The Truths we Burn (The Hollow Boys Book 2) Page 14

  Rosie’s voice is like white noise. It crackles and hisses inside my ear, millions of little needles poking my eardrum over and over again.

  “Since when did they get engaged?” I ask, hoping my tone comes off flat and unbothered.

  She shrugs, biting into a stick of celery. “My mom said way before Christmas. They’d just wanted to keep it low-key until graduation. Looks like they got tired of waiting.”

  I nod to her answer but also make a note to myself.

  I’d been right all along. I should never have touched the pretty flower, never allowed her teeth to sink into the flesh of my forbidden fruit.

  Everyone says the devil is the corrupt one; no one thinks it could have been Eve tempting trouble.

  She had been pretty poison all along, and now I’m invested.

  My mind is plagued with memories of her, of who I thought she was, my body infected with the feel of her.

  She’s in me, everywhere, and I want her the fuck out, right now.

  All of her words, all of her actions, they had all been filthy, fucking lies. Every last one of them.

  I’m sweating, fuming beneath my clothes, and the shaking in my hands is the worst it’s ever been. I’m positive fumes could be seen radiating off me.

  I’m spinning out of control, a downward spiral heading to nothing but a chaotic end, and I need to get out of here. I need to leave. I need to be punished for trusting someone I know is a liar.

  “I forgot my chemistry paper at the house. Gonna run and grab it before next block. Catch up with you all later.” I drop my feet to the ground, pushing away from the table I’d just sat down at only moments ago, and walk right out of there.

  I’m going to leave—that’s what I tell myself as my feet thud down the hallway. I need to be hit or I need to blow something up before I combust.

  Except, as I walk past the theatre doors, I pause.

  I know Sage comes here after lunch every day because of her free period. I’d sat in here many days watching her in the back row of the room without her knowing, just to see her in what I thought was her natural element.

  I sat there like a fucking puppy. A fool. A fucking chump. Frothing at the mouth like she was some goddess or angel. I sat and watched, thinking of all the things I would do and say to her later. It was how I got through the day without gutting her boyfriend.

  It held me off until I saw her again, because if I’m being truthful with myself, the only real place I’d felt anything close to happy was when I was near her. Not just comfort, like with the boys, but actual happiness.

  A feeling I hadn’t felt since my mom died.

  Goddammit, how could I have done this to myself. How could I have even thought, for one split second, I was capable of being in love.

  Even after what Rose said, even after the ring on her finger, this force inside of me keeps trying to defend her. It’s lost on false hope, begging my brain to listen, to be optimistic. That maybe this is all some huge misunderstanding.

  It wants to believe in her.

  In whatever we were.

  I shove the doors open to the theatre, cursing myself. “You pathetic fucking idiot.” My hands pull at my hair, tugging at the strands painfully hard.

  Even when I have no reason to believe her, I still wait. I lean against the wall in the darkness, and I continue being the guy who believes in her. I believe in the Sage I saw that night at The Graveyard.

  There’s no way she could fake the way her eyes cried out for help.

  She could not have forged all those conversations, all those late-night rambles and laughs.

  There’s no way.

  I stand here waiting as the minutes tick by, going to war with myself, never realizing until this very moment that I’d actually started hoping for something good for once.

  Something that doesn’t hurt.

  Tricked into thinking I deserve more.

  The door opens again, the sound of students outside canceled once it shuts behind her.

  I’m not going to drag this out. I want answers.

  I need the truth.

  “I’ll give it to you, Sage. You’re a hell of an actress.” I push off the wall, stepping closer to her. My body towers over hers even in those strappy heels.

  “Rook—”

  “Let’s go back to pyro, yeah? Rook is for people who don’t blatantly lie to my goddamn face.” My internal war spews from my mouth, my words not even giving my mind a second to hear her out.

  I stare down at those blue-flame-colored eyes and search for something, anything. A flicker of emotion that could kindle my hope so that it doesn’t burn out.

  Maybe anger because I’m doubting her. Sadness because she’s in some sort of trouble.

  I would have taken regret. I would have accepted her lying to me about Easton and regretting it because she had learned to care about me.

  Instead, I’m met with nothing.

  A passive face with an unreadable expression.

  I look up at the ceiling, my chest expanding with a deep breath. “Just how long were you going to keep this up? Were you planning on keeping me around till just after the reception or when you had to figure out who the baby daddy was?”

  She just stands there, looking at me with zero reaction. Normally, she’d yell back, fight back with me, because that was her. That was who she was with me.

  I’m fueled with so much energy, my hands want to reach out and shake her. I want to scream at her to say something, to say anything.

  “Tell me it’s a lie, Sage,” I say with a harsh tone, but my chest is aching.

  She told me I could keep her. That she was mine to keep, and here I am doing the exact opposite.

  I’d never been able to keep anything I cared about.

  I just want this one godforsaken thing.

  “Please fucking tell me the engagement is a hoax, that it’s not true. That this is what your parents wanted for you. Tell me the truth, and I swear I’ll shred the world in half to save you from it, to protect you.” I keep going. “Tell me the you that clings to my hoodie when she sleeps is the real you. Tell me I got the real Sage.”

  Hoping this will be the straw to break her from her trance, I step forward, placing my hands on either side of her head.

  “Just tell me it’s a lie, baby,” I whisper.

  In three short movements, she obliterates all the trust I had for her. She steps back, out of my touch.

  “This isn’t how I wanted this to go, but I suppose it’s best to rip this Band-Aid off.” She tucks a piece of hair behind her ear casually, as if I’m not ready to explode. “I just, I needed a little…” She trails off as she thinks of the right word, looking rigid and calculated.

  “Danger before graduation, ya know? You get that, right?” Her eyebrows lift at the rhetorical question, sounding more like a robot than a human. The attitude that soaks every single word rocks me.

  The girl I had started letting in is gone. This is the old Sage, and she is back with even sharper claws.

  The sad part is I don’t think she ever went anywhere.

  “I didn’t really get the full wild high school experience everyone always talks about—trying to keep up images, cheer, school—and when Easton proposed…” She sighs, looking away from me for a moment as if she’s picturing him, then returning her gaze to mine. “Well, I just wanted to check off all my life experience boxes, and you seemed like you would get the job done.”

  My chest constricts. A large knife had been dug into my back, filling my lungs with blood.

  The only words I can manage through gritted teeth are “Is that right?”

  She nods, showing her teeth with a condescending smile. “I’ll admit, I had my doubts when he popped the question.” As if to rub it in worse, as if to pour gasoline over my sliced wrists, she absentmindedly twirls the ring on her finger. “But! I think you made it more than obvious Easton Sinclair is everything I need for my future. I mean, we were practically made for each other. Don’t you thin
k?”

  Is she fucking serious right now?

  I step closer to her, furrowing my eyebrows into an angry V.

  “You’re joking. Your future is fake orgasms and people who treat you like a blow-up doll? That’s bullshit, Sage. This is bullshit. You mean to tell me that all the scripts, all the tears, LA, that was all, what? An act?” I’d never heard my voice so full of emotional intensity.

  I could sound threatening. I could sound funny or sarcastic, sure. But this is different. Every word feels like razor blades against the soles of my feet, because she barely flinches at them.

  As if they don’t bother her, as if she couldn’t care less.

  “I told you what you needed to hear, Rook.” She adjusts the strap on her book bag, bored of this conversation apparently. “I gave you a girl you thought you could save. And you were just the pool boy I wanted some dirt on. I just—”

  She stops, and fuck me if I thought she was going to crack and take it all back.

  Her laughter resonates, biting into my skin like close-range bullets. One after the other, I take hit after hit until I look like Swiss cheese.

  Left empty and full of holes all over again.

  “I just can’t believe you actually fell for it.” She finishes her giggling, wiping tears of joy from underneath her eyes.

  Fresh hatred pumps into my veins like adrenaline, an appetite for retaliation building. I thought my resentful spirit had dwindled since being around her, and this only throws meat at the starving beasts inside of me.

  She’s a liar. A manipulative bitch. A traitor.

  The enemy.

  There’s no one I hate more than her right now, and I want her to pay.

  I want her to fucking hurt the way I’d allowed myself to get hurt.

  I suck on my bottom lip, grinning from the animosity filling my body, overflowing in me. “Just know when you’re all alone at the end of this because you’ve used everyone around you that you did this to your fucking self. No one pities the bitch with no heart.”

  She scoffs, turning away from me to head towards the stage. “I don’t need pity, pyro. Just like I don’t need this.”

  “You’ve been playing this game so long, Sage, you don’t know if you’re playing it or it’s playing you,” I call to her only for her to glance over her shoulder and smile.

  “Don’t be upset that you’re the one who ended up being played this time, Van Doren. I’m sure you’ll get over it. After all, tomorrow the birds will sing.”

  I let her words soak into my skin. I let them feed my hatred for her, even if the only real person to blame is myself.

  She’ll get what’s coming to her. I’ll make sure of that.

  I tear out of the school, attempting to rip the doors off the hinges as I do. I know exactly what I’m going to do, but first, there’s something I need taken care of.

  I go to the one person who would do as I asked without requiring answers.

  Someone who craves the kind of demented torment I need in this moment.

  Punches to the gut from Alistair and coarse Bible verses dipped in malice from my father aren’t going to curb my hankering for pain today. It won’t be enough.

  I need some to extract this poison.

  Now.

  With my body shaking with so much self-hatred, I stumble up the stone steps to the front door. The gaunt knocker glares at me as I bang my fist on it, urgency in my movements.

  My brain is shouting, screaming, and raging at the useless fucking organ in my chest.

  It should have stayed dead. It should not have started beating again after everything it had been through. It knew better—it saw how the world was, and yet it expected Sage to be different.

  For her to not be a liar.

  It started pumping black sludge through the ducts when she dug her nails into me, the only liquid left filling my veins, fighting to work. It fought to believe it could once again beat normally, transport real blood instead of toxic fluid.

  The heavy door groans as it opens, sunlight pouring into the darkened house. His black Oxfords click across the floor as he leans against the frame, looking at me with dull eyes.

  He has a voice that’s full of life, sarcastic wit, intelligent banter, and even some humor, yet his eyes let you know it’s all an act.

  Inside, he’s twisted. He couldn’t care less.

  Not because he doesn’t want to, but because he physically can’t care about others. Not the way normal people do.

  He’s loyal, he understands me, but he doesn’t care.

  Human emotions are void to him.

  While Silas comprehends emotions, how they work, how they affect others, he just doesn’t enjoy them.

  Thatcher could never grasp the concept of sentiments because he can’t feel them for himself.

  How could he?

  However, Thatcher Pierson can do what no one else would for me.

  I look at him, my fiery eyes meeting his icy ones.

  “I need you to make it hurt.”

  Sage

  Stomach acid pours from my throat, splashing into the toilet beneath me. I grip onto whatever’s beside me, trying to brace myself for the pain.

  There’s nothing left inside of me to vomit. Every time my chest heaves, my organs tighten and shift, expelling only a few puddles of greenish-yellow bile. I’d made myself comfortable on the floor of my bathroom, having left school and come directly here, wanting to avoid contact with all human life.

  No amount of makeup or snarky bite could hide what was happening inside.

  I’d used up all my energy keeping a straight face with Rook, keeping it all shoved down deep, and now it’s forcing its way back up.

  My body is punishing me for what I had done to him.

  Another wave of nausea hits as warm tears streak down my face. All I can see are his eyes.

  How they cracked and splintered open with so much pain and spite. I physically witnessed him torch every single positive feeling associated with me in his body.

  All the good that I’d worked so hard to bring to the surface vanished with every single lie from my lips. With one conversation, I took what we had and buried it ten feet under.

  It’s dead now. I’m dead now.

  Dead to him.

  Left to rot with my own regret and the bugs, with no tombstone to mark my grave, because I know he’ll never return. There’s no need for him to know where I’m left to rest.

  In that moment, I proved to him what he always believed to be true.

  This life is not meant to hold anything but contempt and suffering for him.

  “Is it done?”

  I lift my heavy eyes to the door, barely glancing before trying to pretend he doesn’t exist. I’m hoping if I ignore Easton long enough, he’ll simply disappear from the face of the earth.

  “Yes.” I cough. “You can get the hell out of my house now.”

  His footsteps come closer before I feel his presence next to my hunched-over frame. Bravely, his fingers push a few strands of hair out of my face and over my shoulder. Not like it really matters now since there is already puke in them.

  “Are you lying to me, Sage?” he purrs gently, voice soothing but his hand is the opposite. It greedily palms at the back of my head, clasping a fistful of hair, snapping my head back so I’m looking at him. “For your sake, you better not be lying to me.”

  “Get your hands off me!” I shout, pushing my hands deep into his chest. He falls back from his squatting position straight to his ass, a weird grin on his face the whole time. “I told you I did it. It’s done, you smug bastard.”

  “Tsk, tsk,” he clicks, shaking his head. “I had always found our relationship quite vanilla before. I think this is going to really spice things up for us in the future, babe.”

  “You make me sick,” I spit at him, a look of disgust on my face.

  A fresh wave of emotions bubbles inside of me, and I desperately want to curl into a ball on this floor and cry.

  But I�
�m not giving Easton that. He’s getting ready to take everything I am; I won’t give him the pleasure of watching me break any more than I already have.

  Had I really thought I could break away from all this? Leave and actually end up with Rook? Had I really allowed love to make me that naive all over again?

  “You know what makes me sick?” He stands up from the floor and dusts his pants off. “Knowing you let that fucking lowlife touch you. It makes you look pathetic. You should be thankful that I’m still agreeing to this marriage with you. When I could just as easily take Ro—”

  “Don’t you dare, you prick,” I warn him, matching his stance. It’s funny how even though he’s taller, his little-dick syndrome makes it feel like I’m talking down to him. “We had a deal, and I held up my end of it.”

  A few days after the rave party, Easton had stolen my phone. Imagine me finding out the psycho had snuck into my house while I was sleeping to do it. According to him, he was being a considerate boyfriend and taking action.

  It wasn’t hard for him to find the messages between me and Rook or figure out who they were from.

  When he confronted me about it, I thought, how perfect. Isn’t that stupid? I thought this meant I could tell him to fuck off sooner than I’d expected. That Rook and I would be together publicly before graduation.

  I ran before I could walk. I got overly excited about the time ahead instead of focusing on what stood in front of us.

  They couldn’t force me or Rose to do this. It’s illegal, and we’re already eighteen. We could leave and never look back. Silas would do it for her in a heartbeat, and I’d placed my trust completely in Rook.

  That he would be there. That when I told him, he’d refuse to let me. He’d fight for me.

  Easton nods, rubbing his hand on his chin as he looks around. “I just have to know; did you really think you could get away with it? That I wouldn’t find out you were fucking him?”

  “You found out ’cause you’re crazy and stole my phone.” I push past him, moving to my disaster of a room, searching through the floor of clothes for one thing in particular. “Don’t give yourself the credit of figuring it out on your own. You’re not that smart.”

  I want to leave. I want this conversation to be over so I can pack a bag and head to the lake house. Stay there a few days and pretend everything is okay.