Page 133 of The World Undone

“Go.” Declan handed me a ball that had the hellhound trotting up to us, tongue lolling out the side of his mouth as he wagged his tail. “Get out of here, take a few hours to relax. You need it. We’ll be fine.”

“But—”

“Max, we’ll be okay for a few hours.” A small grin tugged at the corner of her mouth, but something about it felt flat and she dropped her eyes when they met mine. She was just as exhausted and drained as we all were.

“Do you want to join me?” I twined her fingers through mine.

For a moment, she wrestled with the offer, a tension I couldn’t place. “Not this time, I’m going to stay back and keep an eye on things, maybe catch a nap.”

“Alright.” I swallowed my disappointment. They’d all been so strange this morning. “I won’t be long.”

She straightened. “Take as long as you need, Max. Go recharge, take Ralph. This is a marathon, not a sprint. We need you strong and rested for the long haul if we're going to have any hope of—you know, figuring this all out.”

Finding a way for me to not die, she meant.

I pulled away, feeling uncomfortable, though I couldn’t place why, exactly. Maybe she was right. The pent-up energy of everything.

Tensions were high and I still felt the fumes of our ‘family meeting’ coat every interaction I had with my team.

“Just, you know,” I tapped my head, “reach out if you need anything.”

She shook her head. “Give them the space and privacy to process everything. They need it.”

Her eyes screamed the truth. She needed it too.

I sniffed, staring at my shoes. “Right.”

Ralph nudged my left hand, nosing the cartoonishly small ball that he was obsessed with.

Dec squeezed my shoulder. “It was quite a bomb, Max. We just need some time to figure this all out. And so do you. To say the last few days have been chaotic and gut-wrenching would be the world’s biggest understatement, yeah?”

I nodded, suddenly feeling the weight of the cabin press in on me. “You’re right.”

It wasn’t just our cabin either, the unspoken (and very loudly spoken, thank you, Darius) anger and fear, the planning, the grief. The grounds of the Lodge itself were suffocating, the grief unavoidable—attacking us from all directions. Both the loss we were all trying to process and the future loss I was trying like hell to make tomorrow’s problem.

“Alright.” I fought the desire to leave for another moment, sensing something that Declan wasn’t telling me. Maybe she was right though. That was why I needed to leave. To give them space. To think through some things myself for a few hours.

To just go—exist—for a few hours, without the weight of everything suffocating me.

Resisting the urge to press anymore, I kissed the corner of her mouth. “I’ll see you in a bit, I guess.”

I tasted it in the atmosphere, the heavy sadness that cloaked the community here—metallic and cold and impossible to ignore. I felt Evelyn and Bishop’s absence like a heavy stone in the base of my lungs. Saw pain in every pair of eyes I met as I walked through the now-familiar buildings and paths of the grounds. Could feel my own clogging my throat every time I tried to take a breath.

Dec was right. I really was close to burning out. Not just from the last few days, but from the last few months.

I couldn’t argue with my team anymore. Couldn’t stand to see the hurt and betrayal etched across their features after our talk. I didn’t want the remainder of our time together to be filled with so much fear, so much hurt.

As much as they fought me, I knew they were trying their best to understand, to let me go. I needed to find a way to mend things, while giving them the space to express and process what they needed to.

It helped some that they were mobilized by Atlas’s request. Since our talk, whenever I entered a room, I’d often find them huddled together, whispering and conspiring, going over options and possibilities that I knew were pointless.

I didn’t fight them though. He was right. I did owe them this. I couldn’t tell them how to grieve, how to make this okay for them.

But I also couldn’t sit there and just…watch them pour over options that I knew would prove futile. So, I sank all of my time and energy into helping out around The Lodge. I did my best to take over some of Charlie’s duties, while Mer and some of the others kept watch over her.

I’d kept myself so busy that I’d hardly even had time to catch up with Claude and Nash, but I knew that Darius was keeping an eye on them. Between chores and checking on everyone, I caught glimpses of the three of them a few times. They were always bickering, but even after everything they’d been through, it was clear there was still a healthy layer of affection and love underneath all the muck—they just needed time to dig it up.

I spent last night curled up with Eli, holding him while he tried to process shit with his mom on top of everything else. I hated that he was offered my death on a platter so soon after losing his mom. His complicated emotions about her, about everything, were tangled and gnarled, and my chest ached whenever I lingered on his pain for too long.

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