Relief moved through me first.
Sharp and immediate.Then guilt followed right behind it, because being relieved another dead woman wasn’t my sister was a terrible kind of math.I opened my eyes and stared at the end of the bed.“I guess at least I know Erin isn’t one of the bodies your club found.”
Push didn’t answer right away.
I looked over at him.
His expression had gone careful, like he was choosing words and hated every option.“I’m not gonna tell you that means she’s okay,” he said.
“I know.”
“But it means you don’t know she isn’t.”
My throat tightened.There it was.The small piece of hope I’d been trying not to hold too tightly.
Because hope could keep you alive, but hope could also gut you.
“That’s kind of the problem,” I said quietly.“Not knowing means she could be anywhere.”
“Yeah.”
“She could be alive.”
“Yeah.”
“She could be hurt.”
His jaw tightened.“Yeah.”
“She could be trapped somewhere waiting for me to find her.”
Push pushed away from the dresser and moved closer to the bed.He didn’t sit.Didn’t touch me.Just came close enough that his presence filled the space in a way that somehow made the room feel steadier.“Then we find her.”
I looked up at him.
We.
Not you.
Not the club.
We.
The word shouldn’t have hit me as hard as it did.It shouldn’t have made my throat close.It definitely shouldn’t have made me want to cry, because I wasn’t a crier.Not usually.I was a compartmentalizer.A problem solver.A person who shoved feelings into a mental junk drawer and promised to deal with them later, then never opened the drawer again.
But there was something about the way Push said it.
Simple and certain.Like finding Erin was already part of his job now because it mattered to me.
I swallowed hard.“You don’t even know her.”
“No.”
“You barely know me.”
His eyes stayed on mine.“Know enough.”
I looked away first and cleared my throat.“That was dangerously close to emotionally useful.”
