogged plastic.

Eli.

“Yeah,” I say. “It’s me.”

Her face crumples. She turns her head toward my hand and presses her cheek against my knuckles. The sound she makes is barely human, a keening that vibrates through my bones.