She’s right—I know she is. My fingers skimming the top of her shoulder.
Her face twists, salt tracks streaking pale cheeks.
“I need space,” she says, the words breaking on a sob. “I need… time.”
Her voice trembles, thin and frayed, and I can see how much effort it takes just to keep breathing.
“Too much has happened this week. Me and you… and now my parents.” She wipes at her face, but the tears just keep coming. “I know we didn’t have the best relationship—I swore I’d never forgive them for handing me over to you.” Her voice catches, softening to something fragile. “But they’re still—” She presses her fist against her mouth, choking back the rest. “Mama and Papa,” she whispers, the words shattering as another sob tears through her.
Every part of me wants to close the distance—wrench her into my arms and smother the world with her until the tears stop. I want to cradle her, warm her, never let anything touch her. Instead, I watch the line in her eyes, the hard steel threaded through the grief, and for the first time I see how shattered she really is. The woman who is my whole goddamn world is cracking at the seams, and every inch of me wants to fix her.
My breath comes ragged; my fists hover useless at my sides, trembling like something animal and young.
“Not touching you,” I rasp, each word scraping out of me, “when all I want is to hold you—it’s torture.” The admission is a confessionanda threat. It tastes like rust.
But then I make myself do the only thing that still means something in this mess. I lower my hands to my sides, feel the roughness of dried blood my skin like a promise I can’t afford to break. I force my voice down until it is nothing but stone. “Just… come back to the house, Summer, I’ll keep my word. You have it. We can fix this. We can work it out. I’ll tell you everything,” I promise, the words spilling out fast, unfiltered. “Everything you need to know about your parents—no more half-truths, no more secrets. You deserve that much.”
I take another step, careful, slow. “Just come back with me. Please. Let me make this right.”
She hesitates—just long enough for me to think she’ll turn away again—then gives a small, broken nod. No words. Just surrender.
We move through the trees, not together, not apart, but somewhere inbetween. The forest groans beneath us, branches snapping underfoot, leaves whispering secrets we can’t bear to hear. The night seems to close in, heavy and suffocating, swallowing every sound except our uneven steps.
Our shadows stretch ahead of us, long and crooked, staggering like the ghosts we’ve become—always near, never touching.
When the house finally rises through the darkness, the porch light flickers an ugly, sickly yellow, casting the yard in shades of orange and gold. The gravel drive lies open before us, a gaping mouth waiting to devour whatever’s left of us.
And then I see what remains of him.
Benny.
Sprawled. Broken. A heap of ruin under the porch light, blood dark against the stones. Summer stops dead beside me, a gasp cutting through the stillness. Steam curls from his skin in the cold, blood dark and sticky beneath him. He’s nothing but noise dying out.
Her chin lifts, defiant, even with her face streaked in dirt and salt.
“Can we get him some help?” she asks, voice trembling but hard beneath it. “An ambulance. Something. Just some help.”
For a long beat, I don’t move. The world tilts, the sound of the wind and the hum of insects fading until it’s just her and me and thebody on the ground between us. Her eyes find mine—wild, pleading, burning with the kind of fear that still trusts me to fix this.
I give one harsh nod. It’s all she needs.
“Go inside, Summer,” I say quietly, steady enough to hide the storm breaking behind it. “Stay there. Do whatever you need to do to get through the next half hour. I’ll be as quick as I can.” I hold her gaze a second longer, making sure she hears the weight behind it. “Do not open the door to anyone.”
She hesitates, trembling, then backs away toward the house.
The moment she’s gone, the world exhales again. I cross the gravel, the stones crunching beneath my boots, a grim rhythm counting down what’s left of the man lying there.
Benny’s chest lifts in shallow, ragged breaths. His eyes flutter, glazed and unfocused, the whites—now red—catching what little light spills from the porch. His lips crack open, dry and trembling, trying to form a single sound—her name.
Summer.
It comes out as a rasp, and I can feel the fury in me ignite all over again.
Pathetic.
I fist his ankle and drag. His body scrapes hard across the stones, a smear of red marking his path. He groans—weak, broken—the sound thin and animal.
I haul him up into the bed of the truck like garbage, his arm flopping useless over the side.
