Page 218 of What We Become

Blood drips from my fingertips onto the sand.

Stephen swings behind me, slow and dead on the rope.

Knox pushes away from the piling. I close the distance before he can put his weight on that leg.

He strips off his gloves and drops them, then peels the mask off. The sight of his face almost undoes me more than the killing did. There’s blood at his temple from the crash. Bruising along his jaw. His mouth set hard like he’s barely holding himself together.

His hand comes to my cheek, huge and warm and a little unsteady.

“You’re fucking incredible, Fury,” he says, voice low and wrecked.

Then he kisses me.

His mouth takes mine with that same brutal need he always carries for me. I melt into him and bite at his lower lip and taste salt and blood and something so fiercely his that my whole body answers.

I fist the front of his shirt and kiss him back like I’m trying to climb inside his ribs and live there. His hand spreads at the back of my neck, holding me steady, holding me up, and when he finally breaks the kiss, we’re both breathing hard.

I lift my head enough to look at him. At the bruises. The blood. The wild dark of his eyes.

A laugh catches in my throat, soft and ugly and a little cracked. “You know what I just realized?”

His thumb strokes over my cheekbone, smearing blood. “What, Fury?”

I glance back at the corpse still swaying on the rope. “He got the same ending Brock did. Same fear. Same pain. Same dark.” My smile turns sharp. “But he’ll never get the last piece. He’ll never know what we did with Brock after. Where we put him. How completely he disappeared.” I look back at Knox. “And honestly? I think that’s perfect—the not knowing.”

His gaze burns hotter. “Everything he deserved,” he says, and then his mouth is on mine again.

This kiss is deeper. Slower and somehow rougher for it. My fingers curl into his shirt harder as his hand slides from my cheek to my throat, his thumb settling beside the cut. Holding. Claiming. The ocean roars in my ears. My blood hums. Behind us, Stephen hangs and swings and means nothing at all.

For the first time since Brock dragged me under this jetty, this place doesn’t feel haunted.

It feels finished.

I can finally start to live.

FIFTY-THREE

SAGE

“Let’s make this part quick,” Eli says.

Salt air fills my lungs while blood dries on my skin. Dennis and Gene lower Stephen’s body from the rope, the wet thud of it hitting the sand louder than a body has any right to be.

What I need now is for the rope to stop swinging and the night to start being ours.

Gloria waves us clear. “Hank will handle disposal.”

His refrigerated van is waiting beyond the beach access. Dennis and Gene wrap the body in a tarp and carry it up while Gloria drops the other van’s keys into Eli’s hand.

“Bring everyone home,” she says.

Milo limps after them, leaning on Ray for support. As the rear doors slam shut, he raises a hand in a wave.

“Bye, Dads!” he calls out, voice cracking with that bright edge he gets when the world’s tilting too far.

Hank pulls away with Gloria and the other dads aboard, tires crunching as the van disappears into the night. Milo stares after it, then turns back to us.

“I wonder what Hank’s going to do with a body?”