He shrugged, then looked up. The blue in his eyes was washed out, all fatigue. “Damron doesn’t ask. He tells.”
A long silence. I watched the way he flexed his hands, the old habit of rolling his thumb against the scar by his knuckle.
He opened his mouth, then closed it. Finally, he spoke. “They think the Sultans were behind my dad’s death, too. Not just Ma. That it was all connected. Like you said.”
He waited for me to say something—maybe to absolve him, maybe to promise I’d still be here on the other side of whatever bloodbath tomorrow would bring.
I couldn’t. I just reached across the table and took his hand, careful not to touch the worst of the bruises.
His fingers curled around mine, strong but shaking. For a while, neither of us moved. The air between us hummed with things we’d never dared to say.
“After this,” I said, voice barely a whisper. “What happens to us?”
He stared at our hands, the way my thumb rested over the back of his. “I don’t know,” he said. Honest, at least. “If I walk away, I’m dead. If I stay, I’m probably still dead. But maybe I can do this one thing and then be done.”
I squeezed his hand. “You think it’ll bring peace?”
He shrugged, not quite a laugh. “I think it’s the only shot I’ve got.”
His phone buzzed on the table, screen lighting up with DAMRON in angry all-caps.
He silenced it, then looked at me, eyes raw. “You don’t have to wait,” he said.
I didn’t answer. I just reached over, tucked a strand of hair behind his ear, and kissed his battered mouth.
The kiss wasn’t soft. It was the kind of kiss you gave at a prison visitation, or a funeral, or the night before you went to war. It tasted like salt and beer and old fear, but it was real.
When we broke apart, I pulled his hand to my cheek, holding it there.
“You’re not dead yet,” I said. “So don’t act like it.”
He smiled, for the first time all night, small and lopsided. “Yes, ma’am.”
We finished dinner in silence, passing the beer back and forth. Sergeant circled our feet, then lay down with her head across both our boots, as if she could pin us together by sheer will.
When Dean left, it was with a promise to come back if he could.
After the door shut, I sat alone at the table, cold burrito in front of me, and tried to imagine the morning after. Whether he’d be here to drink burnt coffee and tell me another lie, or if I’d be reading about him in the news.
I pressed my fingers to the paw print behind my ear, felt the memory of his hand on my skin.
Tomorrow, everything would change. But tonight, for a few more hours, I’d let myself believe there was still a future for both of us.
14
Emily
The shelter smelled of dog piss and the last dregs of my patience. Closing shift was always a drag, but tonight my hands moved like they were pulling wire from my own skin, methodical and a little bit numb. I swept the runs, signed off on the med logs, and started flicking off lights in every room except the lobby—half a superstition, half a way to put off the moment when I’d have to go back to the apartment and wait for the world to implode.
Sergeant’s nails clicked behind me as she limped along, nose to the ground. The other dogs had wound down to a low thrum of anxiety, some already curled in their beds, some howling at ghosts. I paused by the old collie’s kennel to double-check the water bowl, and that’s when I saw thecorner of paper, not white but a cheap, muddy gray, folded twice and slid under the gate.
My heart didn’t just skip. It tripped over itself, then tried to claw its way up my throat.
I stared at the paper for a full ten-count, the way you look at a spider you know is poisonous but might not move if you just stay still. Then I knelt—cold seeping through the knees of my jeans—and picked it up. It felt like nothing, like the note might disintegrate if I breathed on it too hard.
The fluorescent lights overhead buzzed and flickered as I unfolded the note. My hands shook so badly the words blurred, but the blocky, all-caps printing was hard to mistake:
YOU’RE IN OVER YOUR HEAD.
