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Sage stood, heart hammering. Every instinct screamed to run, but she saw the avalanche of hurt around him — she saw the little boy he once was.

Cal roared on. “And I have to carry that for the rest of my FUCKING LIFE. You’re young and beautiful and good… God damn, you’re so good… not like me.” He drew a ragged breath. “And you deserve⁠—”

Move Sage. Come on you big bad bitch! Now or never!

She stepped toward him, her own spirit roaring up like an avenging phoenix.

“I DON’T CARE, YOU FUCKING IDIOT!” Sage screamed back, tears burning hot down her freezing cheeks. “I love you! You could have burned the world down ten times over and I would still love you. Don’t you get it?”

Her voice cracked but kept rising. “If you can’t find redemption, then who the hell can, huh? HUH?” She laid her hands on his bloody arms, eyes wild and passionate. “If your God is so merciful, then why don’t you get mercy? And if you can’t get mercy…” She laughed bitterly. “…then how can I ever get mercy for what was done to me?”

The words hung sharp as icicles as her question hung on the icy air. Cal stared at her, lost.

“Tell me!... FUCKING TELL ME!!”

Cal staggered like she’d stabbed him. His massive frame folded — first to his knees in the deep snow, then further. He sat hard, curled forward, forehead pressed to the frozen ground as years of swallowed grief tore out of him in huge, wrenching sobs. Full-body. Ugly. Beautiful. The kind that sounded like it might kill him.

Sage dropped with him instantly, knees sinking into the snow. The cold soaked through her leggings but she didn’t feel it. She wrapped her arms around his shaking shoulders, face pressed to the back of his neck.

“I was twelve, Sage,” he gasped between sobs. “I was twelve and I was chopping wood and she was inside… dying⁠—”

Another wrenching sound.

Oh Cal…

“Then…later…alone…I saved Annie but they turned on me. The whole goddamn mother fucking town turned on me.”

His big hand punched the snow like a bolt of lightning, dirt and rocks and snow, flying, knuckles bleeding red against white.

“I left because I had to… and they made me a monster because I had to be⁠—”

She wrapped her arms around his shaking shoulders, pressing her face into the back of his neck as the sobs tore through him.

Sage held him tighter, her own tears falling into his hair.

He sobbed in a way that she knew this was coming from deep inside. "There's darkness in me. I know you don't think so. I've tried to chain it deep down. But it's there,waiting..."

He looked at her, his face wrecked, and his eyes reflecting agony. "Oh sweetheart, it's there. The void. The darkness."

Sage was sobbing.

Oh my love, what did they do to you?

"You're so wonderful and beautiful. So pure. You’re everything good. How could I..." he scrambled to hold her hands, squeezing gently, even now.

“Baby, don’t waste your life on me…” his voice trailed away in tears that came from a soul tormented by grief and pain and never ending tears.

The wind howled through the pines. Snow kept falling, swift and relentless, covering the broken tree, their tangled bodies, the blood on his hand.

Brutus whined once from the treeline but stayed back, guarding.

No. Never. I will never ever leave you.

Sage pressed her lips to Cal’s temple, voice trembling but certain. “You're wrong. You're wrong. You are goodness. You are love. You are that thing that protects against the dark," her voice fell to a whisper. "You saved me from my darkness"

Cal looked at her. He looked so tired. He looked up into the storm. "Baby. Baby, look at me."

Cal looked back at her, tears on his face. "Daddy, I don't have nightmares anymore. I'm not afraid anymore,” her words broke in sobs of her own “I’m safe...y...yyou...did...that. C…Cal! I need you. I need you.”