Page 109 of Carrick
“I told them what they needed to know.”
Her gaze sharpened. “He’s not going to be safe.”
“No,” I said. “But he’ll be safer.”
Her lip trembled—just for a second—before she locked it down. “Chicago’s a big city.”
“I gave him the name. He knows to find her.”
She nodded, then crossed the room and handed me her mug. I took it, held it.
Her fingers brushed my cheek—light, brief. “You didn’t have to do this.”
“I know.”
She didn’t ask why I followed. She didn’t need to. The answer lived in every breath between us.
We didn’t split off to separate rooms or talk about where we were going. We just ended up in my cabin, exactly like the lie we’d told to cover the truth. I didn’t turn on the lights. She didn’t ask me to.
The cot in the corner and the half-made bed against the back wall sat quiet, like they’d been waiting for us to bring in the weight we’d been dragging all night. A single camping lantern flickered on the crate-turned-nightstand, casting a low amberglow across the unfinished drywall and concrete floor. It gave the room a sepia tint, softening the hard edges like we were suspended in some forgotten pocket of time.
Bellamy didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to.
She walked to the bed and collapsed onto it with a graceless finality, like her body had stopped negotiating with her spine. Her hands disappeared into the sleeves of the sweatshirt she wore, which was mine. The same one I’d handed her that first night when she wouldn’t meet my eyes. It had drowned her then. It still did. But now it looked like it belonged to her; worn in, familiar, frayed around the edges like both of us.
She curled in on herself, knees drawn up, cheek resting on denim. I watched her for a moment, then sat on the edge of the cot and bent to unlace my boots. My fingers worked from muscle memory, tugging at knots like this was any other night But it wasn’t. Nothing about this was routine.
My mind kept returning to the apartment. The splintered doorframe. The ransacked drawers. Rayden’s hands shaking as he fumbled with the cash. The broken picture frame on the floor, two kids inside smiling at a future they couldn’t begin to imagine. But worse than all of that was the look on her face.
She hadn’t looked at him like a sister. Not even like a survivor. She looked like a girl watching the last thread of her life snap in real time, then tying the knot herself.
And after? She’d folded into me like her bones had given out, like she’d poured the last of her strength into letting him go and had nothing left to hold herself up.
I hadn’t stopped holding her since.
Even now, the space between us felt too wide. Too quiet. Like if I blinked, she might be gone.
She was the one who broke the silence first.
“Do you think he’ll make it?” Her voice was quiet—not soft, but stripped down, worn thin at the edges like an old prayer.
I looked over. She wasn’t watching me. Her gaze was fixed on a distant corner of the room, like looking at me might make the truth too real. She didn’t seem hopeful. Just tired. Like someone who knew better than to wish, but still couldn’t stop the ache.
“I think he has a shot,” I said. “And right now, that’s more than he had yesterday.”
She gave a slow nod, but it felt automatic—her body moving before her mind could catch up. The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was dense, like fog in the lungs. Hard to breathe through. Heavy with everything we weren’t saying.
I started where I could. “You didn’t see Niko’s face.”
Finally, she turned. Not surprised. Not defensive. Just curious.
“He looked at me like I was a stranger,” I said. And that—God—that landed harder than I expected. Niko had always been the anchor, the one who backed my play even when he hated it. And this time, he hadn’t.
“You think you crossed a line?”
“I know I did.”
She nodded, slow and sure. Like she understood the weight of it. The cost. The fallout still coming.
