Nothing happened.
The grass didn't move. The air didn't change. No demon materialized between the headstones.
He said it again. “Ihave more to lose.”
Nothing.
“I have more to lose.” He said it louder this time, feeling desperate and stupid. He was standing at his brother's grave saying words his mother had said three years ago in this exact spot and the sky wasn't cracking open.
The words just sat there in the dark, flat and dead.
“This isn't working.”
Greg's face had gone pale. Even in the moonlight Dustin could see it. “I think you have to mean it.”
“I do mean it.”
“Dustin.” Greg's voice was gentle in a way that made Dustin want to hit something. “Do you?”
The question sat between them.
Do you mean it?
Do you have more to lose?
Could Dustin say that when he jumped off things for a living and didn't much care what happened when he landed? When he'd signed up for a stunt with a fifty percent fatality rate because the odds felt about right for how much he valued being alive?
He looked at Tyler's headstone.
He looked at Greg, standing among the graves in the dark, clipboard to his chest. He thought of Greg abandoning that clipboard for him. He thought of Greg resting his head on Dustin's chest last night, listening to Dustin's heart beat.
He thought about Cathy at the kitchen table, looking scared for him.
“I have more to lose,” he said again, with feeling.
He held his breath, and still nothing happened.
“Imeanit,” he insisted.
But if there was a supernatural entity listening, it did not seem to believe him.
“Fine,” Dustin huffed, more to himself than anyone else.
He pulled out his phone. The screen was too bright in the dark. He squinted against it.
“What are you doing?” Greg asked.
Dustin scrolled through his contacts, past the names he hadn't called in months, past the promotional group chats he'd muted, until he found the one he was looking for. Marcie. His manager. She'd been fielding calls and signing contracts and scheduling his stunts since before he reeled in Apex, since before Tyler died.
She'd be asleep. It was almost midnight on a weeknight and Marcie had two kids. She went to bed at nine-thirty and she was going to kill him.
He tapped the number.
It rang. And rang. And rang.
He was about to give up when the line clicked.
“Dustin?” Marcie's voice was groggy and immediately alarmed, the way people sounded when their phone rang at midnight. “What's wrong? Are you okay?”
