Page 202 of Buried in Blood

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“I like this version of us,” I whisper.

He brushes my hair behind my ear. “So do I.”

That night, we curl into bed again, and I read to him from a book I found at a thrift shop. He listens, eyes closed, a soft smile on his lips.

“Do you ever think about the future?” I ask quietly, closing the book.

“All the time.”

“What do you see?”

He turns to me, gaze dark and soft all at once.

“You,” he says. “And everything else is just noise.”

60

Reese

I don’t sleep much anymore.

Not because of nightmares—those faded with the sound of Harmony’s breathing beside me—but because the silence is loud now. Deafening in ways I didn’t expect.

There’s nothing left to guard.

Nothing left to watch.

The machine Damien built is dead. And I was the one who took it apart.

It started with the Orchard. Then the Golden Hollows. Then I helped shut down Club Muse. For good.

I lit the first match myself. Walked through each room with a can of kerosene and memories I wish I could forget. The halls were empty by then, cleared out during the final raid, but the ghosts remained.

Harmony’s blood.

Brooke’s fear.

The echoes of girls who never made it out.

I soaked every floorboard, every mattress, every inch of that place until the walls reeked of gasoline and shame.

Then I watched it burn.

One spark.

And the empire he’d built turned to smoke.

It should’ve felt like justice.

But it didn’t.

Justice implies balance.

There’s nothing balanced about this.

There’s only fire.

And what comes after.

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