his voice cut through the night like a ripple across the still water. it wasn't loud – it didn't have to be. jj never needed volume to hit her where it hurt. kiara sat on the edge of the boat, knees tucked up to her chest, the salt-crusted wind tangling through her hair as it whipped around her face. the moon was hanging low over the ocean, casting silver shadows across the deck. she stared at the dark waves below, trying not to feel the ache swelling between her ribs. tired? that didn't even scratch the surface. she blinked slowly, letting the silence stretch between them. the engine had gone quiet hours ago, and so had the others. somewhere behind her, pope and cleo were knocked out cold, john b was mumbling in his sleep, and sarah was curled up in the corner like a question mark. broken and trying to hold on. like the rest of them. she didn't turn to look at jj. she couldn't. not yet.
tired? she was wrecked. she was frayed at every seam, her insides twisted into knots so tight she'd forgotten what it felt like to just… breathe. there was always a plan, a lie to keep straight, someone to run from. gold, guns, graves. she hadn't signed up for any of it, not really – but somewhere along the way, the line between right and wrong had blurred, and she'd stopped noticing. she swallowed, hard. “i don't know,” she said, quietly. her voice didn't sound like her own. “i think i'm too far in to be tired.” but she was. god, she was. she missed her room, her mom's voice, the smell of her stupid lavender shampoo. she missed hot showers and cold cereal and waking up without wondering if someone they knew would be dead by sundown. she missed laughing without fear behind it. she missed them before they were ghosts of themselves, chasing ghosts of something that might not even exist. “do you ever feel like…” she trailed off, biting the inside of her cheek. “like we're just running toward something that's never gonna let us go? like it's always gonna be this?” her fingers curled inward. she still wouldn't look at him. she couldn't because she knew if she did – if she saw that pain in his eyes again – it would break something in her she wouldn't know how to fix. “i'm tired of pretending this doesn't feel like drowning,” she whispered. “every single day.”
