Page 49 of Sage Haven
But fear and desire?
They live too close together inside me, and I didn’t want to run.
I wanted him to chase me.
12
REICH
The revelations from thenight before with Castor twisted my thoughts into knots, each one pulling tighter, amplifying the confusion already simmering just beneath the surface of everything I thought I knew.
Sage.
She was a mystery since the first day she showed up on my field.
An equation I couldn’t solve, no matter how many times I tried to work through the variables.
But now?
Now, she was tangled in something much bigger than I had expected.
Her connection to Klay changed everything.
It shifted the entire foundation under my feet.
What was she running from?
And more importantly—why did it lead her to me?
I clenched my teeth as I rolled up my sleeves.
The buttons popped free with sharp snaps, like breaking threads.
My slacks were stained, dirt clinging to my knees, but I didn’t care.
Not tonight.
Not now.
I drove the shovel into the dirt again, the metal biting deep into the earth with a sound that was all too familiar.
A hollow, wet scrape.
The kind of sound that got under your skin if you thought about it too long.
The sorry bastard lying on the ground next to me had bled all over my shirt hours ago.
Another mess.
Another name checked off the list.
The red stain had already dried to a dark rust at the sleeves.
I should have changed before now.
I should have taken a hot shower, stripped away the blood and grime, burned the evidence like I always did, but I hadn’t.
I’d been too irritated.
