His hand finds mine again. Fingertips featherlight against my skin, tracing each knuckle, each valley between fingers, circling the pulse point at my wrist. My shoulders sink an inch lower with each pass.
My limbs grow heavier against the mattress. The room tilts slightly when I blink.
I should sleep. My eyelids droop, but my brain keeps spinning.
"I feel like we came close today, you know?"
Gage exhales through his teeth. "Yeah, I know. They should’ve finished us.”
I turn my head on the pillow, eyebrow raised.
The corner of his mouth twitches up. “Because when we find them—and we will—we’re gonna finish them.”
Something electric ripples down my spine, like the first warning tremor before a wave breaks. The promise of violence in his voice shouldn’t heat my blood this way.
I let my gaze roam over his face, feeling brave under the cover of darkness. “I can’t stop thinking about it. Trying to figure out what went wrong. What I missed.”
“Youdidn’t miss anything. If there was something overlooked, then it falls on all of us. Not just you.”
I lick my lips, trying to wade through the thick pit of trepidation. “Maybe.”
“We all signed off on it.” His thumb traces circles against my skin. “All of us.”
The ceiling fan clicks with each rotation. One, two, three. The sound fills the silence between heartbeats.
“Besides, there are too many unknowns tonight,” he continues, voice dropping lower. “But we’ll figure it out. We always do.”
We. The word settles in my chest like a stone. Gage and his brothers move as a unit—always have. Four brothers moving as one shadow across so many memories I have of this town.
The walls I built between Hollow Beach and everything after suddenly feel paper-thin. And now my siblings sleep down the hall while I lie in Gage’s bed, the indent of his body beside mine like a question I can’t answer.
He leans in, his lips brushing my forehead. The contact lasts one heartbeat, two, before he pulls away.
“Sleep now, Bell,” he murmurs. “I’ll be right here.”
My eyes close before I can stop them.
The mattress cradles me like quicksand. His breathing settles into a rhythm that pulls at something old and familiar, something I thought I’d buried.
EIGHT
BELLAMY
My eyelids peel apart,sticky with sleep.
The room swims into view, then recedes, then returns again—ceiling first, then walls, like I’m bobbing at the surface of consciousness.
Something cold and wet seeps through the shoulder of my shirt. The ice pack. My fingers find the edge of medical tape, the stiff wrap circling my joint. When I try to shift, a dozen tiny cuts pull and sting across my skin, and deeper bruises throb beneath them in a dull, steady rhythm that matches my pulse.
I blink at the ceiling. Wait for the cottony feeling in my skull to dissolve.
A gray-blue light leaks around the edges of the blinds—not night anymore, but not quite morning. On the TV screen, black-and-white figures move through some ancient sitcom, their tinny laughter barely audible. Each inhale brings detergent, fabric softener, and something else—a warm, familiar scent that makes my stomach tighten.
I roll my head against the pillow.
Gage’s chest rises and falls beside me, one arm flung across his ribs, the other twisted awkwardly beneath his head. Thebruise blooming along his eye has darkened overnight, purple-black now instead of red. His mouth hangs slightly open, lips parted, breath coming soft and even. No frown lines. No tension at the corners of his eyes.
My mouth burns with the ghost of last night’s kiss, but something cold settles in my chest alongside it. The way it didn’t feel like stepping into something new, but slipping into something old—a well-worn path I swore I wouldn’t walk again.
