Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 97537 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 488(@200wpm)___ 390(@250wpm)___ 325(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97537 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 488(@200wpm)___ 390(@250wpm)___ 325(@300wpm)
He looks at Juno’s face and something in him cracks, then hardens into a line that reads as I will push the world back with my hands if I have to. “This way,” he says, and we move.
Knight’s car is at the curb with the engine running. He doesn’t say a word, which is how he says we’ll grieve later. Render slides into the passenger seat without seeming to come from anywhere. The first siren smears the far end of the block, and the dog in 4B opens its mouth to complain about the disruption.
We’re three turns away before anyone breathes loud enough for the car to hear it. Juno stares at her hands like she could read minutes off them. I reach and she lets me. We sit with that, the way people sit with bad news they can’t yet say out loud.
“I can’t believe what I did,” she says finally, broken, furious in the way only the honest get to be.
“It was an accident, Juno,” I say, hoarse. “And if they try to pin this for something different, I’ll take the fall.”
“No,” she whispers.
“Yes.” And then there’s nothing but silence as she stares at me with new eyes.
Her jaw flexes. Outside, the city makes siren-noises so loyal you could set your watch to it.
Gage breaks the quiet with a surgical whisper. “Huxley just got a ping for an ambulance at that address. She hasn’t connected it to you.”
“Good,” I say. My voice is sandpaper.
Ozzy stares at his soy sauce packet as if it’s a relic from a different life and then tosses it into the cup holder like a tiny surrender. “Devin’s channel is going to post a scheduled video about winning brand wars in twenty minutes,” he says. “You think the algorithm knows how to grieve?”
“No,” Juno says, still looking at her hands. “It only knows how to keep watching.”
Knight takes the bridge like a man who has learned to respect wind. Gage texts me a map of the block with three dots that mean cameras you don’t want to be on, and I text him back a single dot that means the one we were. He replies with a skull and a heart because we are terrible people in the good way.
We drop Render and Ozzy on opposite streets because paranoia has taught us how to breathe. Knight pulls into Juno’s lot and kills the engine. The silence that fills in where the motor was feels like a system reboot.
Upstairs, Juno freezes in the doorway long enough that I almost touch her shoulder, then thinks better of robbing her of the choosing. She picks the couch, sits on the edge like the world is on a slant and the cushion might slide out from under her.
“I didn’t mean to,” she says to no one, to me, to a version of herself that is going to want to judge this moment until the day we don’t get. “I held it up. He hit it.”
“You told him to stop,” I say. “We were outside. He dragged you in. He put his hands on you. You defended yourself.”
“You said we don’t go inside,” she whispers.
“I said we don’t,” I say. “And then Devin pulled you in.”
She looks up, eyes shining and furious. “Do you hear yourself? You sound like a man making excuses for a story he planned.”
I nod because if I say no, she won’t believe me. “I hear it. I hear all of it. You still defended yourself.”
She folds forward, elbows on her knees, hands in her hair. I crouch in front of her and put my hands on her shins, the way you ground someone who might leave their body without asking permission first.
“Breathe with me,” I say. “Five in. Five out.”
We do. Five in. Five out. Her fingers loosen. My heart slows to something less ridiculous.
When we surface, the clock says 8:58 and the YouTube page counts down like a bomb that has decided to be polite about it.
“Do we watch?” she asks.
“No,” I say. “We make our own tape.”
She barks a laugh that tastes like tears. Then she sets her shoulders and wipes her face with the back of her hand in a move that says I’m not done being a person tonight.
“Devin’s dead, isn’t he,” she says.
I don’t answer. We both know that when sirens arrive late to stories like this, they write endings whether you asked them to or not.
My phone buzzes. It’s a number that is Huxley’s without saying it, because she’s careful and she respects my version of careful. “Is there anything you want to tell me about an ambulance on Franklin,” the text reads, “or should I pretend I don’t know you read the news faster than my radio?”
I stare at it until the screen dims. Then I type: “We were not there when the ambulance arrived. I called. A man hurt a woman I love. She defended herself.”