Chapter Seventeen
~ Bodean ~
Knox waited for me at the edge of the trees, hands in his pockets and that old Marine scowl already in place. He didn't have to say a word—one look at the set of his jaw, and I knew: time to rip off the Band-Aid and find out how much blood was left underneath.
He jerked his chin at the path, the one we'd carved through blackberry brambles when we were kids and determined to build a fort so secret even the crows couldn't find it. That path had survived wildfires, two hundred years of floods, and a dozen drunken McKenzie cousins, but it hadn't outlived the memory of the last real conversation Knox and I had out here.
We walked in silence, the world crunching and snapping under our boots. Alders grew so close together the trunks looked like a fence painted by a drunk with double vision. The river was somewhere ahead, invisible but loud—a constant, hungry growl gnawing at the root line. It pulled at us, the way rivers do, but Knox wasn't in a hurry.
I was, if only to get it over with.
He didn't speak until we rounded the curve and the creek came into view, brown-green and swollen from yesterday's rain. Cattails lined the far bank, their heads bursting with fluff that drifted on the breeze and stuck to your lips if you breathed too deep. There was a spot, just past the fallen log, where the bank slumped down into a shelf of flat stones and moss.
It was where we'd always gone to talk about the stuff we didn't want Ma to hear—fist fights, first smokes, whose turn it was to fix the broken fence or take the blame for Harlow's science experiments gone nuclear.
Knox stopped there and waited for me to settle. I picked the driest rock, but water had already seeped through my jeans before I could even sit. I didn't care.
He sat a good four feet away, arms folded, boots planted like he meant to keep the whole valley from drifting off downstream.
We listened to the creek for a while. I tried to count how many times he'd brought me here—once for a black eye, once for a broken heart, three times for shit I'd done that embarrassed him so bad he couldn't even yell about it in the house. I wondered if this was one of those times, and what flavor of disappointment I'd be served.
I glanced over my shoulder, half expecting to see Jo lurking at the tree line, but he hung back by the trailhead, feigning interest in a patch of wild mint. Even when he wasn't at the center of things, the bastard knew how to own a perimeter.
I could feel the collar at my neck—heavy, impossible to ignore, like a second mouth sucking air just above my Adam's apple. I'd worn it to the party last night, all the way through the toast and the hundred rounds of backslaps and “goddamn, you made it” from cousins who hadn't bothered to remember I existed until this week.
I didn't take it off after, even when Jo's mouth found its way there in the dark, when his teeth left a ring of bruises just below the buckle. This morning I'd wanted to, but it felt like I'd be taking off something more permanent than a strip of leather and brass.
“Nice day,” Knox said, finally.
I shrugged. “I've seen worse.”
“You remember the time you fell in?” He jerked his thumb at the spot a few yards downstream, where a swirl of foam had eaten the bank into a perfect U. “Pa swore you'd drown, but you just came up cussing and tried to punch the river.”
“Yeah,” I said, but my voice was already gone, sucked up by the sucking sound of the water.
He waited, arms still crossed, his face giving away nothing.
“You want to just get to it?” I said. “Or is this one of those times where you make me sweat it out for an hour before the hammer drops?”
He cracked a smile—barely, but I saw it. “Never thought you’d be the one to say that. Always figured you liked a little suspense.”
“Not today.”
He went quiet again. I could see him working up to it, trying to find a way to be gentle without making it obvious. That was the problem with the McKenzie men: they never learned to talk straight about anything that hurt, so they circled the wound until someone bled out.
He let the silence fill, until even the water sounded awkward.
“You want to tell me what’s really going on with you and Jo?” he asked, voice low and flat. Not a hint of judgment, just a clean bullet point with my name on it.
I looked at the water, watched the foam catch on a stick and swirl out to oblivion. “I thought it was obvious.”
He made a noise in his throat. “It’s not the what I’m after. It’s the why.”
I picked at the moss beside my knee. My hands were shaking, but I kept them low, out of his line of sight. “What do you mean?”
He hesitated, then said: “The collar.”
My chest went tight. I could feel it—God, I could feel it—every ounce of shame, fear, pride, and relief fighting for space in my ribcage.
