4
FOLK
I heard the dog first. On some level, a deeper one than I wanted to face right now, maybe I knew it was Lida. Either way, I didn’t turn around as her rumbling whine reached me, cut off by the low command of the last person I’d expected to see tonight, despite being so close to his house.
Viktor.
Lithe and striking with his copper-streaked hair and light-green eyes, it blew my mind that I’d forgotten about him for so many years. It downright bemused me that he was part of my lifenow. He should’ve been dead, and maybe that’s what had surprised me the first time I’d seen him lurking around the Crow compound—that he’d made it that far.
That we both had.
“This is a nice view at sunrise.” He crouched beside me, smelling of earth and rain. “Lida seems worried you are going to spoil it.”
By splattering myself on the rocks below. I knew how this looked. “I made a promise.” I swept my thumb over a smooth stone by my foot. “No more cliff jumping at night.”
“It will not be night forever.”
“Did you believe that a year ago?”
Viktor leaned forward, scanning the drop and eliciting a straight-up growl from his loyal dog. “I am not sure what I believed a year ago, but I do know that I broke a lot of promises.”
I’d broken promises too, probably the same ones as Viktor. But he wasn’t talking about pill bottles hidden in rolled-up sleeping bags. Half-truths that became lies. Not really. He’d climbed up here to check I wasn’t going to off myself, and it would’ve been the easiest thing to reassure him. To be amused that he cared, even if it was proxy concern for Ranger’s benefit.
But the truth was, I didn’t have the energy—to say it or to feel it. I hadn’t for a while now, and searching for answers at the edge of this cliff had got me nowhere even before Lida had led Viktor up here. “Go home, brother. Your conscience is clear.”
Viktor snorted. “It is not, and it will never be.”
Mine either. I had blood on my hands, so much blood. But it wasn’t killing people that kept me up at night. It was losing people, and there was nothing Viktor could do about that.
I rose, stepping back from the cliff.
It took him a second to follow, but I didn’t look back as I hopped the railing and set my boots on the path.
I left, trusting Lida to keep him safe, and returned to my bike. I was home before I regretted it.
Silent house.
Dark bedroom.
Only texts on my phone screen for company.
Seth:embry said u went home. u ok?
Folk:All good. Think Ivy wanted some space
Seth:from u???
Folk:It happens. I’m not as much fun as Liliana
Decoy didn’t respond straight away. He was driving through the night until Mateo took over at dawn, and even then, I knew he wouldn’t sleep much until they hit their rest stop after lunch, too diligent to take the breaks he’d earned.
I loved him more than I’d ever thought possible. I washappywith him, and with Ivy. I wanted to marry Seth, adopt Ivy, and have more children, but somewhere along the way, I’d missed the dark cloud descending on me. And somehow, despite spending the past year more content than I’d ever been, I couldn’t see past it.
You can. You have before.
But this felt different. The answers to addiction were as obvious as the consequences of contemplating my own mortality. I didn’t want to die, so I lived. And I lived well. But I’d messed up. I’d missed something. And now here I was, dismantled by choking inertia and lacking the tools to fix it.
My phone flashed again. A photo. Ivy tucked up in a pink sleeping bag on Mateo and Embry’s living room floor, tongue poking out, popcorn in her hair. I smiled, and for a moment it felt real, but it didn’t last and gravelly exhaustion swayed me on my feet.