Page 57 of After All The Wreckage
Performed by The Beatles
I leanedup against the wall, legs sprawled along the edge of the mattress, as I watched my brother sleep with Ivy tucked up against him. The curls he’d kept shorn close to his head over the last year had dried while trying to spring to life. His face was free of dirt, but it made the purple-and-black marks on his pale skin stand out even more. My throat nearly closed thinking about how much worse it could have been than a few bruises and scraped-up hands.
The anger I’d kept buried all evening returned. My fingers clenched. I wanted to repay the favor, giving the grown-ass man who’d hit my kid brother a permanent mark that wouldn’t fade the way Monte’s bruises would.
One look at River’s face as he and Audrey had rushed into the apartment tonight had told me he felt the same. They’d hugged us—held us tight—and then gone down to cover the barfor me yet again. I owed them more than I could ever repay, but whenever I brought it up, they got upset.
“We’re family, Gage. And family takes care of family,” River had said. And the truth was, if the roles were reversed, I’d do the same for them. But I’d never been good with pity. Or feeling like I owed someone something.
My eyes closed briefly, exhaustion pulling at me, but every time they shut, the entire day played on repeat. I wanted desperately to feel nothing but relief at having Monte home. Instead, the storm felt like it was lingering over us. A momentary pause before we’d be battered all over again.
Dunn was still alive, which meant Monte would continue to see Rory shooting him.
For a few seconds in the car outside the police station, I’d panicked. I’d felt Monte’s fear, and it had become mine. And then I’d been frustrated, thinking Rory had hidden something from me. But those feelings had passed in a flash with the look of hurt and incredulity on her face.
That’s when I’d realized the worse truth. If Rory shot the congressman, it was because of us. Because she was protecting us, and I couldn’t allow that. In that panicked moment, I’d thought if I could keep her away from us, it would keep her away from Dunn.
But the truth was, Monte’s visions were never wrong.
Which meant Rory was going to shoot the congressman.
I closed my eyes, and all the versions of her I’d seen today scrolled across my mind. Determined and sure while handing me a contract. Smiling and teasing with the officers at the Rayburn Building. Fierce and confident climbing a fire escape. Sad and lonely, thinking of her mom in a coma. Devastated because her father had left her behind after she’d given him what he’d wanted and he’d deemed it a failure.
Rory and I had never shared more than a platonic hug in the decade I’d known her. And yet, an inexplicable bond seemed to be knotting us together. One that I’d never acknowledged until she’d sauntered into the bar this weekend. Part of my overreaction in the car had everything to do with those threads tightening around me because I doubted our abilities to take on the added burden of each other’s complicated lives without collapsing.
But hadn’t I learned in my physics courses that it wasn’t the strength of a singular pillar that kept a bridge standing? If a bridge only had to sustain its own weight, and if it was perfectly rigid, then a solo column might be able to bear it. But instead, a bridge fought the external forces of vehicles crossing it and the natural inclination of materials to bend under pressure. This was why engineers used multiple columns to help transfer the mass from one to the other, redundancies in case one failed.
Sharing the weight helped each perform the job of holding up the whole.
Family taking care of family.
Monte whimpered, and my hand immediately went to his leg, hoping the simple touch would soothe him. Instead, he thrashed his feet and sat up straight with eyes wide in fear.
My hand on him tightened. “You’re safe, Monte. You’re at home. You’re safe. I’ve got you.”
He drew in a ragged breath, glanced down at Ivy, and scooted away from her to join me with his back to the wall.
“I saw the warehouse again,” he said quietly. He looked frightened but also worried. “Gage… I saw… I saw Demi there too.”
My blood ran cold, a shiver running up my spine. “What?”
Usually, Monte’s visions slowly came into focus, giving him more pieces each time, but this felt like an entirely new vision.
“She’s at his side,” he said, voice shaking. “She looks like shit… like a skeleton. Eyes hollowed, clothes hanging from her.”
I swallowed hard. “And Rory is the one to shoot him? With Demi standing right there?”
Monte’s brows creased, and he nodded. “She’s got a gun. She’s aiming it at him, but by the time the gun goes off, I’m looking at Dunn in the dream. He’s moving, and I can’t tell if it’s because he’s trying to protect Demi or if he’s trying to run or what. But then there’s blood pouring from his forehead, and he gets the same stunned look I’ve been seeing all week. But now, instead of just seeing him on the ground, I see Demi… She sort of catches him as he falls, and they both end up tangled there on the ground… There’s so much blood… I don’t know… I don’t know…”
He banged his head against the wall, and acid eroded another layer of my stomach lining. Fuck. Was Demi killed too? Would Dunn and our mother die at the same time?
With Rory pulling the trigger?
“I don’t know why Rory is there,” I said. “But I’m the one who brought her into this. Tomorrow,” I said as I glanced at the alarm clock on the side of the bed and saw it was two in the morning, “or later today, I’ll call her and make sure she stays out of it. That she drops anything to do with us or Dunn.”
Monte’s eyes closed. “It won’t help. It never does.”
The despair in his voice slayed me.
