Page 56 of Run of Ruin

When we finally looked back, the footage had shifted to Ezra. He was crashing through the underbrush, branches whipping at his face, calling out Bex’s name. There was a desperation in his voice that settled uneasily in my stomach. Briar caught my eye, and we shared a look.

“Bex, please. Where are you,” Ezra muttered to himself, his voice cracked and raw. “Please… be okay.”

“Damn. They’re really making him out to be this big protector. They’re really gonna make me look like an asshole, aren’t they?” I asked rhetorically. They were painting Ezra this man on a mission to save the girl, meanwhile, I was gonna be the cocky sonofabitch that swoops in.

I can see it now.

Hell, I’d probably do the same thing if I were trying to get ratings. Dammit.

Briar put a comforting hand on my shoulder, but didn’t respond. She knew I was right.

The feed cut to Bex’s point of view in full flight,sprinting through the trees, a snarl chasing after her like death itself. I leaned forward, every muscle in my body tensing as if I could leap through the screen and help her all over again. The moment in the edit was just as intense as I remembered it, the fear in her cries, the sound of her breath hitching in her throat. And then, Briar’s camera caught me swinging that rock, cracking it against the creature’s skull and dropping it in a heap at her feet.

But what came next surprised the hell out of both of us.

The edit didn’t cut away to some Praxis-approved narrative beginning to paint me as this villain. It lingered. It moved between the three of us, Briar, me, and Ezra, all focused on Bex in our own ways. Briar’s hand steadying her shoulder and cleaning her wounds, my voice murmuring that she was okay, and working to provide meals for her, Ezra’s panicked search and desperate need for her safety. The footage painted a picture of people showing each other genuine care. Of people looking out for each other in a place designed to tear them apart.

And the weirdest part? It made it look like our only motive was Bex’s safety. Briar, me, and Ezra, protectors rather than competitors.

The footage shifted to a quiet moment the three of us shared around one of our late night campfires. We were laughing, joking, teasing, flirting, on my part mostly. It was easy, simple, and fun.

“I told her about Felix,” Briar whispered.

I turned to face her, my jaw slack.

We never talked about Felix. That was the rule, unspoken, but solid as stone. He’d tried to take us when we were kids, and Briar and I hadn’t seen him for what he was. That blind spot, that failure to recognize the danger in him, was her deepest shame. She never listened when we tried toconvince her that it wasn’t her fault. I knew that event changed her.

And as far as I knew, she hadn’t spoken his name in nearly twenty years.

But now she’d told Bex?

“What’d she say?”

“That it wasn’t my fault,” she replied.

“Like I’ve been saying for two decades,” I retorted.

“Yeah, yeah,” she said, waving me off.

“You must really trust her,” I said carefully.

She met my eyes. “Don’t you?”

I didn’t hesitate. “Yeah,” I said. “I do.”

Briar’s eyes fixed back on the screen and I knew we’d likely never speak Felix’s name again. Fine by me. But a part of me was glad that someone outside of us two knew about it. Maybe now that she’s shared it, it wouldn’t weigh as heavy with an additional person to help carry the weight.

I glanced back at the screen just in time for the big showdown. I braced myself when I pulled her against a tree and caged her in. I waited for the fight, the anger…

But it never came.

The footage cut from Bex and I pressed together in tense silence, thinking we’d heard something in the woods, to Bex calling out for Ezra. She threw herself into his arms. Like it was a happy reunion.

I turned my head, locking eyes with Briar. Her brow was furrowed, mirroring my confusion.

The Ezra on the screen thanked us for protecting her. And on camera, we swore we’d do it again.

“I’ll protect her,”Ezra said on the screen. His eyes looked at Bex with a type of longing that I understood intimately.“I care about her, and I want her to survive this. That’s all that matters.”

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