Chapter Text
AZZI DOESN’T KNOW when it started. The pull, the ache, the hunger that sits deep in the marrow of her bones. It comes in waves, soft and subtle at times, a dull itch beneath her skin, a whisper threading through her veins. Other times, it surges through her like a tide breaking against rock, unrelenting and impossible to ignore.
She doesn’t know what’s wrong with her. She doesn’t know why it happens, why her body betrays her, why the scent of skin—warm, alive, thrumming with blood—makes her mouth water, makes her stomach coil with something between hunger and need.
But it’s there. It’s always there, lingering and rotting and picking.
The bedroom is dim, bathed in the soft flicker of a lavender-scented candle, the wax pooling in thick, glossy ribbons against ceramic. Music hums from the speaker in the corner, something slow, something dreamy, something meant to wrap them like the haze of summer air. Colleen—her friend, the one who Azzi snuck out to see because her dad prefers her encasement—sits close. Too close.
Azzi can feel the heat radiating from her, the pulse at her throat, the scent of her skin—warm sugar, sweat, something soft, something unbearably human. It drowns her.
“Look,” Colleen says, extending her hand, fingers tipped in a glossy, iridescent pink. Azzi likes pink. “Aren’t they cute?”
Azzi takes her hand without thinking. Holds it between her own, runs the pad of her thumb over the smooth shell of Colleen’s nail. The skin beneath is warm, soft. So soft. She brings it closer to her face, inhaling without meaning to.
The scent makes her stomach twist.
“Azzi?” Colleen’s voice is playful, teasing. “You like them or what?”
Azzi swallows. Her mouth is wet. Her skin is too tight, stretching over her bones. The world is slipping out of focus, narrowing down to the pulse in Colleen’s wrist, the warmth of her fingertips.
She doesn’t think.
She doesn’t mean to.
But her mouth moves before her mind can stop it.
Her lips part, her teeth press into the flesh of Colleen’s finger—and then they sink in.
The taste of her explodes against Azzi’s tongue, hot and bright, metallic and sweet, a rush of salt and warmth that floods her senses, makes her shudders makes something inside of her unwind in satisfaction.
Then comes the scream.
It cuts through the air like glass shattering, sharp and shrill and alive with horror. Colleen jerks her hand back, blood blooming across the surface of her skin, dripping in thick, crimson beads onto the bedspread.
Azzi stares, her own breath caught in her throat, the taste still lingering on her tongue, sharp and vivid, like she’s just bitten into the core of something forbidden.
And then she’s running.
Her lungs move before she can really think about it, her body acting on instinct alone. She pushes past Colleen, past the echo of her scream, past the scent of blood hanging in the air like a prayer unanswered.
The night swallows her whole.
Cold air bites at her skin as she stumbles down the front steps, across the dewy grass, her breath coming in ragged gasps. Her heart is a war drum in her chest, pounding against her ribs, screaming for her to move, move, move.
Her hands shake. Her clothes—her favorite little pajama set—are streaked with red. She swipes at her mouth, smearing it further, tasting it again, reliving it.
A sob crawls up her throat, but she swallows it down.
She doesn’t stop running.
She doesn’t look back, not until she reaches the house. The house that doesn’t feel like home.
It’s the kind of place that echoes, the kind of place where the walls are too clean, too blank, waiting to be filled with pictures that will never be hung, waiting for laughter that will never come. Azzi doesn’t know how many places they’ve lived now—how many times she’s been told to pack a bag, how many times her father has driven them across state lines, searching for a fresh start that never lasts.
She doesn’t remember what home is supposed to feel like.
The porch light flickers above her, buzzing softly, casting her shadow long across the floorboards. For a moment, she hesitates, fingers curling around the doorknob, holding her breath.
Then, she pushes inside.
Her father is still awake.
He’s on the couch, hunched forward, elbows braced against his knees. The TV murmurs in the background—some old Western, the sound warped and hollow, cowboys riding through dust-choked plains, the ghosts of their pasts trailing behind them. He turns at the sound of the door opening, and for a second, everything stops.
His face is unreadable. Slowly, he rises to his feet.
Azzi watches the way his body stiffens, how his fingers twitch at his sides, like he’s trying not to clench them into fists. His eyes drag over her—her wild, tangled curls, the blood smeared across her mouth, her chin, the deep red stains soaking through her pajamas.
His breath leaves him in a sharp, heavy exhale.
“You didn’t.” His voice is flat. Not a question, not a plea. Just a statement.
Azzi doesn’t answer. Everything feels distant, like she’s hearing him from the other side of a thick sheet of glass, like the words have to travel through water before they reach her. Her own breath sounds foreign in her ears, too shallow, too fast, like she’s forgotten how to exist inside her own body.
Her father swallows hard. His hands shake.
“Five minutes,” he says, his voice clipped. “Be ready to leave in five minutes.”
Azzi barely hears him.
The floor tilts beneath her feet, and she stumbles toward her bedroom, her legs numb, her hands still trembling, her skin burning with the phantom heat of Colleen’s fingers between her own, soft and warm and human. She doesn’t remember opening the door, doesn’t remember closing it behind her, but suddenly she’s there, standing in the middle of the too-empty room, staring at herself in the dirty mirror.
The blood is everywhere.
It’s on her hands, smeared across her cheeks, darkening the collar of her hoodie. The reflection stares back at her with wide, hollow eyes, her mouth slightly parted, lips stained red like some grotesque version of a child playing with lipstick.
She should feel sick.
She should feel something.
Instead, she presses her tongue against her teeth, against the taste that still lingers, rich and coppery and real.
Her insides curl—not with guilt, not with shame, but with something darker, something she doesn’t want to name.
Then, suddenly—
“Move, Azzi!”
Her father’s voice slams through the silence, sharp and jagged, splintering the air.
“When the cops get here, we have to be good and gone.”
AND, GOOD AND GONE they were.
Until one morning, he was just gone.
Azzi had woken up to a quiet too thick, too unnatural. The kind of quiet that wraps itself around your throat, that steals the breath from your lungs before you even understand why. The motel room was dim in the early morning light, the air stale, smelling of cigarette smoke and old coffee. She had turned over, expecting to see him there, sprawled out on the other bed like always, one arm slung over his eyes, his shoes still on because he never really let himself relax.
But the bed was empty. And, in his place—neatly arranged, almost too neatly—was a wad of cash, Azzi’s birth certificate, and a letter.
She had stared at it for a long time, her mind slow to catch up, sluggish and unwilling.
He left me.
The words settled in her stomach, heavy and thick, pressing down, pressing in.
She read the letter. It was predictable. He apologized. He told her he loved her. He said he knew she can’t fix the cravings she has, but he also can’t be there to help her anymore. She’s eighteen now. It’s her responsibility.
Azzi understands. She’s too much, too bad, too tainted. If she were him, she’d leave too.
And so, she followed in his footsteps, and left the motel behind. She took buses, walked when she had to, let the world blur around her, let the days slip between her fingers. No real destination. Just idle movement.
Now, a week later, the air is thick, dense with humidity, clinging to her skin like something alive. She lays on a bench beneath a flickering streetlight, the book in her hands a paperback she barely remembers shoving into her bag before she left. The words on the page shift and swim under her gaze, her mind too restless to focus, too aware of the way the night feels stretched thin around her, like something waiting to snap.
Suddenly, a feeling hits her. It coils in her gut, sharp and certain, pricking at the edges of her awareness.
Someone’s watching her.
She sits up fast, her fingers tightening around the book, pulse thrumming low and insistent beneath her skin. She glances around, her eyes scanning the shadows, the empty road, the neon glow of a gas station in the distance.
And then she sees him.
A few yards away, standing just past the reach of the streetlight, an odd-looking man lingers, his posture too still, his head tilted slightly, as if studying her.
Her muscles go tight. She grabs her bag, fingers closing around the strap, her body poised to run.
Slow and deliberate, the man starts toward her.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he calls, his voice thick with a Southern drawl, heavy and unhurried. Azzi swallows, her throat dry. It makes sense, she thinks absently. They’re in Mississippi.
She shifts her weight onto the balls of her feet, ready, her eyes darting to the road, mapping out the quickest route away.
“You waiting for the bus?” she asks, her voice steady, but distant, detached.
The man smiles, slow and easy. “Well, no, missy,” he replies, still approaching. “I came lookin’ for you.”
Azzi’s stomach drops. She stiffens, her head telling her to run, to bolt now before it’s too late. But something in her gut keeps her feet planted to the pavement beneath her, a glint of curiosity resting within her hammering heart.
“Do I know you?” she asks, slow, cautious.
He’s closer now, just near enough for her to make out the odd tilt of his head, the way his nose twitches like a dog sniffing the air.
“I guess not in the way you mean,” he says. Then, almost lazily, “I smelled you.”
Azzi’s blood goes cold. Her breath catches, her pulse skidding sideways in her chest.
“Probably like you smell me now,” he adds.
And, suddenly, she does.
It hits her all at once, curling under her tongue, sharp and unmistakable. The scent of something rich. It runs hotter, seemingly less human than that of Colleen’s scent or even Azzi’s father’s. This man smells different.
She starts to walk away, her feet moving before she can think better of it.
“When was the last time you fed?” he follows up, from behind her.
Azzi stops. The world tilts.
She turns back, slow and careful, staring at him now, really seeing him. His clothes are worn, his face lined with something unreadable. He’s still watching her, his nostrils flaring slightly, his gaze sweeping over her figure in that same searching, knowing way.
Azzi swallows. He’s still approaching.
“Stop,” she says, her voice breaking slightly, sounding young. “Stop, stop, stop there. Stop.”
He does.
But he doesn’t look startled. Doesn’t look afraid.
Instead, he tilts his head, inhales again, and nods, like he’s confirming something to himself.
“It must be weeks now,” he murmurs. “At least.”
Azzi just stares, her breath uneven, her mind trying to catch up. “You can smell that?” she asks, her voice barely above a whisper.
The man grins a little, his teeth catching the light. “Oh, sure,” he says, like it’s the simplest thing in the world. “You—you can smell lots of things, if you know how.”
He doesn’t say anything else. Just watches her for a long, loaded moment before turning on his heel and walking away.
Azzi stands frozen, her body vibrating with something she doesn’t know. She should leave. She should go.
But something in her shifts, restless and hungry and desperate for understanding.
Maybe she’s stupid. Maybe she’s reckless.
But she has nothing left to lose.
So, she follows.
And, as she does so, she learns things.
His name is Sullivan, but he tells her to call him Sully, says it suits him better. The way he says it, practiced and easy, makes her think he’s said it many times before, to many people before. And yet, she wonders how many have followed. How many have felt what she feels now, this slow, gnawing pull in her gut, this instinct that wants to trust him, this instinct that wants to run.
Eaters. That’s what they are, he tells her. It’s what he calls them—their kind, their affliction, their curse, their evolution, their gift. Whatever it is, it has a name now, something solid, something that doesn’t shift and slide through her fingers when she tries to grasp it. Eaters. An identity. But it does not settle right in her bones. It does not soothe the part of her that has been twisting and turning her entire life, lost in the shadows of what she doesn’t understand.
He tells her he has rules—or, at least one that matters above all else. Never, ever eat another Eater. He says it with something close to reverence, something close to fear. As if he’s seen it happen. As if he’s done it. It should make her feel safe around him, this unspoken promise of protection, this line that he will not cross. But it doesn’t. Not really. Because she knows, deep down, that hunger makes monsters of all of them.
And yet, she still follows.
It’s not logic that makes her move, nor is it trust. It’s something deeper, something buried beneath muscle and marrow, whispering that she’s not meant to be alone. That this—this man, this strange and knowing man—may have answers she needs. Or at the very least, he may know what comes next.
The house he leads her to isn’t his. She knows it the second they step inside, the air too sterile, the pictures on the walls showing strangers, smiling faces that don’t belong to him. A house full of ghosts, their memories lining the shelves, pressed between the pages of books, tucked inside the fabric of a forgotten jacket draped over the back of a chair. And still, Sully walks through it like he owns it, like he belongs. He sinks into a chair, easy and fluid, gestures for her to sit, and she does, if only because she doesn’t know what else to do.
She asks if he knows more of them. If there are others. If they’re alone.
He shrugs, says he’s passed by some. Says there are more than she’d think, but not many. A dying breed, maybe. Or an emerging one. She doesn’t know which is worse.
It creeps in slowly—the scent.
At first, it’s like the tide before a storm, lapping at her awareness in soft, insistent waves. But then it floods. It surges through her, thick and undeniable, a red, wet heat in the back of her throat, on her tongue, in her lungs. Blood. Rich and warm and calling, sitting on a bed of flesh. It fills the space between them, clings to her skin, and before she can stop herself, Azzi stands, moving, following.
Up the stairs, one step, two, three—Sully begins her, silent, expectant. The smell is stronger now, pulse in the air, waiting. The door before Azzi is closed, but it doesn’t matter. She already knows what’s inside.
She opens it anyway.
The woman is barely alive.
Azzi can see it in the way her chest rises and falls, shallow and uneven, her skin pale, her lips parted just enough to let out the barest of whimpers. There’s something empty in her gaze, something already half-gone, like she knows what she is, what she’ll be.
A meal.
Azzi can’t move. Her body locks, her fingers tremble at her sides, and her mind reels against the weight of it, against the reality of it, against the brutal, awful knowing that this is what she’s supposed to be. An Eater. A thing that doesn’t hesitate, a thing that doesn’t mourn, a thing that takes and takes until there is nothing left but bones.
But she does hesitate. She does mourn. And she doesn’t want to take.
Sully’s presence behind her is solid, a shadow curling at her back, a force she can feel expressing against the edge of her indecision. He doesn’t touch her; he doesn’t have to. His hunger fills the space between them, echoes Azzi’s, amplifies it, makes it a tangible thing, a beast rattling its cage. But he doesn’t take the first bite. That’s for her. That’s what he wants—to teach, to mold, to show her what she must do, what she will always have to do.
But she can’t.
She can’t, she can’t, she can’t.
The room tilts. The scent is too much, the hunger is too much, the choice is too much. She shakes, her vision blurs, her stomach churns with the war between instinct and morality. She wants to run. She wants to stay. She wants to exist outside of this hunger, outside of this need, outside of what she is.
Sully is angry.
She can hear it in the way his breath hitches, in the way his fingers twitch at his sides, in the way his jaw tightens as he exhales, sharp and slow, a tether on his frustration. He tells her she has to feed. That this thing inside them needs to be fed. That this isn’t a choice, that it will never be a choice. He doesn’t want her to leave. He likes her. Thinks she needs guidance, thinks she’s lost and searching and waiting for someone to show her the way.
But this is not the someone she needs, and this is not the way she wants to do it.
Right now, she needs to leave.
And so she does.
TWO DAYS LATER, Azzi is in Kentucky.
She doesn’t know exactly where—somewhere south of Louisville, judging by the road signs—but it doesn’t really matter. She’s been drifting from place to place, moving like a ghost through bus stations and empty streets, her body propelled forward by instinct alone. She doesn’t let herself think about where she’s going. Thinking leads to remembering, and remembering leads to hunger, and hunger is a dangerous thing to indulge.
The air is heavy with humidity, pressing against her skin like a damp palm. The last bus let her off miles back, and she’s been walking ever since, following the loose idea of a town, of food, of somewhere to disappear for a little while. That’s all she does now—disappear, reappear, disappear again. She doesn’t belong anywhere, not really.
When she sees a small market store up ahead, its neon sign flickering weakly, she stops. Inside, fluorescent lights hum against the silence. The air-conditioning is too cold, biting at the sweat on her arms, but she doesn’t shiver. She moves carefully through the aisles, scanning the shelves with the sharp-eyed calculation of someone who knows how to take just enough, never too much. She’s gotten good at it—quiet hands, quick movements, nothing flashy, nothing reckless. She bends down near the deodorant display, fingers curling around a stick of it, slipping it into her backpack.
And then she smells it.
Something shifts inside her, a tension coiling in her gut, a deep and instinctual recognition that makes her breath hitch in her throat. It’s familiar, but not. The same kind of pull Sully had, but richer, deeper. Warmer. Her eyes flicker up, cautious, searching, and then—
Her gaze lands on a girl at the end of the aisle.
Tall. Blonde. Pretty in a way that catches Azzi off guard, sharp and delicate at once. She’s wearing a loose hoodie, her hands tucked into the front pocket, her stance casual. Azzi knows, instantly. This girl is what Sully called an Eater. She smells like home, like something Azzi has never had but always, always wanted.
She stills. Doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe.
It’s then that the girl looks at her. Not directly—just a flicker of a glance, a side-eyed kind of thing, quick and subtle, like she’s trying not to be obvious. But Azzi feels it anyway. Feels it like a weight pressing against her chest. Her fingers tighten around the strap of her backpack. She doesn’t know whether to run or approach, doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do with the sudden, undeniable fact of this girl’s presence.
Before she can think too hard about it, something else shifts in the air.
Down the aisle, a woman and her toddler are walking past, pushing a shopping cart. A few feet behind them, a man stumbles forward, his voice raised, his words slurred with the weight of alcohol or drugs or both. Azzi watches, tense, as he gestures aggressively toward the woman, his face twisted with irritation.
“Hey, don’t talk to her like tha—” Azzi starts, voice soft but firm. But before she can even finish, the blonde girl is cutting in, louder, clearer.
“Hey! You’re out of control, buddy.”
The man stops, blinking as he turns his attention toward her. Azzi does the same. The girl is still standing at the end of the aisle, her posture unchanged, like she’s completely unbothered by the man’s glare and Azzi’s stare.
“You with the store or somethin’?” the man asks, his words thick with drunken hostility.
“No,” the blonde girl responds, “but I’mma escort you out of it.”
The man lets out a bark of laughter. “Fuckin’ see what happens.”
“See what happens?” The girl tilts her head, grinning like she’s on a joke no one else understands. “What’s gonna happen, huh?”
And then, just as easily as flipping a switch, she snatches the man’s hat right off his head and bolts for the exit.
Azzi watches, slightly stunned, as the girl sprints out of the store, laughing, her voice bright and alive, the sound of it hitting something deep inside Azzi’s chest like a struck match. The man yells, swears, stumbles forward in pursuit, and then they’re both gone, out the door.
Azzi doesn’t follow.
Or—she does, just not right away.
She stays inside the market for a little longer, moving slow, her fingers brushing over crinkling plastic and cold glass bottles, pretending to browse. It’s not that she isn’t curious, or that the pull of the girl’s scent hasn’t settled deep inside her bloodstream, thick and electric like summer air before a storm. She just—needs a moment. A breath. A pause before she steps into something she still doesn’t understand.
So, she lingers, taking a box of crackers, a pack of gum, slipping them into her her bag carefully. Just enough to get by. The cashier doesn’t look twice at her when she walks up to the counter, because she knows what she’s doing—knows to make herself small, to keep her movements natural, to buy something cheap and sugary so she doesn’t look like the kind of girl who would steal.
She takes a sucker from the jar by the register, turns it in her fingers like coin. It’s bright red, cherry-flavored. She pays for it with crumpled bills, lets the wrapper crinkle between her fingertips as she steps outside.
The air has changed.
The last bit of daylight is filtering into something softer, a sunset thick with golden light, the sky stretched wide and open above the town. The streets are quiet, emptied out in the way that small towns tend to empty, folding into themselves as the evening settles in. She lets the door swing shut behind her, the bell above it jangling once before silence presses in again.
The scent returns. Warm, unmistakable. The girl. It’s here, lingering, curling through the air like smoke. It makes Azzi inhale deeper. But underneath it, something sharper, more distinct—something else she recognizes, even if she doesn’t want to. The sharp, iron-heavy scent of flesh and blood.
She stands still, feet planted against the cracked pavement, her eyes scanning the street without moving her head. She doesn’t want to look like she’s searching. Just watching. Observing. The way Sully did, with that sharp, animal awareness that made her stomach turn. If she knows what to look for—if she knows how to smell—it helps.
It’s then that the blonde girl steps out from behind a rotting old building across the street, moving like she’s just now remembering how to walk properly, how to carry herself again. She’s wiping at her mouth, her hands, her hoodie sleeve streaked with something dark and wet. She’s trying to make herself presentable, but it’s obvious.
She just fed.
Azzi knows it. Probably on that man, if she had to guess.
And the thing is—she should be disgusted. Should be repulsed, or afraid, or something other than this quiet, restless fascination settling into her limbs. But instead, she watches. Watches the way the girl moves, the way her chest rises and falls like she’s steadying herself, the way she shakes out her hands and lifts her chin, like it’s just another thing to get past.
The girl looks up. Sees her.
And Azzi—Azzi doesn’t look away.
She should, probably. Should pretend she hasn’t noticed, should turn and walk the other way. But she doesn’t. Because looking at the girl like this, seeing her up close, smelling her—it’s overwhelming in a way Azzi didn’t expect. It tugs at something within her, something buried, something old. She wants to step forward, to close the space between them, to press closer and let herself sink into that warmth.
Her body makes the choice before her mind does.
A single step. Just one. Just enough to feel like she’s moving toward something instead of away.
The girl passes her, close enough that Azzi can feel the shift in the air between them, the almost-touch of something unspoken. And then—
“He’s over in there,” the girl murmurs, tilting her head toward the old building behind her. “Like, four hundred yards, if you wanna…”
She doesn’t finish the sentence, but Azzi knows. If you wanna feed.
She doesn’t want to.
She shakes her head, a small, sharp movement, and the girl doesn’t push. Just keeps walking, like she already knew the answer before she even asked.
And this time, Azzi does follow right away. She doesn’t know why. Just knows that she needs to, that she doesn’t want the space between them to stretch too wide.
She catches up, her steps light, measured. “You could tell, in the store?” she asks, the words coming out before she can second-guess them. The girl stops short, turns to look at her, and Azzi keeps going, keeps talking, the way she always does when she’s nervous, when she needs to fill the space with something other than silence.
“I smelled you, too,” she says. “I didn’t know I could do that. I, uh—I’m going to Virginia, I think. Or somewhere. I don’t really know.” She hesitates, then presses forward, words tumbling faster now. “I just stole dinner. It was all I could think to do. You’re not local, either, I guess.”
The girl’s expression doesn’t change. She just tilts her head slightly, considering her. She asks slowly, “Why does that matter?”
Azzi doesn’t know. It doesn’t, she guesses. So, she changes the subject.
“It was nice,” she tells the blonde girl, genuine, “what you did for that mom in there.”
The girl doesn’t react much. Just bites at the inside of her cheek, taking in Azzi’s words, maybe deciding whether or not they mean anything to her. And maybe they don’t. Maybe Azzi is the only one who thinks it was something worth mentioning.
And, once more, the brunette doesn’t know how to handle the weird silence because there’s too much beneath. So, her words keep spilling out, unfiltered—“I’m eighteen, if you’re wondering.”
She doesn’t even know why that’s what she says. Maybe because the girl looks older. Maybe because she doesn’t want to feel younger in comparison. Maybe because she needs to remind herself that she’s old enough to be here, old enough to be doing this, even if she doesn’t quite believe it.
The girl’s stare sharpens, like she’s assessing her. “I was gonna guess younger,” she replies.
It’s not an insult, but it still stings, just a little. Azzi isn’t sure why.
Silence stretches, heavy and waiting. The girl looks at her a little longer, like she’s still deciding something. Then, without another word, she looks away, wipes at her arm again, catching a streak of blood she missed. And then she turns, just like that, like Azzi isn’t here, like she’s already stepping out of this moment and back into whatever life she came from.
“I don’t usually talk to anyone after,” the blonde mumbles, voice quieter now. “I don’t actually meet many others. Sort of glad not to.”
She says it like a fact, like it’s something she’s accepted, like it’s something that’s always been true.
And Azzi—Azzi should let her go. Should let this be the last word between them. But she doesn’t. Instead, she follows. Again.
She shouldn’t. She doesn’t know why. She just knows that there’s something about this girl that pulls at her, tugs at some unseen thread inside her, makes her feel like she has to keep close, even if it’s wrong and maybe even dangerous.
“Yeah, I get it,” Azzi murmurs.
She follows the girl’s path with her eyes, then with her feet, watching as she approaches an old, beat-up truck and yanks open the door like she’s done it a hundred times before. Her movements are easy, like this is routine. Like she’s done this before.
“I’m just sayin’, I’m, like, not an asshole,” she says, tossing her bag onto the seat.
Azzi watches her, slow and careful, like she’s trying to memorize this moment, press it into her mind like a bruise so it doesn’t fade too quickly. She doesn’t know why.
“You should probably go anyway,” Azzi decides to say after a beat, quieter now. “You can see the blood, up close.”
The girl laughs at that. Just a little. Not mean, not dismissive—just amused. Her lips stay tilted upward as she leans her back against the trunk, looking at ease. She seems almost unbothered by the fact she’s standing here, covered in someone else’s blood. “We’re fine,” she tells Azzi.
But Azzi’s not. She’s feeling too much, for too many things, for too many reasons. And so she shakes her head, almost to herself, her gaze now locked onto the rocks by her feet. She murmurs, “No… I really don’t think I am.”
Oddly enough, the girl doesn’t brush it off. Doesn’t scoff or laugh or turn away.
She just looks at Azzi.
Really looks at her.
And then, slowly, she leans further against the truck, and asks—“You wanna get in for a minute?”
Azzi stares. A flicker of hesitation erupts in her chest, an instinct that says she should hesitate. That says she should be careful, that she should think this through.
But she doesn’t have anything to lose.
And there’s something about this girl.
So, without a word, Azzi moves.
She rounds the truck, fingers brushing the cold metal of the door as she pulls it open and climbs in. The blonde girl slides into the driver’s seat beside her.
Azzi takes a breath—and stops.
She can smell him. The man from before.
It’s in the air, lingering in the truck, mixing with everything else.
She exhales sharply, glancing at the blonde. “This truck’s his.” Azzi shakes her head. Even though the man is dead, reduced to a meal, this is wrong. “You can’t just take it.”
The girl doesn’t look at her, just scoffs again. She’s good at that. “Everyone’s got their rules. That’s not one of mine.”
And then she’s shifting her attention, pulling something out of her pocket—an ID, Azzi thinks. It’s hard to tell; the car is dark.
“Barry Cook,” the girl says aloud, voice flat. “5278 Route Fifteen.”
Azzi frowns. “You’re going to his house?”
The girls shrugs. So nonchalant. “Yeah. He ain’t have any pictures in his wallet, so I think it’s a’ight.”
Azzi furrows her eyebrows. There’s so many things wrong with this. “You took his wallet, too?”
The girl shakes her head, tossing the ID into the back seat. “Didn’t take his wallet. I took the money out of his wallet.” She laughs to herself, clenching her jaw a little. “Eight bucks.”
Azzi doesn’t know what to say to that.
So, she says nothing.
A long silence infects the truck. The kind that feels like its own language, speaking in the things neither of them are willing to say. It stretches taut between them, almost humming with the weight of it, filled only by the distant sounds of a town folding itself into the night.
Finally, Azzi lets it go. Decides it doesn’t matter.
She exhales, shifts in her seat, then says, “I’m Azzi.”
The blonde girl turns her head. Looks at her. Really takes her in for the first time.
And then, after a pause, she says, “‘M Paige.”
THE DINER SMELLS like burnt coffee and syrup, like the kind of place that has existed forever, steeped in the scent of grease and sugar, in the remnants of a hundred quiet, tired mornings. The red leather of the booth is cracked at the edges, and the table is sticky no matter how many times she wipes her sleeve over it. A ceiling fan churns sluggishly above them, barely stirring the thick, warm air. Azzi doesn’t think this place has air conditioning.
Outside, the stolen truck is parked a little haphazardly in the lot, dust clinging to the windshield. They only drove a few miles before finding this place, drawn in by the promise of food and the quiet comfort of a place where no one asks questions. Azzi sits across from Paige, her elbow braced against the table, idly pressing her fingernail into the soft flesh of a strawberry before popping it into her mouth. It’s a little sour, not quite ripe, but she chews it anyway. It’s what she’s used to.
Paige is eating like she hasn’t had a real meal in weeks. There’s a heap of bacon piled on her plate, syrup pooling at the edges of her pancakes, butter melting into a slow, golden mess. She eats with her hands more than her fork, tears pieces off with her fingers, chews with the kind of enthusiasm that almost makes Azzi smile. It’s endearing, in a way. A little wild, almost childish.
She’s different this morning. Lighter. Looser. Yesterday, there was something cold and quiet about her, something distant in her voice, like she was barely there at all. But today, there’s color in her cheeks, amusement flickering at the corners of her mouth. Last night, after they left—after Paige did what she did—they drove until the sky turned dark. They stopped at Mr. Barry Cook’s house, a tiny, grimy thing on the outskirts of a town that barely existed, and stayed there for the night. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. Azzi had slept with the pocket knife her dad left her clenched tight in her hand, the metal pressing into her palm.
But it turns out it was unnecessary. Paige didn’t try anything. And for some reason, maybe blind, stupid trust or something else entirely, Azzi doesn’t really think she will.
She watches as Paige tears another piece of bacon in half, chewing with the kind of pleasure that makes Azzi wonder when the last time she enjoyed something this simple was. Maybe it’s been a long time for both of them.
She shifts in her seat, picking at her toast, and says, “Sully was his name. The other guy I met.”
Paige barely glances up, still focused on her food. Azzi hesitates, then keeps going.
“He showed up at a bus staton, said he could smell me half a mile away.”
That gets Paige’s attention. Her chewing slows slightly, her blue eyes flicking up, curious. There’s calculation in her gaze, like she’s trying to put together a puzzle, figure out what this means, what kind of person Azzi is to have drawn someone like that to her.
Azzi meets her eyes, holds them. Then she tilts her head and asks, “Can you do that?”
Paige swallows, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, and shrugs. “Not that far.”
Azzi hums, considering that. “He said he could also smell when people are about to die, too.”
Something flickers across Paige’s expression. Not surprise, exactly. More like recognition. “Actually,” she says, cutting into another piece of pancake, “I think I mighta heard of this guy.”
Azzi blinks. “Really?”
Paige nods, stabbing her fork into the syrup-soaked mess on her plate, but her tone is dismissive, almost uninterested. Like it’s not that impressive. Like she’s seen worse.
Azzi shakes her head, the memory curling at the edges of her mind. “He keeps this… braid. Woven with the hair of the people that he eats.”
Paige freezes mid-bite, then grimaces, face contorting with pure, unfiltered disgust. And for some reason, that makes Azzi want to smile. Like it’s proof that, despite everything, despite what she did last night, there’s still something left in the blonde that can be horrified.
“Christ,” Paige mutters, looking like she wants to spit out her food.
Azzi leans back slightly, lips curing faintly. “It’s, like, eight feet long.”
Paige shakes her head, putting her fork down like she’s lost her appetite. She wrinkles her nose. “That’s a choice. We ain’t have to be like that.”
Azzi raises her brows, stabbing another piece of fruit with her fork. “Guess not.”
There’s a lull in the conversation, the hum of the dining room filling the space between them—silverware clinking, the low murmur of conversations, the hiss of something crying behind the counter. Then, after a moment, Paige asks, “Why didn’t you tag along with him?”
Azzi exhales slowly, chewing, letting the question settle. Why hadn’t she? She hadn’t really thought about it before. But now, with Paige looking at her like she genuinely wants to know, she finds herself considering it.
“Something about him,” she says slowly. “I don’t know.” She pauses, rolling a blueberry between her fingers. “I think he was… tryin’ to help?”
Paige scoffs, a smirk curling at the corner of her mouth, like she finds that ridiculous. Like she finds it slightly endearing that Azzi even considered it. “I profoundly doubt that.”
Azzi shrugs. “He was creepy, I guess.”
“Fuckin’ sounds like,” Paige laughs, shaking her head, and that makes something loosen in Azzi’s chest. She likes this version of Paige. The one that’s dryly amused, that makes little jokes, that still has something bright in her despite what she is.
She didn’t seem like that yesterday. Not after quite literally eating a man for dinner. But she does now.
Silence stretches again, the kind that doesn’t feel awkward. The kind that settles, heavy but not uncomfortable. Paige focuses on her food, Azzi focuses on her, chewing idly, watching the way the morning light from the diner window catches on her pale skin.
Then, quietly, she asks, “Why’d you offer to bring me along?”
Paige looks up, her gaze meeting Azzi’s, unreadable for a long, stretched-out second. Then she shrugs, like it’s the simplest thing in the world, and says, “You seem nice.”
Azzi swallows. Considers that.
Then, simply, she nods, popping another strawberry into her mouth.
“I am nice.”
IT’S BEEN A FEW DAYS—they’ve slipped by like sunlight through dirty glass, hazy and warm. Time unspools in strange, slow stretches now, the kind that feel almost like a held breath. They drive nowhere in particular. Aimless, like they’re looking for something they’ve already forgotten. The truck rattles over country roads that snake through green woods and golden fields. They stop when they’re tired. Sleep when the world around them goes quiet. Eat only when they’re hungry, which is rarer than it used to be. Hunger means something different now.
Azzi doesn’t ask where they’re going. Paige doesn’t offer it. They don’t have a map. They don’t need one.
Most nights, they sleep in the back of the truck—limbs tangled awkwardly in piles of blankets and discarded jackets, under the open sky. The heat hangs heavy and humid, the kind of thick that clings to skin, that curls hair at the edges and makes it hard to breathe. Summer, loud with cicadas and fireflies, presses down on them like a fever dream. Everyday, Azzi sweats through her clothes by mid-afternoon. Her skin smells like smoke and sun and whatever wild thing she’s becoming.
Sometimes they talk. Not about anything important, not really. Paige will say something offhanded—about her favorite kind of music, or the time she snuck into an NBA game without tickets and ate about ten hot dogs. Azzi will laugh and offer up her own story, small things from Before. But mostly, they exist beside each other in silence. Paige hums under her breath sometimes, tapping her fingers against the wheel in uneven rhythms. Azzi likes to watch her.
Paige is a mystery wrapped in loudness—her voice carries so easily when she chooses to use it, her laugh loose and high when it comes out. But then there are hours, entire afternoons, where she barely says a word. She’ll drive in silence, one hand out the window, the wind threading through her fingers like it’s the only thing that can touch her. Azzi doesn’t push. But she watches. She always watches.
There’s something about Paige that feels almost unmade. Like she’s dismantled herself piece by piece and only put back the parts that don’t ache. There’s kindness in her—a lot of it—but it’s wrapped in so many layers of barbed wire that it hurts to get too close. She’s funny, sarcastic, brimming with the kind of charm that makes you want to follow her into the dark. But when she gets quiet, really quiet, it feels like all the color drains out of her, like a ghost caught in her own body.
Azzi doesn’t even know what state they’re in anymore—just that it’s not Kentucky. They’re somewhere in the middle of the country, somewhere hot.
Tonight, they’re parked near a lake. A clearing off some gravel road, where the trees thin out just enough to let the stars in. They’re laying in the back of the truck again, side by side, heads resting on opposite ends of a folded-up sweatshirt. The metal beneath them is warm from the heat of the day, but the night has cooled just enough to make the breeze feel like a balm. Crickets sing around them, and somewhere in the distance, water laps gently against the shore.
Azzi stares up at the sky. It’s a rich, endless black, scattered with stars that blink like secrets. She imagines each one has a name. A story. A life burning far away from this one.
She turns her head slightly, just enough to glance at Paige in the dark.
Her silhouette is soft under the moonlight—sharp jaw, messy blonde hair, arms folded beneath her head. There’s something about the way she looks at the sky that makes Azzi ache a little. Like she’s looking for answers she’ll never speak aloud. Like she wants something she knows she doesn’t get to have. Azzi wonders what it is. Wonders if it’s something human, or something monstrous, or something in between.
Since the diner, they haven’t talked about the thing that hangs above both their heads, that rests in their stomachs. They’ve only eaten real food—diner eggs, gas station jerky, a loaf of bread from a tiny grocery store that felt like it hadn’t changed since the 1950s. Azzi hopes it stays that way. She doesn’t know what she’ll do if it doesn’t. She’s still scared.
Not scared of Paige, exactly. Just scared of what Paige is. Scared of what she is, too. Scared of how close the line is between being good and being hungry. Between craving something and becoming it.
Paige hasn’t said much all night. It’s not an angry silence, or even a particularly sad one—just the quiet way she is sometimes, the sort of retreat inward that Azzi is staring to learn by shape and sound. Azzi doesn’t mind it. She’s not good with small talk either. She likes the space between them, soft and wide and wordless, filled only by the thrum of night insects and the occasional breath catching in Paige’s throat.
She thinks about how strange this all is. How not even a week and a half ago she was alone in a bathroom stall somewhere in Mississippi, clutching her dad’s old knife like it could pray for her. How now she’s here, in a stolen truck with a girl who’s part-monster, part-light, full of contradictions and shadows and some kind of pull that Azzi can’t help but circle like a moth.
She doesn’t even realize that Paige has turned to face her until she feels it—piercing blue on the side of her cheek, along with a question: “How do you feel ’bout going to Minnesota for a couple days?”
Azzi blinks up at the sky before turning to look at the blonde. Paige’s mouth is curled into a half-smile, barely there, and her eyes glint with something that feels tender. Vulnerable, even. Like she’s offering something delicate without making a big deal out of it. It’s very Paige—with her, everything is a dare and a secret, both at once.
“What’s in Minnesota?” Azzi asks, her voice quiet, soft.
Paige looks at the sky for a second longer, then back at her.
“My little brother,” she answers. “I promised I’d visit. Been bad about it. He thinks I’m cooler than I am.” Her smile shifts, something warmer blooming at the corners. “I love him. I wanna see him.”
Something about the way she says love makes Azzi’s chest tug in a strange way. Like a thread catching a seam. She thinks of tiny hands reaching for Paige, of laughter in a backyard somewhere, of shoes too small and voices too high and unconditional love. She imagines Paige kneeling to tie someone else’s shoe, wiping chocolate off a younger siblings’s chin. It’s a vision so vivid, so wildly separate from the Paige she’s seen—Paige with blood on her lips and bone in her voice—that it almost feels fake. But she knows it isn’t. Not really. People can be more than one thing. Maybe they have to be.
Azzi feels a smile rise to her face before she even knows it’s there. It curls slow and certain like warmth in her stomach.
“Let’s go to Minnesota, then,” she says simply.
At the words, Paige turns her head fully, looks right at her. She stares for a long moment, cerulean blue searching. It lasts longer than Azzi expects
And then: “Okay,” Paige murmurs.
Azzi turns, meets Paige’s eyes. She holds them, watching them burn. She lets the silence settle back around them like dust. She cradles the moment between her fingers like glass: cool, smooth, precious.
“Okay,” she echoes.
THE HOUSE IS A HUSHED THING, crumbling quietly into the edges of its own memory. It sits squat and unloved under the cloudy sky, surrounded by brittle grass and the molting bones of last fall’s leaves, as though even the earth has begun to forgot it was once someone’s home. Azzi steps out of the truck slowly, her legs aching from the long drive, her eyes catching on the shutters that hang at odd angles, the porch that sags like a tired breath.
Paige leads the way, casual, like she’s returning to a childhood memory, something familiar. She’s different here—lighter on her feet, surer in her movements, her shoulders not quite so tense. Azzi follows her up the freaking steps, watches her fish a key from behind a loose board. The door opens with a reluctant groan. Paige steps inside first, ducking under the frame.
“We’ll stay here tonight,” she says, her voice echoing just a little. Then: “It’s my aunt’s place. She died in March.”
Something about the way she says it—flat, unadorned—makes Azzi pause in the doorway. There’s no grief in the words, but there’s history. Thick as dust. Azzi steps over the threshold and feels it immediately, the weight of a life once lived in the bones of the place. The scent of state fabric and mothballed, the faint rot of forgotten fruit or maybe just time. There are framed cross-stitches on the walls, a calendar still flipped to January, a teacup on the table with something dried in the bottom.
It makes Azzi feel like an intruder. She nods quietly in response, unsure what to say to death when it’s this still.
“My house isn’t far, just a little ways behind the row of trees,” Paige continues, pointing toward the far corner of the property. “Can’t be seen in town, though. You need to know why?”
Azzi pauses. Her fingers trail along the back of a worn recliner, the fabric soft from decades of hands and elbows. She looks at the room: the dying lamp in the corner, the stack of old Reader’s Digests, a ceramic angel leaning against a dusty mirror. She thinks about the kind of person Paige’s aunt must have been. Wonders what it means to die alone in a house like this. Wonders why Paige can’t be seen in town.
Then she looks at Paige, who’s setting her backpack down like this is just another night on the road.
Azzi shakes her head. “No,” she says.
She means it. Whatever Paige has done, whatever shadows she drags behind her like a coat too heavy to hang, it isn’t Azzi’s business. Not unless Paige wants it to be. Trust, she thinks, isn’t something she should have in a world like this. But somehow she does. Somewhere between a stolen truck and a lake beneath the stars, it’s crept into her chest and started to root.
Azzi turns her attention back to the house, wandering slowly into the living room. The curtains are drawn halfway, letting in a slant of soft, pale light that cuts through the dust in golden sheets. On the far wall, a photo collage. Who Azzi assumes is Paige’s aunt, younger. A man with kind eyes. Children, maybe nieces and nephews, smiling with mouths too wide for their faces.
Azzi feels small in the room. Like time is pressing in from all sides, folding around her like paper, sling nothing and giving even less.
“What’s gonna happen to all this stuff?” she asks softly.
Paige looks around, one hand resting on the doorknob like she’s halfway out already. She shrugs a little. “My mom’s gonna come over from Montana—that’s where she lives now—and clean it all out.”
Paige gives the room one last glance, then looks at Azzi. For a second, something flickers behind her eyes—nostalgia, maybe, or guilt, or just the weary familiarity of old places that don’t quite feel the same anymore. Then she smiles, quick and gummy, and says, “Okay, I’mma go hang out with Drew for a little. I’ll bring back some food for us later.”
“Drew’s your brother?” Azzi asks.
“Yep.” Paige’s grin widens. “Okay. Bye!”
And just like that, she’s gone—out the door quickly, her presence dissipating like smoke. Azzi blinks at the silence she leaves behind, stunned at the ease with which Paige moves through the world. At the way she can disappear without warning, like a bird startled into flight. It makes Azzi feel like she’s standing in a paused frame of someone else’s life.
But then the door creaks open again, and Paige’s head pops back in. Her voice is soft, almost fond. “Lock the door.”
Azzi smiles. It’s small but real. She waits until the door clicks shut again before turning the deadbolt with a gentle snick.
Now it’s just her and the house and the ghosts that live in the wallpaper.
She walks slowly, exploring with quiet feet. The kitchen is lined with peeling linoleum and faded fruit-printed wallpaper. A fridge hums to itself in the corner, still alive though it probably hasn’t seen groceries in months. She wonders what the aunt was like—what she thought about before bed, what she read, who she missed. If she knew Paige had changed. If she would’ve let them in.
Azzi finds herself in a hallway with creaky floorboards and three doors. One’s a bedroom—floral quilt, lamp with a doily underneath. One’s a bathroom with a pink toilet. The third won’t open all the way, blocked by a chair or maybe a memory. She doesn’t push. Some things don’t want to be seen.
Back in the living room, she sits gingerly on the couch. Dust puffs into the air beneath her. The silence feels different now—not heavy, exactly, but thick. Like the house is listening.
She leans back, closes her eyes. Thinks about Paige. Thinks about Drew. Thinks about what it means to have someone to go see, someone worth stealing back into town for. Her own family is a blur now, faces remembered more in feeling than in shape.
She opens her eyes and looks at the angel on the shelf. Its wings are chipped. One hand is raised like it’s waving goodbye.
Azzi stares at it for a long time, wondering if Paige feels haunted, too.
THE KITCHEN TABLE is small, square, and uneven, the kind of ting made for a widow or a woman like Paige's aunt, who maybe just wasn't very good at being known. One of the legs wobbles each time Azzi shifts in her chair, and she finds herself adjusting it too much. It's late, almost too late to eat, but here they are, cross-legged around paper cartons with plastic forks, like two outsiders trying to remember how to be normal.
The food smells good. Soy and garlic and sesame clinging to the air, curling into Azzi's hair, her sleeves, every inch of her. She'd prefer this to what she truly craves. Not to mention it's the first thing she's eaten in days that wasn't packaged for survival. Not protein bars broken in half and handed over like rations in a war they never volunteered for. Not crackers from gas stations, not water sipped with restraint, like indulgence was a sin.
Paige is sitting close—closer than usual. Her thigh bumps Azzi's now and then beneath the table, and she doesn't apologize for it. Doesn't move away. She's talking more than she has in days, maybe more than Azzi has ever seen her, smiling as she lifts the takeout box like it's some kind of holy offering and says, "God, I missed this. I forgot how good greasy noodles are. Like, bro, my soul needed this exact sodium level."
Her voice is light, almost teasing, but there's something glowing beneath it. Not bright and garish. Just something quieter, more subtle. Like the last light of a lantern before dawn.
Azzi watches her through the haze of steam rising from the cartons, as if Paige is a vision conjured from the heat itself. Her hair is pulled back messily, the strands at her temples curling slightly from the humidity, from the day, from living too much and too hard. There's soy sauce on her knuckle and a faint shine to her lips. She looks like something human and mythic all at once.
Azzi can't seem to pull her eyes away from her.
There's laughter in Paige's mouth tonight, easy and bubbling up like it was always meant to live there. She tells Azzi a story about Drew and a BB gun and a traffic cone, and Azzi is laughing before she can stop herself, head thrown back, chopsticks forgotten mid-bite. It feels good. Or maybe better than good. It feels like forgiveness. Like maybe they're allowed to be happy here, for just one night, in a dead woman's kitchen with cheap Chinese food and all this road dust still clinging to their skin.
And it's not just stories. It's the way Paige looks at her tonight—like Azzi is real. Not a ghost. Not something fragile or broken or about to float away. Paige's eyes keep catching on her face between bites, and she doesn't look away when Azzi meets her gaze. She just smiles, something gummy and true blooming on her lips, and keeps talking.
Azzi doesn't know what to do with all this light. She wants to bottle it. Wants to press it between the pages of a book she'll never finish, just to prove it happened.
"Bet you've never had lo mein like this," Paige says, chewing around her grin. "This place is, like, legendary. Total hole in the wall. Used to go here with my dad all the time, back when—" She pauses, just for a breath, something flickering in the cerulean of her eyes. "Back when."
Azzi doesn't push. She never does. She just nods and takes another bite and lets the silence pass gently between them like smoke.
She wants to say something beautiful, something that would match the way this feels, but her thoughts are too crowded tonight, and her mouth too clumsy for them. Instead, she leans a little closer, bumping Paige's arm with hers. Paige looks at her and doesn't move away.
They sit like that, shoulder to shoulder, forks moving slower now. The food is almost gone. Paige's anecdotes have started to trail into soft laughter and comfortable hush. There's something nice about the way the room hums between them, something that holds hands with joy.
And then—
BANG. BANG. BANG.
Three sharp knocks at the front door, like the fist of a child who doesn't know they've justs shattered something delicate.
Azzi stiffens.
Her chopstick freezes mid-air, noodles sagging between them. Her body folds into itself on instinct, adrenaline already flooding her bloodstream like a false alarm. Every noise lately feels like a gunshot. Every door is a question she doesn't want to answer.
Paige swears under her breath. "Fuck."
She's up in a second, already moving. Azzi follows, slower, more cautious, like someone approaching a burning church, unsure whether to pray or run.
The front door creaks open.
And there they are.
Two children, strawberry blonde like washed-out firelight. A girl, maybe eleven, with a storm in her eyes. A boy, thirteen or so, taller than he knows what to do with, standing with his arms folded across his chest like he's trying to protect something inside him from splintering.
"How come we didn't know you were here?" the girl demands, her voice bright with betrayal.
"I didn't know either of you were here," Paige says defensively, stepping out onto the porch. "I thought you were in Montana with Mom."
The boy rolls his eyes. "We're here all the time since Aunt Beth died. Why're you staying in her house without asking?"
"It was only for a night," Paige responds. "And I didn't know you guys were her, I promise. If I did, I woulda come and saw you."
"Would you have?" the young girl asks, eyes burning.
Azzi can hear the pain in that question. The trembling edge of hope frayed too many times. She knows that sound. It lives in her, too.
"Yes, Lauren," Paige answers. Her voice cracks around the name.
Lauren.
"No, you wouldn't have," the boy counters, spitting it. "You're always comin' and leavin' like nothing. We're all worried about you. Ever since your dad—"
"Stop." Paige's voice slices clean through him.
The silence that follows is thick. Azzi watches Paige's face, watches the way it shatters and reforms in real time. A girl who's been too many versions of herself, too fast, too young.
"Why can't you just stay?" Lauren asks smally. Smaller than she was a second ago. A child's voice, lonely and lost.
"I'll come back in a couple weeks, 'kay?" Paige says gently. "And if you guys aren't here, I'll come to Montana to see you and Mom. But we're leavin' tomorrow, and we have to go. I'm sorry."
We. Azzi feels the word land in the room like a dropped stone. Both kids turn to look at her for the first time, taking her in.
"Is that your girlfriend?" the boy asks, blunt and sharp.
Azzi goes still, blood leaping to her face like a tide. She doesn't know what expression she wears, but she knows how exposed she feels in that moment, almost like she's a painting someone just pulled the sheet off of.
Paige stumbles, "What—Ryan, no. You guys need to go, okay? Promise I'll see you soon."
"You always say that," Lauren mumbles, voice thick.
Paige doesn't answer that. She just stands there in the doorway, backlit by the last light of evening, eyes too full of history to speak. She doesn't try to fight the accusation. Doesn't make another promise. She just stands there, letting them leave without slamming the door shut.
When the porch is empty again, Paige closes it softly. She turns the lock slowly until it clicks.
Azzi doesn't say anything, lets her vocal chords stay dormant. Instead, she just lets her eyes track the way Paige leans her forehead against the wood of the door for a breath, a beat, before straightening.
Azzi knows better than to ask what happened. She knows better than to touch the fresh wound of that—Paige's dad—still lingering in the air like smoke that won't clear.
Azzi steps back into the kitchen, sits down at the table, and waits.
After a moment, Paige joins her.
“Let’s go tonight,” she says, staring at the table. “They’re probably gonna tell me mom I’m here. Leave before she can come. Wanna spare you of that.”
THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE crouches against the horizon like a rusted-out animal, carcass of a building half-surrendered to the prairie night. Its roofline is jagged, the windows blind, the walls carrying the ghost of a smell Azzi swears she can taste from the passenger seat. Even with the truck idling quiet now, the place hums in her bones—like it has its own low frequency, some note of death and routine violence that doesn't quite fade. Paige points with a casual lift of her chin, as though she's talking about a corner store instead of a graveyard for livestock.
"I worked summers here," she says, hands light on the steering wheel, voice lighter still. Most of the rot that creeped back into her earlier, when her siblings came by, has melted away again. Or, probably more so just painted over. "I can't get in the safe, but they keep all the petty cash in the café."
Azzi almost laughs at the word—café—as if there's any grace in the thought of people sipping coffee against a backdrop of screaming animals. "A café? At a slaughterhouse?" she asks, the disbelief spilling out across the words.
Paige just grins, quick and crooked, the kind that makes absurd sound reasonable. She shrugs once, like the universe is stitched together with contradictions she's learned not to tug at the thread. That shrug, that grin—it's enough to pull the heat into Azzi's chest, to make her want to laugh at the bleak joke of it, too.
Paige kills the engine, and suddenly the night feels thicker, louder in its silence. The two of them get out of the truck and Azzi follows Paige toward a fence, chain link catching the glow of the moon. The blonde climbs with the ease of someone who's done this countless times before, her body weightless, motions practiced and swift. She's over it in seconds, dropping onto the other side with a soft thud. She doesn't gesture for Azzi to hurry, doesn't mock or prod; she just stands there with her hands stuffed in her jean pockets, watching. Waiting.
Azzi lingers for a second too long on the rattling metal, sneakers slipping against the slick cold. She curses under her breath, but then she's over, landing awkwardly, the soles of her shoes slapping against the dirt. Paige grins again when their eyes meet. Azzi feels her pulse stutter as they run together, gravel crackling underfoot.
The slaughterhouse is a cathedral of grime inside, the walls slick with years of work no one bothered to wash away. Paige leads with confidence, her sneakers soft against the floor, moving quick but not frantic. Every step echoes in Azzi's chest, not her ears, because she's convinced the building itself remembers every scream, every drop of blood, and it's only holding its tongue for now.
When they reach the window, Paige pries it open with a jerk of her wrist. The metal groans. They climb inside, and in there, it's warmer, thicker, tinged faintly with rust. Azzi whispers, "Aren't there guards anywhere?"
Paige looks back at her, eyes glinting with a kind of mischief that shouldn't belong in a place like this. "Yeah. Dale. Deaf in both ears."
The words roll off her tongue so easily. Azzi can't help but shiver—not from the fear of Dale, whoever he is, but from the realization that Paige seems to know the weak spots of every world she enters.
They keep moving, darting through hallways that all smell faintly of iron, the air humid with old work. Azzi follows Paige's shoulders, the way her hoodie pulls tight when she turns corners, the way she slows just enough that Azzi never has to scramble to keep up. Paige pauses at a door, her hand hovering over the handle, her other hand lifted like she's asking for silence. Then she leans close, voice low.
"Keep watch real quick."
Azzi nods, throat dry, and Paige disappears into the next room with a push of the door.
The hallway swallows Azzi whole. The quiet feels wrong, like it's pressing against her eardrums. She leans against the wall, twitching toward the pocketknife in her jeans—the one her father gave her, the one she sometimes can't help but grip at night. She pictures Dale, deaf but not blind, rounding the corner with a flashlight beam sharp enough to burn her eyes. She tells herself she'll hear Paige before anyone else. She tells herself Paige is quick, sharper than anyone chasing shadows. Still, her pulse drums too hard.
Then, Paige is back, sudden, like she's been carved out of the air itself. Azzi startles at how close she is—Paige standing almost chest to chest with her, cheeks flushed, grin brighter now, charged by adrenaline. She holds out a wad of bills, edges frayed from too many hands.
"You be the bank."
Azzi does as Paige asks, takes it, stuffs it into her pocket, and for a second, she feels the burn of responsibility sitting against her thigh.
She lifts her eyes again and Paige hasn't moved, still too close, still smirking like the night has broken open just for her.
"I wanna show you something," she says, her voice lower this time, slower, like an invitation, like a key sliding into a lock.
Azzi nods, follows Paige without question. They end up near the cattle stock, the air full of the scent of hay and sweat and something older, something sour that clings to the back of Azzi's throat. Paige leads her without hesitation, her flashlight beam cutting quick arcs across the concrete, until they reach the catwalk above the pens. From here, the animals look endless, a restless tide of bodies shifting against one another, eyes gleaming faintly in the dark.
Paige drops to sit on the edge of the walkway, legs swinging free, and without thinking, Azzi follows, lowering herself beside her until their sides are pressed flush. The contact is warm, especially in the humidity of the summer heat. Azzi can feel the steady pulse of Paige's mere presence seeping through the fabric of her shirt, each small movement—the twitch of her leg, the tilt of her shoulder—echoing straight into Azzi's ribs.
There's music, faint but unmistakable, humming from tinny speakers overhead. It takes Azzi a second to realize it isn't leaking in from a car radio somewhere near by, but woven into the slaughterhouse itself. Paige tips her head toward the ceiling, a little smirk tugging at her mouth as she explains, "The music's supposed to keep 'em calm."
Calm. Azzi almost laughs at the word. Nothing here feels calm. Not the twitching of ears below, not the pacing hooves, not the uneven rhythm of her own heartbeat. But she listens anyway. She looks down at the animals, at their steady breathing and dark, wet eyes that never stop moving.
And then the thought pushes its way out of her, soft but heavy as stone: "Do you ever think that... every one of them has a mom and a dad, sisters, brothers, cousins, kids... friends, even?"
The words fall into the air between them like pebbles into a still pond, rippling outward. But Azzi knows she isn't really talking about the animals, even if she doesn't specify that. The words drag something deeper between them, something she keeps buried most nights but can't always seem to smother. She's thinking of every set of eyes she's looked into that didn't belong to cows or pigs, every mouth she's pulled away from with blood and flesh still warm on her tongue. She's thinking about how each face she tries not to remember once belonged to someone who was loved. Someone with roots, with a web of connections spun around them that she severed. And she knows, with a sharp twist in her chest, that Paige knows that's what she means, too.
But Paige doesn't want to sit in that place, linger in those thoughts. Azzi feels it in the small shake of her head, the way she lifts her arm and drapes it casually around Azzi's lower back. The pressure is steady but soft, like she believes she can soothe the thoughts right out of the brunette's body. Like she can draw Azzi back from the edge simply by holding her close enough. The younger girl lets herself lean into it, though her chest still feels bruised.
Paige murmurs, changing the subject, "It's like their own language. Listen to them."
So, Azzi does. She closes her eyes for a moment, surrenders to the sounds around her. It's quiet but far from silent, layered, strange, a living chorus rising from the pens. Low moans that stretch out like fog, sharp squeals that pierce and vanish, shuffling movements that create their own tempo against dirt and hay. It's messy, chaotic, and yet beneath it, there's some kind of order, almost like lyrics of a song only animals can sing and understand.
Azzi tries to hear it anyway, as language instead of noise. She wonders if they're telling each other secrets, if they're whispering warnings, if some of them are calling for mothers who aren't here, or for calves who will never come back. She wonders if, even in this place where they all suffer the same ending, they cling to the instinct to belong to one another.
(Azzi knows that she does.)
She and Paige don't bother speaking, like they don't a lot of the time. Paige's arm stays draped around Azzi's waist, steady, though Azzi can feel the pulse of life in her—heat seeping through the fabric of her hoodie, the faint rise and fall of breath. Her own heart won't calm. It beats too fast, like it knows something is coming, like it's bracing for something.
It's then that she feels it. Paige's fingers move against her side, not with intention, just idly, like a thoughtless glide her body makes while her mine works elsewhere. They trace the smallest circle on the bare skin of Azzi's waist between her shirt and jeans, lazy, feather-light, but it's enough to send a shiver climbing up the brunette's spine, enough to make her blood sing.
The quiet breaks when Paige exhales and murmurs, almost shyly, "I was, um, thinking..." Her voice trails off into the hum of the cattle below, and Azzi turns her head instinctively.
The sight steals something from her lungs. Paige looks impossibly beautiful in the dim slaughterhouse light, all sharp lines softened by glow. The reflection catches on the curve of her cheekbones, the slope of her jaw, painting her in gold. Her features are strong, cut like stone, but softened by everything else—by the gentle fullness of her bottom lip, by the warmth tucked strangely into the cool blue of her irises, by the faint pink climbing her cheeks as though she's caught off guard by her own words. Her hair is slicked back into a ponytail and it leaves her face completely open to be seen. Azzi stares too long, memorizing the curve of her profile, the nearness of her, the impossibility that she is here like this.
"About what?" Azzi prompts, her voice hushed, like raising it might break the fragile thing forming between them.
Paige turns, meets her eyes. The space between them shrinks. Azzi catches her scent—something clean and sharp, mixed with sweat and the faint tang that must have clung from dinner. Her stomach twists at how much she likes this closeness, how much she wants to keep it.
"We have the truck," Paige says, careful, slow. "We could... y'know, just drive. Kinda like how we've been doin' the past couple weeks, but more. We could go coast to coast, see it all. If—if that's something you wanna do. With me."
Her voice falters at the end, betraying something Azzi hasn't seen before. Vulnerability, nervousness. For once, Paige isn't hiding behind jokes or charm or her easy shrugs. For once, she looks like she doesn't know what the answer will be, like she's holding her breath for it.
"See it all?" Azzi repeats, testing the shape of it.
Paige nods, swallowing thickly, eyes flickering down as though she's afraid to hold Azzi's gaze too long. Azzi studies her, marvels at how much it changes her to see her like this—unguarded, uncertain, stripped of her usual armor. She likes it. She likes knowing Paige has walls and that, with her, maybe some of them can come down.
"Okay," Azzi murmurs softly. "Let's see it all."
Paige's eyes return to hers and she smiles, small and endearing. It lands like sunlight. Azzi watches as her eyes drop lower—to her mouth—and it feels like the world tilts on its axis, like gravity shifts just enough to pull them closer.
The kiss happens without them deciding, without the world announcing it. One moment there is air between them, the next it's vanished, and Paige's lips are on hers. Azzi startles at the contact, the shock of it, but then everything inside her softens.
It's nothing like she expected. Softer, slower, a press of warmth that makes her entire body feel like it could come undone. Paige's mouth moves against hers gently, patient, like she's afraid to break her. The taste is faintly sweet, faintly salty, a blend of the food they shared and something that is just Paige.
Azzi's never kissed anyone before, never let herself get close enough, and yet her body knows what to do—knows how to lean in, how to breathe through the shiver running down her spine, how to let the world blur until there is only this. Only Paige.
Her hand hovers awkwardly before finding a place—her wrist brushing Paige’s arm, tentative but sure enough to feel the muscle shift beneath her skin. Paige presses a little closer, lips parting just slightly, and Azzi feels something flare deep in her chest, bright and terrifying and good.
She likes kissing. Or maybe she just likes Paige.
The animals murmur below them, restless, unknowable, their language still threading through the air. But for Azzi, the world is narrowed down to one thing: the warmth of Paige’s lips, the sharp thud of her own heart, and the dizzying thought of what's to come.