11
The lantern’s flame burned low, swallowing the barn in long, trembling shadows. Jimmy shouldered the backpack he’d thrown together. A flashlight, water, a change of clothes, the first-aid kit from his truck. It felt insultingly small against whatever they were up against.
Sassy stood in the center of the barn, breathing slow and measured like she was listening to something inside her own bones.
“Sass.” He touched her elbow. “Talk to me.”
Her eyes were open, but there was a distance in them that made his skin crawl. No panic, no wildness. Just intent focus, like she was tuning a radio only she could hear.
“What do you hear?” he asked.
She didn’t answer right away. Her spine straightened; her hands, which had been trembling five minutes ago, stilled.
It looked almost like calm.
He knew better.
“There are… people,” she said finally. “Three of them, for sure. Maybe more behind.”
He stared at her. “You can’t see outside from here.”
“I don’t need to see.” She lifted her hand, fingers hovering in the air. “It’s like… I can feel where they’re standing. Where they’re heading.”
He tried to laugh it off. “That’s the drugs talking.”
“Maybe,” she said. “Except I felt this before they touched me.”
Her tone, flat but honest, made his stomach drop.
She closed her eyes.
Jimmy watched, uneasy, as her shoulders rose and fell, her head tilting slightly like she was mapping something only she could sense.
“They’re on the main road now,” she said. “Slowing down. One of them is getting out. They don’t trust the truck on gravel.”
“Sassy.” He stepped closer. “You’re just guessing.”
Her eyes snapped open. “I’m not.”
For the first time since she’d woken up, her gaze locked onto his with full force. It startled him—how clear she suddenly looked. No haze. No confusion. Just Sassy, razor-sharp and scared and trying not to show it.
“When I was a kid,” she said quietly, “they did… exercises. With us.”
His throat tightened. He didn’t like where this was going.
“Who did exercises?” he asked carefully.
“The group,” she said. “The ones my mom pretends not to remember. They’d blindfold us. Put us in a room. Make us tell them where they were standing. How many there were. Which one had moved.”
“That’s not possible,” he said.
“They said it was a gift.” Her mouth twisted. “Felt a lot more like training.”
He searched her face, wanting to find some crack, some tell that this was just trauma and not something worse. He didn’t find any.
“They taught us to feel feet on floors, breath in walls, intention in air,” she continued, voice hardly above a whisper. “Then they’d praise us when we were right. Punish us when we were wrong.”
“What kind of punishment?” he asked, even though he wasn’t sure he wanted the answer.
She flinched almost imperceptibly. “The kind you don’t forget. Even when you forget everything else.”
His hands curled into fists. “Those people are not getting near you again.”
“Good,” she said. “Because right now? They’re about twenty feet from the edge of this property.”
Any illusion that she was exaggerating evaporated in the way she said it. Clean. Precise.
Jimmy swallowed hard. “Okay. Okay, we’re leaving. We can cut through the fields, circle back to the highway—”
“You can,” she said quietly. “They’ll follow me.”
He stepped in front of her, close enough to feel her breath on his collarbone. “Then we don’t split up. Ever.”
A faint, fragile smile ghosted across her lips. “Bossy.”
“Terrified,” he corrected.
She reached up, fingers curling loosely in the front of his shirt. The move was familiar—she’d been doing it since she was fifteen and needed to drag him away from bar fights. It had never felt like this before.
“I don’t know how long I’ll stay… clear,” she said. “Sometimes I feel like I’m sliding. Like I’m in two places at once.”
“You’re here.” He pressed her knuckles to his chest, over his pounding heart. “With me.”
Her eyes closed briefly, and for a second he thought she might lean into him again, like in the moment the intruders had stolen.
Instead, she exhaled slowly and nodded. “Then use me while I’m useful.”
He frowned. “You’re not a tool, Sass.”
“Maybe not to you,” she said. “To them, that’s all I ever was.”
The way she said them made his skin crawl.
“Who are they?” he asked, softer this time. “I know you’ve said… bits. About your mom. About that place. But I don’t know what they want.”
“I don’t either,” she said.
He believed her.
“I just know they think I belong to them,” she added. “And when they get close, something in me… reacts.”
“Can you use that to keep us ahead of them?” he asked.
She opened her eyes again, that unnatural focus sliding into place. “I can try.”
“How close now?”
She paused, listening. “They just reached the front gate.”
Jimmy grabbed the lantern, snuffed it out, and slung the backpack fully onto his shoulders.
“Then we don’t give them a second look at you,” he said.
He held out his hand again.
She took it.
As they slipped out the back of the barn, into the tall grass and dark, Jimmy looked back only once. The barn loomed under the bruised sky, perfectly still. As if drawn in a landscape.
The kind of still that came just before the first drop of rain.
12
The night swallowed them as they cut through fields and tree lines, avoiding the road. Sassy moved with a strange combination of determination and fragility—like someone walking a tightrope she’d crossed a hundred times in a dream and was now trying awake.
“Right,” she whispered at one point, tugging Jimmy’s hand. “They’re sweeping the ditch.”
He didn’t ask how she knew anymore. He just obeyed.
His lungs burned. His legs ached. He’d never been so aware of how exposed open country made you. No corners. No crowds. Just you and whoever wanted you.
“Slow down,” he gasped when they reached a low ridge. “You just had God-knows-what pumped into your veins.”
She stopped, putting a hand on his chest to steady both of them. Her breath fogged in the cold air; he could feel the uneven stutter of it under his palm.
“They don’t feel… close right now,” she said. “We have a minute.”
“We need more than a minute. We need a plan.”
The word hung between them. Sassy turned her face toward the dark horizon, the faint scatter of distant town lights smudged under the low clouds.
“I had a plan once,” she said. “Keep everything small. Keep Mom safe. Pretend the weird stuff was just in our heads. Never talk about that place.” She huffed a hollow laugh. “That went well.”
“You did keep her safe,” Jimmy said. “As long as you could.”
Her jaw tightened. “And look where we are now.”
He wanted to argue, to tell her none of this was her fault. But the words felt thin against the size of what was chasing them.
She went quiet for a long moment. When she spoke again, her voice was steadier.
“There’s one place they won’t go,” she said.
Jimmy’s instincts flared. “If you say the sheriff’s office—”
“Benji’s.”
He stared at her. “Absolutely not.”
She met his gaze head-on. “It’s the only place in driving distance that’s armed to the teeth and doesn’t answer to anyone.”
“Yeah,” Jimmy snapped. “Because the Fallons think the law is a suggestion.”
“Exactly.”
“Sassy, Benji Fallon is a walking red flag,” he said. “Multiple. On fire.”
“He hates everyone,” she said mildly. “That’s useful.”
“He especially hates me.”
“He especially hates losing,” she countered. “If he thinks something dangerous is after us, he’s going to want to win.”
Jimmy scrubbed a hand down his face. “This is your plan? Trade one kind of crazy for another?”
“You tell me somewhere safer,” she said. “Because wherever those people are from? They don’t like attention. They don’t like questions. They slink around the edges.”
“And Benji is… the opposite of subtle,” Jimmy admitted grudgingly.
“His family keeps to themselves,” she added. “They don’t mingle. They don’t come to town unless they have to. Whatever’s after me doesn’t want a feud with them. They want quiet.” She shivered. “The Fallons are not quiet.”
He hated how much sense this made.
“You really think he’ll let us stay?” Jimmy asked.
Her eyes softened, just a little. “He’ll let me.”
Jealousy burned through him hot and petty. “Because he’s had a thing for you since you were sixteen.”
“He had a thing for owning things,” she said. “I scared him a little. That helped.”
“That’s… not reassuring.”
“Jimmy.” She stepped closer, palm flattening against his chest again. “You said you trusted me.”
“I do.”
“Then trust me now.”
He looked down at her hand. At the faint tremor in her fingers. At the stubborn line of her mouth.
He trusted her. He didn’t have to trust Benji. He could stand between them.
“Fine,” he said. “We go to Benji. But if he so much as looks at you wrong—”
“You’ll hit him,” she said dryly. “Like last time.”
“He deserved it.”
“He always deserves it,” she agreed.
Something like a smile flickered between them, brief and tired but real.
The near-moment from the barn edged back into his awareness—her body warm against his, their mouths almost touching. He wondered if she remembered it or if it had already blurred with the rest of the night’s horrors.
“Sassy,” he said quietly.
“Yeah?”
“If this is… more than you can carry—”
“It is,” she cut in.
He swallowed. “Then let me carry some of it.”
She studied him for a second, eyes searching his face like she was memorizing it.
“You already are,” she said.
Then she turned toward the darkness ahead.
The land changed as they neared the Fallon property. Fences thickened with barbed wire. No Trespassing signs transitioned from printed to hand-painted to bullet-riddled. Security lights glowed a harsh, industrial white over metal gates and corrals.
The Fallons didn’t just own land.
They defended it.
As they crested the last rise, the main barn came into view, lit up like a small fortress. Cattle shifted in the pastures, dark shapes against paler ground.
And there he was.
Benji Fallon, leaning against a fence post like he’d grown out of it, cigarette ember glowing near his knuckles. He wore a flannel shirt, jeans, the same scuffed boots Jimmy remembered kicking his ribs that night behind the bar.
Even from this distance, Jimmy could tell Benji had already clocked them. His head tilted—first at Jimmy, with something like contempt, then at Sassy, with something far more complicated.
“Fantastic,” Jimmy muttered. “He sees us.”
Sassy squeezed his hand once, then let go.
“Let me talk,” she said.
Jimmy bit back everything he wanted to say and nodded.
They approached the fence. Gravel crunched under their boots.
Benji flicked his cigarette to the dirt and ground it out with his heel. “Well,” he drawled, eyeing Jimmy first. “Either the end times are here or you got even dumber, showing your face on my land.”
His gaze slid to Sassy and stayed there. “Didn’t expect you, sunshine.”
Jimmy bristled at the nickname. Sassy didn’t flinch.
“We need a place to stay,” she said simply.
Benji’s grin was slow and sharp. “Yeah? World’s full of motels.”
“These people aren’t going to knock on a motel door,” she said. “They’re going to slip in the back. They like quiet.”
Something flickered across Benji’s face at the word they. Some instinctive recognition of danger.
“And you think my place isn’t quiet?” he asked.
“I think your place is loud,” she replied. “And mean. And full of guns. I think whatever’s following me won’t want to step foot on Fallon land if they can help it.”
Benji stared at her for a long, uncomfortable beat.
Jimmy’s fingers twitched toward his belt, wishing for his service weapon and hating being here as just a guy in a hoodie with nothing but his fists.
Finally, Benji pushed off the fence.
He walked closer, boots crunching gravel, eyes scanning Sassy’s face like he was taking inventory of damage.
“You look like hell,” he said, but there was no triumph in it.
“Long night,” she replied.
His gaze flicked to Jimmy. “He do that to you?”
Jimmy took a step forward, jaw clenching. “Try me, Fallon.”
Sassy slid between them, a hand on each of their chests, holding two storms back with pure stubbornness.
“No one did this to me,” she said. “But someone will finish it if we don’t find cover.”
Benji’s jaw flexed. He looked at her hands, one on him, one on Jimmy, then at the shadowed land beyond her.
“Who’s coming?” he asked quietly.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But they’re organized. And they don’t like to lose.”
Something in that answer satisfied him. Or maybe it just confirmed what he’d already guessed.
Benji stepped aside.
Tilted his head toward the barn.
“Get inside,” he said.
Jimmy blinked. “That’s it? No threats? No conditions?”
Benji shot him a look that could’ve peeled paint. “You step out of line, and we’ll have that conversation. Until then, you’re here ’cause she asked. Don’t make me regret it.”
Sassy exhaled, shoulders sagging in relief. “Thank you, Benji.”
He snorted. “Don’t thank me yet, sunshine.” His gaze drifted toward the dark beyond his property line. “Feels like you brought a storm with you.”
As they crossed onto Fallon land, Jimmy felt it too—that sense of pressure, of something closing in from all sides.
But for the first time all night, they weren’t running.
They were digging in.
13
Benji’s barn wasn’t built for comfort. It was built for storms—real ones and human ones.
Jimmy paced in a tight circle near the old workbench, every muscle in his body pulled tight as wire. Benji lounged in the doorway like he owned the earth beneath them, arms crossed, watching Jimmy with thinly veiled amusement.
“You’re wearing a hole in the floor,” Benji drawled.
Jimmy glared. “I don’t trust you.”
Benji smiled. “Good. You shouldn’t.”
Before Jimmy could snap something back, Sassy touched his arm. “I need to shower. Just… rinse off. I feel like something is crawling under my skin.”
Jimmy’s anger melted instantly into worry. “Do you want me to—?”
“No,” she whispered. “I just need a minute.”
Benji jerked his chin toward the back of the barn. “Water heater still works. Bathroom’s through that door.”
Sassy nodded and disappeared into the dim hallway, shutting the old wooden door behind her.
Jimmy waited by the bathroom like a guard dog, but minutes stretched into ten… then fifteen. No sound. No movement. No water.
His chest tightened. “She’s been in there too long.”
Benji pushed off the wall. “She’s probably catching her breath.”
“You don’t know her,” Jimmy shot back.
Benji took a slow step forward. “No. But I know when someone’s drowning.”
Jimmy’s jaw worked. “I’m checking on her.”
He took one step toward the door—
but Benji’s arm shot out, stopping him cold.
“You bust in on her like that,” Benji said softly, “you’ll make her worse.”
Jimmy hesitated—just long enough for Benji to see the crack in his armor.
“Sit down,” Benji said. “I’ll check.”
Jimmy bristled. “Like hell—”
But Benji didn’t wait for permission. He strode down the hall and rapped twice.
“Sassy?” he called. “You alright in there?”
No answer.
“Sassy,” he repeated, voice lowering in concern Jimmy had never heard from him before. “I’m opening the door.”
When he pushed it open, steam poured out. The shower was running—but Sassy wasn’t in it. She sat curled on the tile floor, arms wrapped around her knees, hair wet and plastered to her forehead. The water had soaked her shirt, clinging to her trembling body.
Benji froze.
She looked up at him with wide, shattered eyes.
“I can hear them,” she whispered.
Her voice was small. Fractured.
Not Sassy.
Not the lucid Bloom she’d been earlier.
Just a terrified girl breaking apart.
Benji didn’t think.
Didn’t speak.
He stepped inside and crouched, scooping her into his arms as if she weighed nothing. She tensed at first—then collapsed against him, shaking violently.
“It’s okay,” Benji said, his voice surprisingly gentle. “You’re safe here.”
She pressed her forehead into his shoulder, tears mixing with shower water. “No. You don’t understand. It’s not men after me. It’s not something you can shoot or scare off. They can feel me. They can reach me.”
Benji’s jaw clenched, but his grip stayed steady. “Then we’ll make it so they can’t.”
“You don’t know what they are,” she whispered, fingers twisting in his shirt like she was holding on to the last real thing in her world. “They don’t want money or land or revenge. They want me. They always have.”
Benji’s expression shifted. A trace of something dark and knowing.
“That so?” he said. “Then I think I know someone who might have answers.”
Sassy blinked up at him, disoriented. “Who?”
Benji carried her out of the bathroom, ignoring Jimmy’s widened eyes and the fury growing behind them. He set her gently on a cot, covering her with an old quilt.
Jimmy rushed to her side. “Sass, are you okay?”
She didn’t answer—just curled into herself, trembling.
Benji stood over them, shadows cutting hard angles across his face.
“My grandpa,” he said. “The old man knows things. Things he shouldn’t. Things most people wouldn’t believe.”
Jimmy looked up sharply. “Your grandfather is ninety-three and blind.”
Benji shrugged once. “Blind don’t mean stupid. The Fallon men ran these lands long before your family even moved to this town. We’ve seen things out here.”
Sassy lifted her head slightly. “What kind of things?”
Benji’s gaze softened on her—more compassion than Jimmy had seen from him in a lifetime.
“The kind of things that don’t get written down,” he said. “The kind of things folks whisper about but never say aloud.”
Jimmy stepped forward. “Benji, this isn’t some ghost story—”
Benji turned on him with a glare sharp enough to cut.
“You think I’m talking about ghosts?” he snapped. “You have no idea what’s been buried in these hills. What’s done the hunting. And what’s done the dying. And why…”
Sassy shivered under the quilt.
Benji continued, voice lower now. “Grandpa kept journals. Stories he wasn’t supposed to tell. He mentioned a group once, years ago. Before my dad was even born. Said they were the kind of people you don’t look at twice if you want to live.”
Sassy’s held her breath. “Did he call them something?”
Benji took off his hat and swept his dirty blonde hair back.
“He didn’t say much. And we knew no to ask. But the way he mentioned them they weren’t a gang. They were something else.”
Jimmy’s blood ran cold.
Benji went on. “He said they came through once, quiet as smoke. Said they moved like they weren’t walking on earth at all.”
Sassy’s eyes welled. “What did they do?”
Benji hesitated—rare vulnerability flickering over his features.
“He said they traded secrets for silence. Paid in fear instead of money. Said my great-granddad told them to get off Fallon land.”
“What happened?” Jimmy whispered.
Benji’s mouth curved into a grim line.
“They left. Not because they wanted to—but because they had to. They believed there was something on the land they didn’t like. But my grandpa said there was nothing here they wanted.
Jimmy exhaled hard. “So, you’re saying we’re safe here.”
Benji’s eyes drifted back to Sassy.
“I’m saying they were safe here,” he corrected. “The rest of us?”
A slow grin.
“We’ll have to see.”
Sassy swallowed. “Can I meet him? Your grandfather?”
Benji’s features softened even further—honestly, frighteningly gentle.
“Yeah, sunshine. But fair warning…”
He leaned closer.
“…he sees more than he says. And he’ll know what you are the second he hears your voice.”
A shiver rippled down Sassy’s spine.
Not fear.
Recognition.
Jimmy reached for her hand protectively, but Sassy didn’t pull away from either of them.
For the first time, Jimmy realized the truth:
Benji wasn’t trying to take her.
He was seeing her.
Seeing something in her he’d always sensed but never understood.
And if Sassy was honest with herself—
Part of her sensed something in him too.
Something ruthless.
Something loyal.
Something powerful enough to stand between her and the Garden.
14
Benji led them across the yard toward the old farmhouse, a hulking structure with peeling paint and windows that reflected no light. The air was still too still. Even the crickets seemed to sense the weight of what walked beside him.
Sassy clutched Jimmy’s hand, but her gaze stayed locked on the farmhouse door. Each step made her chest tighten further, as if something ancient inside her recognized this place even though she’d never been here before.
Jimmy walked close, tense and watchful, while Benji moved ahead with unsettling confidence. Like this was his world, and they were just passing through it.
When they reached the porch, Benji paused and glanced back at Sassy.
“You sure you’re up for this?”
Sassy swallowed. “I need answers.”
Benji nodded once. “Then he’ll give you what he can. But be prepared—he’s blunt. And he sees more than a blind man ought to.”
Jimmy muttered, “Comforting.”
Benji shot him a look. “I’m not trying to comfort you.”
Before Jimmy could reply, Sassy stepped forward toward the door—and something cold washed over her. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t pain.
It was familiarity.
Like stepping into a memory, she’d never lived.
Benji opened the door.
The inside smelled of cedar and old tobacco. Lamps glowed dimly, casting long shadows over walls covered in dusty photographs. Generations of Fallon men standing sternly beside cattle, barns, and rifles.
No women.
Not a single daughter in a hundred years of family history.
And Sassy understood the truth in her gut:
The Garden never came here
because there had never been a girl worth taking.
But now… now there was.
Benji guided them down a hallway and stopped at a door left slightly ajar. He knocked twice, low and respectful.
“Grandpa? You awake?”
A gravelly voice emerged from inside. “I don’t sleep much these days. Bring her in.”
Jimmy stiffened. “He knows we’re here?”
Benji didn’t answer—because he didn’t need to.
They stepped inside.
The room was warm from a wood stove. In a rocking chair near the fire sat the Fallon patriarch—white-haired, thin-skinned, eyes clouded and pale. Blind, but alert in a way that made Jimmy tense and Sassy’s stomach flip.
He turned his face toward her instantly.
“There you are,” he said softly. “The girl the wind’s been whispering about.”
Sassy froze.
Jimmy moved protectively in front of her. “She’s not here to be some story, old man. She needs help.”
Benji shot Jimmy a warning glare. “Watch your mouth.”
But the old man just chuckled. “It’s alright. The boy’s scared. He should be.”
He gestured toward Sassy. “Come closer, child.”
Jimmy looked at her, panic flickering behind his eyes. “Sass, you don’t have to—”
But Sassy stepped forward on her own.
She couldn’t explain why.
Only that she needed to hear what this man knew.
When she stood in front of him, he reached out a trembling hand. “Let me touch your face.”
Jimmy moved to intervene but Sassy shook her head. She let the old man’s fingertips brush her cheek.
The moment he did, he inhaled sharply.
“Oh,” he whispered. “Oh, they’ll be hungry for you.”
Sassy’s heart plummeted. “Who?”
“You know who.”
Her throat tightened. “Why? Why me?”
The old man’s hand dropped back to his lap. His cloudy eyes lifted toward the ceiling as if he were listening to a distant echo.
“They wanted you long before you knew yourself. You shine, girl. Not in a kind way. Not in a pretty way.”
His voice dropped to a rasp.
“In a way that is strong. They always wanted the strong ones.”
Sassy shivered.
Jimmy stepped forward, jaw tight. “What does that even mean?”
The old man tilted his head. “The Garden collects girls like her. I don’t know what they do with them. We kept to our own business. And they didn’t come here. But over the years we would see things. Sense things.”
Jimmy’s voice cracked. “So, she’s just… prey to them?”
“No,” the old man said. “Not prey.” He leaned forward. “Promise.”
“Promise for what?”
“For power,” the old man explained. “For continuation. For their rituals. For their beliefs. For the kind of darkness that folds itself neatly behind prayer.”
Jimmy grabbed Sassy’s hand, needing to anchor her—needing to anchor himself.
“Why didn’t they ever come here before?” he asked hoarsely.
The old man turned his head toward him, expression unreadable. “Because the Fallon bloodline never gave them a reason to.”
His attention slid back to Sassy.
“But now that you’re here. They’ll come. And they’ll come fast.”
Benji stiffened beside the door, jaw clenching.
Sassy swallowed. “Can you help me? Can you tell me how to stop them?”
The old man nodded slowly. “I can tell you what you are.”
Sassy felt Jimmy’s hand tense around hers.
“And what is she?” Jimmy asked.
The old man smiled—thin, knowing, sad.
“A key,” he said.
“A doorway.”
“A girl born not just to be taken but…to be used.”
Sassy’s knees nearly buckled.
The old man reached out again, palm trembling.
“But listen to me, child. You asked the wrong question.”
Sassy’s voice shook. “What question should I ask?”
The fire crackled.
“The one that matters,” he whispered.
“What happens if the Garden ever gets you back?”
The room fell silent.
Benji stood still as stone.
Jimmy’s breathing labored.
And Sassy felt something old, buried, electric rising beneath her skin.
15
Benji didn’t waste time. As soon as the old man fell silent, he stepped into the hall and made two short, sharp whistles into the dark. Within minutes, headlights rolled across the dirt drive, cutting light through the farmhouse windows.
Two trucks.
Two brothers.
Matty Fallon—tall, quiet, with the same squared shoulders as Benji but softer eyes—stepped onto the porch first. Behind him came Cole, broader and colder, a man whose silences spoke louder than most people’s sentences.
They entered without knocking.
“What’s the problem?” Matty asked, scanning the room until his gaze landed on Sassy beneath the quilt.
Cole’s eyes narrowed. “She sick?”
Benji shook his head. “She’s hunted.”
Matty’s jaw tightened. “By who?”
Jimmy opened his mouth, but Benji cut in. “A cult.”
That word alone stilled the room.
“They’re not just any cult,” Sassy whispered. Her voice trembled—not with fear but something quieter, deeper, a grief for what she’d once known and never understood.
Jimmy moved closer, protective. But Sassy didn’t lean toward him or away from him.
She simply stared ahead, as if seeing the shape of the Garden without needing her eyes.
“They believe girls like me are… keys,” she said. “Not to magic. Not to some power. It’s all psychosis. A system of control. Ritualized delusion passed down for generations. They think harming us unlocks something.”
Matty winced. Cole swore under his breath.
Benji’s jaw worked. “And they want her.”
Jimmy nodded, voice clipped. “They already found her once. They’ll keep coming.”
Cole turned to Benji. “So, what—hide her in the grain silo? Run them off with a shotgun?”
Benji didn’t smile, not even a little. “If they step foot on our land, we’ll handle it. But Sassy’s staying in the barn tonight.”
Jimmy bristled. “Like hell she is.”
Benji ignored him. He looked at his brothers. “We close the perimeter. Rotate watches. No one gets in without us knowing.”
Matty nodded immediately. Cole followed with a grunt.
It should’ve made Sassy feel safe.
It didn’t.
Instead, she felt a weight in her chest. A heavy, sinking certainty.
“They’ll get hurt,” she said quietly.
Matty turned to her, gentle. “We’ve handled worse.”
“No,” Sassy whispered. “You haven’t.”
Her hands shook under the quilt. Tears built behind her eyes, but she blinked them back. Jimmy reached for her, but she didn’t take his hand.
She stood—slow, unsteady—and addressed all three Fallon men.
“You’re strong. You’re protective. You think violence keeps danger away. But the Garden doesn’t fight in the open. They slip. They infiltrate. They manipulate. They twist.”
Jimmy stepped toward her. “Sass—”
“I won’t let you get hurt for me,” she said, cutting him off.
Her voice cracked.
“And I won’t let them use you as collateral.”
Benji’s expression shifted—softened in a way Jimmy had never seen. “Sunshine, we can handle these freaks. You just stay put.”
“I can’t.” Her voice nearly broke. “Benji… they want me. Only me. And if I stay here, they’ll come into your world, and they’ll tear through it like it’s nothing. I won’t let them.”
The room fell silent.
Jimmy watched her, pride and fear warring in his eyes.
Benji looked like someone had cracked him across the ribs.
Finally, he exhaled, long and slow. “Where are you going?”
“To find out who they really are,” she said. “Where they started. What they want. Why they believe in this… fantasy. I can’t fight something I don’t understand.”
Jimmy stepped to her side, threading his fingers through hers.
“I’m going with her,” he said.
Benji’s eyes flicked to their joined hands. A muscle ticked in his jaw.
Matty cleared his throat softly. “You sure this is a good idea?”
“No,” Jimmy said. “But it’s the only one we have.”
Cole crossed his arms. “You walk off this land and you’re on your own. Can’t protect you out there.”
Sassy nodded. “I know.”
Benji walked toward her. Slowly, like approaching a skittish horse. He stopped only a foot away; his gaze locked on hers.
“You don’t owe them answers,” he said quietly. “You don’t owe them closure. You don’t owe them anything.”
“No,” she whispered. “But I owe myself the truth.”
Benji swallowed hard. The flickering lamplight revealed something raw behind his usual swagger. Fear. And something else he’d never admit out loud.
He reached out, hesitated… then brushed a piece of wet hair behind her ear.
“You sure this is what you want?”
Sassy nodded, tears finally spilling. “I have to do this.”
Benji’s throat worked as he stepped back. “Then go. But listen to me, sunshine…”
His voice dropped low.
“If they touch you again… If they so much as breath the wrong way in your direction, you come back here. You hear me? I don’t care if it’s the middle of the night or the end of the world. You come back.”
Sassy nodded, wiping at her eyes.
Jimmy shifted beside her, tense but silent.
Benji wasn’t done.
He leaned closer, voice barely above a whisper.
“And if Jimmy can’t keep you safe—”
Jimmy snapped, “Benji—”
Benji shot him a glare before finishing.
“—I will.”
Sassy’s breath slowed.
She didn’t pull away.
She didn’t step into him either.
She simply whispered, “Thank you.”
Benji straightened, returning to the man the town feared.
Matty grabbed his coat. Cole stalked toward the back door to start the patrol.
Jimmy placed a hand on Sassy’s lower back. “Ready?”
Sassy looked at Benji one last time.
His eyes softened just for her.
“Come back alive, sunshine.”
She and Jimmy stepped into the night, walking toward the unknown origins of the Garden.
Behind them, under the dim porch light, Benji watched until they were gone—jaw tight, fists clenched, carrying the weight of a goodbye he wasn’t ready to accept.