Page 28 of Hollow

The words hang between us, heavy with all our baggage.

I clear my throat. “We should crash. Tomorrow’s gonna be a long day.” I nod toward the couch.

He heads there. The way the sweatpants hang on his hips, it’s obvious he’s not wearing anything underneath. I look away and focus on banking the fire.

“Flint?” He’s softer now.

I look up, keeping my face neutral. “Yeah?”

“Thanks. For letting us stay. For helping her.” He pauses. “For still having my back after everything.”

The honesty catches me off guard. We don’t do this. This straight-up communication thing. We fight, we fuck, we bail. Repeat. This is new territory, and it’s throwing me off.

“Don’t mention it,” I say, rougher than I intend to. “Just get some sleep.”

I turn away and get my bed situation sorted. Unroll the sleeping bag by the stove, grab a pillow from the trunk, and try to get comfortable on the floor. Across the room, I hear Damiano settling on the couch, the leather creaking under his weight.

For a while, all I hear is the fire crackling and waves hitting the cliffs. I stare at the ceiling, too wired to sleep despite being exhausted. My mind keeps replaying everything—Briar covered in blood,the stake in Liam’s neck, Damiano’s hands all dirty from burying a body.

“I used to miss this place, you know,” Damiano says, so quiet I almost don’t hear him.

I know exactly what he means. This space. Us. The weird peace we sometimes find between all the mayhem.

“Yeah.” I keep my voice just as low. “Me, too.”

In the dim light from the dying fire, with Briar’s steady breathing between us, I can almost believe we could find that peace again.

Almost.

But as I drift off, one thought stays with me: nothing binds people together like blood.

And now all three of us are covered in it.

Chapter 10

Briar

The body doesn’t look real under the pale morning light.

I stand between Flint and Damiano at the edge of the shallow grave, staring at what’s left of Liam. His face is partially covered with loose soil, one arm bent at an unnatural angle. The stake is gone. Damiano must have removed it. In the daylight, everything seems both more brutal and more ordinary. Just a dead man in a hole in the ground.

“It needs to be deeper,” Damiano says. “At least three more feet.”

“And it needs to be fast,” Flint adds, scanning the perimeter of the maze. “Someone might notice if we’re out here too long.”

Despite the morning chill, sweat trickles down my back. I slept for maybe four hours at Flint’s place before the nightmares started. Dead eyes. Blood spray. That moment when the stake slid into Liam’sthroat and I felt the resistance, then the give. I woke up gasping, and within minutes we were walking through the fog back to my family’s estate.

I swallow hard, throat dry. “What do we do?”

Damiano hands me a shovel. “We dig.”

Flint gives him a look. “She doesn’t need to?—”

“I can dig,” I cut in, gripping the shovel tightly. My knuckles turn white against the wooden handle. He obviously believes I’m too fragile for this. Too sick. Too privileged. Too whatever. “This is my mess. I did this.”

Damiano nods, something like respect flickering across his face. He starts digging at one end of the grave, his movements methodical and practiced. Flint takes the other end, working with quick, forceful thrusts of his shovel. I position myself at the middle, between them.

The first shovelful is the hardest. My arms protest immediately, muscles reminding me that they’re accustomed to lifting cameras, not digging graves. But I keep going, ignoring the burn spreading through my shoulders and back. The repetitive motion is almost hypnotic.

---