Page 18 of Into the Fall

I couldn’t blame her for not wanting us at the wedding. Maybe we’d been too rough, dark, or wrong for what she’d been trying to build with him. When a person lived through what we had, it changed them. We carried it with us, and no amount of time or distance could shake it off. I guessed she saw that in us, in me, and she didn’t want it near the wedding. I couldn’t fault her for that.

But stopping us from attending the funeral?

Damn, it hurt to be cut off from someone who’d meant something.

I squeezed my eyes shut, the frustration and grief mixing into a bitter cocktail.

“Okay,” I murmured. “Okay.”

“We’ll mark it somehow,” Oberon said, and I nodded even though he couldn’t see me.

The words hung heavy in the air, the weight of everything we’d lost pressing down on us. Donnie had been one of the good ones, the kind of guy who made the worst situations bearable. And now he was gone, like so many others.

The grief hit me out of nowhere, sharp and relentless, as I imagined Donnie’s face and heard his laugh in my mind. I tried to push it away, tried to focus on the hereand now, but the pain of his loss—and the loss of the others who were gone—was always there, lurking beneath the surface, waiting to remind me of what was gone.

“Good kid,” Oberon sounded choked. “Always had a way of making us a unit.”

“It won’t be the same without him,” Trick agreed.

Oberon huffed a laugh. “God, do you remember that time in the UK when Donnie ate all the candy the Brits had?”

A faint smile tugged at my lips despite the grief. This is what our team did—we processed loss through memories. “Donnie always knew how to push the SAS guys’ buttons, stealing their candy stash.”

Trick’s laugh was genuine. “All those candy people in one go. What were they called again?”

“Jelly babies,” Oberon said, chuckling. “Sick little baby-shaped things with heads and everything.”

“Donnie always knew how to make an impression,” Trick added, the humor in his voice fading. “I’m gonna miss him.”

“We aren’t the same team we were ten years ago,” I murmured, the realization hitting me like a ton of bricks.

Oberon sighed. “So many team members gone, and now it’s just us three.”

“Yeah,” Trick said, and for a moment we were quiet.

“To Donnie,” Oberon said, his voice low and filled with sorrow and respect.

“To Donnie,” Trick echoed.

I raised my coffee in salute, though it felt like such a small gesture for someone who had meant so much. “Donnie.”

“Forever team,” Oberon added.

We ended the call, promising to meet up one day, though we’d made that promise so many times before and never saw it through. Once in the last five years wasn’t enough, but lives moved on. I’d spent so long trying to find Natalie and track down anyone connected to the cult, and then I’d joined Quinn’s security, and then I was here in Whisper Ridge. Oberon and Trick did their own thing, but I missed the guys and the camaraderie that had made us closer than brothers.

I needed to go out, drive, walk, or dosomething. I returned to the diner with the empty mug and got a refill, taking my usual seat and staring into the coffee. The hollow feeling only grew, and I didn’t know how to shake the emptiness in my chest. Another friend lost.

I’m feeling stupidly lonely.

The door to the diner opened with force, and I was startled, not aware of my surroundings at all. I tensed when Neil walked in and sat opposite me without asking. His presence was like a storm cloud, full of tension and barely concealed frustration.

I swallowed any hint of grief, forcing it down so deep it felt like I was choking on it. The heaviness in my chest wasn’t going anywhere, but I couldn’t let it show. Not now. Not with Neil sitting there, watching me, all wise and shit. I’d spent years perfecting the art of hiding how I felt, and this was no different.

I forced a smirk onto my face, the kind that usually got a rise from Neil, and slipped into the casual banter that had become our routine. “Sheriff,” I said. “Back so soon? What’s the matter? Miss me already?”

It took effort, more than I wanted to admit, to keep my voice steady and pretend everything was fine. But I knew if I let a crack of what I was feeling show, it’d all come spilling out, and I wasn’t ready. Not here, not now. Not with Neil. Burying the grief was like trying to hold back a flood with nothing but feather pillows—ineffective at best, destructive at worst. But I couldn’t let it out, not yet. So, I kept the banter going, kept the smirk in place, even as the ache in my chest tightened with every word.

Neil raised an eyebrow, his eyes narrowing as he stared at me. For a second, I thought he might have read my expression or seen through the mask I was wearing.

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