The Truths we Burn (The Hollow Boys Book 2) Read online

  At one point, he looked at me with longing and need, with desire and passion, but now it’s just hatred.

  “It’s not pain,” I say. “It’s disgust. Rook hates me, and that’s about the only emotion he feels towards me now.”

  “Now? So there was a before?”

  I blow out a breath, running both hands through my hair and letting them cradle my neck as I look down at the bed. I could tell them, right? They won’t say anything. I mean, the only person I’m protecting at this point is Rook.

  Defending the devil.

  Even after all the shit he’s said, I’m still protecting him, keeping our secret so that his friends don’t feel betrayed that he withheld the truth from them. He’s given me so much fucking shit about lying, and now, there’s only one of us that’s lying.

  And it’s not me. Not anymore.

  “Last year, before Rosie died, Rook and I, we—” We what? Fucked? Fell in some type of weed-infused toxic love? “We messed around for a few months. It was just supposed to be a little secret fling. It wasn’t even supposed to be that. He was only going to be a one night of freedom that no one knew about. I didn’t expect it to turn into what it was. I didn’t expect to—”

  “Fall in love?” Lyra interjects, her pupils dark and wide.

  Was it love?

  I think it was the closest I’d ever gotten to it. I know when things get dark inside my head, I relive the time we spent together. I think of all the things we never got to do and what my life would be like had I stayed with him.

  I shrug. “I’m not even sure that’s what it was. I just knew by the end of it, I wanted to be with him. I wanted more, and I wasn’t allowed to have it. I was dating Easton at the time or, I should say, engaged to Easton.”

  “I’m sorry. You said yes to a life with Easton Sinclair?” Briar looks at me, visibly cringing, making me laugh a little.

  “Not willingly. His father set it up, and my family agreed so that Stephen Sinclair would keep paying our bills and funding my dad. I was going to leave after graduation. I wasn’t going to go through with it. I’d planned on telling Rook everything and leaving with him. But…”

  His face flashes in my head, his voice, the way she smelled.

  It was all so real.

  “But Easton found out, and he threatened to take Rose instead. He told me I had to end it with Rook, or he’d ruin Rosie. I had a choice to make, and I couldn’t let anything happen to my sister. Not when her future was so much brighter than mine. She wouldn’t have made it out alive if she had to live a life like that. I forced Rook away to save Rose, and in the end, I lost them both.”

  They both sit there with different versions of shock.

  This weight lifted off my chest with the words, with saying them out loud.

  Briar is the first to say something. “And he still doesn’t know the truth?”

  I shake my head.

  “You have to say something, Sage. You’re just letting him go around hating you!”

  Is it worth it at this point? After everything I’d said, everything that happened, would it be worth it?

  I doubt he would even believe me. I could tell him the sky is blue, and he’d still think I was lying to him. A relationship without trust is a disaster waiting to happen. All we had built in those months was destroyed, and I don’t think we can get that back.

  We’re two people who never should’ve touched one another. We’re both too hardheaded, too stubborn, two flames constantly trying to burn higher than the other. We weren’t made for longevity.

  I’d wanted him too quick. Too much. It wouldn’t have been healthy; it never would have worked. No matter how many times my heart tries to tell me differently.

  Maybe all we were meant to be was that.

  Two star-crossed lovers that made it out before Shakespeare had enough time to kill us.

  I touch the scar on my collarbone, a reminder, a gift.

  “I think it’s for the best that he doesn’t know. There’s too much damage done to rebuild anything. It would be a waste.”

  “I just find it hard to believe he only feels hostility towards you. Rook is…” Lyra swings her arms in the air, trying to find the words. “He doesn’t pay attention to things he doesn’t care about. Yet, every time you’re around each other, the only thing he can focus on is you.”

  I suck in a breath, pulling my knees up towards my chest and recalling the conversation I had with Rose just before I fell into Rook’s fire.

  Rook Van Doren does not give attention to things he deems boring. If he notices you, if you interest him, you’ll know it.” Her eyes glanced over at me. “And I’d say he noticed you.”

  I wondered if she’d always had an inclination about the two of us but didn’t say anything in fear I would deny it or get angry for her assuming something like that.

  “He’s only watching me because he doesn’t trust me. He thinks at any moment I’m going to do something that will put you guys in danger. I’m a liability to him, that’s all.”

  I feel my phone vibrate next to me, the screen lighting up showing me that I have a new message.

  Picking it up, I open it to find the last thing I want to see.

  Pip, meet me at St. Gabriel’s, tomorrow at noon. And this time, you better have information.

  “So that’s it, then? You won’t even consider talking to him?”

  I shut my phone off, chewing the inside of my cheek, my stomach swimming with anxiety. A cold breeze nips at me from the open window, crawling down my skin and chilling my bones.

  “No. We died that day, and he intends to keep it that way.” I push myself off the side of the bed. “Can I borrow a sweatshirt from one of you?”

  I hope that would be enough to pull away from this topic. Today has taken enough emotional energy from me, and continuing to talk about Rook is only a bitter reminder of everything I’ve lost and will never get back.

  “Yeah, grab one of mine. Briar’s consist of Alistair’s clothing, and no one wants to smell like his musky cologne,” Lyra says. “Well, I mean, besides you,” she offers towards Briar with a grin.

  I laugh, opening the small door to Lyra’s very disorganized closet. It’s already being held ajar by the number of clothes that are piled at the bottom, and I realize that I think I’d rather wear Alistair’s hoodie than go exploring through Lyra’s closet.

  Whether it’s because I’m stoned or I just find it funny, I keep imagining this is where she keeps her live specimen she doesn’t want us to find out about. I start giggling a bit, thinking about it.

  Reaching up on my tippy-toes to grab the dark purple sweatshirt at the top of the shelf, I yank at the sleeve, and it comes falling down along with a few other heavy items that crash onto the floor.

  “Shit, Lyra, I’m sorry,” I apologize as I bend down, trying to make sure I didn’t break anything. I quickly attempt to rearrange the clothes and box that had tumbled down so I can put it back where I found it.

  The medium-sized shoebox sits sideways in front of me. At first I think they’re keepsakes of her mother or even her positive experiences thus far at college. But then I see the expensive, knitted, off-white pullover that looks way too big for Lyra.

  There’s also a bottle of men’s Armani bodywash that is half-empty, several handwritten notes that don’t match my friend’s chicken scratch penmanship, candid photographs, and the most damning piece of the puzzle is a cufflink—a lapel pin tie bar that’s designed to keep the edges of a suit together at the wrist, and it had been designed into the shape of the letters T. P.

  “It’s not—” She stands up, her face turning ghostly. “It’s not what it looks like.”

  I scoop up a stark white handkerchief with a blotchy red stain in the middle.

  “This isn’t Thatcher’s belongings in a box inside of your closet?”

  Lyra had always depicted herself as the shy, bug geek who enjoyed her life of invisibility. But I was starting to gather that was only what she wanted people t
o think.

  “Just,” she breathes, “let me explain.”

  Rook

  It is said in Western folklore, you can use a crossroads to summon the devil or a demon. Depends on what deal you’re trying to make.

  They are hailed by ritual items said to be buried in the center of where the roads intersect. It is there that you can bargain a wish for the cost of your soul. You can be granted anything your heart desires, but on a fixed date of the demon’s choice, hellhounds will unearth from the underworld, ready to claim that soul.

  I’d been summoned for vengeance, to deal karma to someone with whom I’d been biding my time. Someone that I had once made an agreement with, and I had let them go untouched, scot-free.

  But now, it’s time to collect.

  I lean against a tall pine tree, the sound of my cigarette burning disturbed the silence.

  For an entire year, I’d been trying to get her out of my bloodstream. Trying to cut her out like some flesh-eating disease, trying to penalize myself for having faith in someone like her. I realize now, I can’t cut her out.

  I’m going to have to cure the root of the infection.

  Eliminate the virus at its source.

  And that’s just what I planned to do as I find myself standing here on the crossroad in front of St. Gabriel’s church, staring at the back glass of Sage’s car that sits adjacent to a black sedan.

  I’m not sure what she had invited into the world when she decided to negotiate with the feds. When she decided to make herself one of the enemies.

  My greatest enemy.

  But it had unleashed an entirely new degree of wicked inside of me.

  I tried to rationalize after leaving Silas at the graveyard. I tried to calm down and give her some leeway. Maybe they really were friends of her father and she didn’t know what they were up to.

  Once again, I had given her the benefit of the doubt. My heart went against my gut and tried to convince me once again it was all a misunderstanding. Something about her keeps wriggling beneath my skin, turning all my screws backwards and making me place confidence in her that she doesn’t deserve.

  When someone shows you their true colors, you have to believe them.

  And Sage is flying her colors high today.

  I hadn’t been stalking her; I’d actually planned on confronting her about it, but when I saw her leaving the dorms alone, I decided to follow. I drove behind her a good distance, at a slow pace, but fast enough that I kept her taillights in view.

  When she pulled into what was left of the church where a car was already waiting on her, it was then I knew what she had really been up to this entire time.

  Why she had decided to come back, her plan all along.

  I’ve been standing out here for about thirty minutes, starting to grow impatient, when I see Detective McKay exit the burnt church doors where they had been chatting. Where she was running her pink mouth about everything we had been up to, reporting back, being the good little rat she is.

  My mouth waters with venom, my hands itching for retaliation. I step into the trees farther as he gets into his vehicle, turning the key and slowly backs out of the space.

  I wait until I’m sure he won’t be returning, pleased to see that Sage is still inside the building I had once set fire to. I toss my cigarette out onto the ground, stepping on it as I walk towards the entrance.

  An odd feeling comes over me. I’m not twitching or enraged. I’m calm; I’m not overcome with impulse. It’s as if my body knows exactly what we’re coming here to do. What we’re here to take care of.

  The door whines as it opens, casting a beam of sunshine into what remains of the inside of the cathedral. Ashes and soot are stuck to the ground, burned benches, and broken decorations. It looks exactly like I had always wanted it to.

  Like hell.

  This place of holy ground burns my feet. I feel it sizzle through my shoes, searing my soles.

  I like that feeling, stepping into a place I know I don’t belong just because I fucking feel like it.

  Maybe that’s because I’d always felt more comfortable in chaos.

  Sage is stationed in the front, her hands resting on one of the only pews left, her head tucked between her shoulders. From this distance, it almost looks like she’s praying.

  “God doesn’t talk to people who make deals with the devil,” I call out. “Don’t you know that?”

  She flinches like my words wound her and shifts her body so she is facing me. All the pigment in her face drains when her worst nightmare comes to life. I’ve caught her in the act. There is no lying; there is nothing to help her out of this situation.

  “What are you doing here?” she asks, eyebrows furrowed together.

  I walk forward slowly, looking around at the damage my flames had done to this holy place. The place that had started the rumor of my demonic lineage. The first place to turn me into a monster.

  “I told you, Sage, I would be watching you, didn’t I? And it’s a good thing I did,” I laugh cruelly, “or I would have missed you meeting with Detective McKay. Since when did your daddy start making friends with the FBI?”

  Panic washes over her. The web that she had spun is crumbling down around her, and she’s grasping for something to say, a lie to conjure up.

  “Rook, let me explain. I’m not—”

  “You’re not what?” I spit out, my upper lip curling, filled to the brim with anger that she would have the fucking guts to lie straight to my face after I’d caught her red-handed.

  “You’re not snitching to the feds about our plans?” My footsteps are heavy thuds. Each weighted movement forward just builds my fury.

  “No, that’s not what is happening. I know that’s how it looks, but it’s not. My father came to the facility with Cain—Detective McKay—and they tried to give me a deal.”

  “That’s how you got out, isn’t it? You cut a fucking deal? To do what? Snoop around, get close to us, just so you could stab us in the back? Have us all sent to prison before we got to put your father’s head on a stake?”

  I’m closing in on her while she shakes her head back and forth quickly, stepping away from me with every single step in her direction. Fear bubbles up in her eyes, making my mouth water.

  It doesn’t matter. She can back away as much as she’d like. She can run if she wants. It won’t fucking matter, because she’s in my clutches now.

  And there is no way in hell I’m letting her get away.

  “No!” she shouts. “I mean yes, but I wasn’t going to do it. I just needed them to let me out so that I could help you guys get to my father. I was going to double-cross them, not you. I just needed them to believe me enough to let me out. That’s it.”

  I bite my bottom lip, smirking. “And you’re good at that, aren’t you? Getting people to believe you.”

  Her back hits the front of the confessional. The sturdy wood that it’s composed of had fought against the heat of the fire, leaving most of it intact. I can practically feel her heartbeat running rapid in her chest.

  “I’m not lying, not to you. I swear that’s the truth. Cain is working with this group called the Halo. All of them are—they’re the people my father owed money to. They’re taking girls around Ponderosa Springs and selling them.” She reaches her hands forward, palms out as if that will stop me, prevent me from doing what I want to do.

  “I only want to stop my father, and then I’m gone. I swear to you. Just like that first night at the lake house, I’m telling the truth. You have always had all of my truths, all of them.”

  So many questions run through my brain, overwhelmed with the information she just spewed. What the fuck is the Halo? Are both of the feds dirty? Is she even telling me the truth?

  I try to take in the information. I try to process, to take what she says and hear her words, but I physically can’t.

  My body temperature is so hot it’s about to melt my clothes. It’s boiling my brain, and the color crimson starts to leak into the corner
s of my vision. I’ve waited a year to make her feel this pain that she’d left me with. This betrayal. I want to hurt her. To make her pay.

  But flashes of the girl on that dock, broken and ripped apart by her past, hit me. They swipe across my memory at high speed, the organ inside my chest tried tethering to it. I’m right back there, being the fool all over again.

  But I refuse to do that.

  I close in on her, slamming my palm so hard into the front of the confessional that it stings my hand.

  “All. You. Fucking. Do. Is. Lie,” I grind out, my teeth bared like a rabid wolf starved for food.

  Her hands press into my chest while she shakes her head aggressively. “This is why I didn’t tell you to begin with, you fucking prick! No matter what I say, you won’t believe me! There is nothing I can say to make you trust me!”

  I’m at my end. I’m starting to malfunction.

  Because of her eyes.

  They are fucking glowing. Bright blue like scalding flames, shining the way they did when we were together. When I thought she was something more. When the words that came from her mouth were ones coated in holy water.

  They are so goddamn beautiful, and it hurts.

  It hurts more than Thatcher’s cuts, more than Alistair’s hits, my father’s words. I hurt so fucking much that it prevents me from breathing. Every single inhale feels like needles in my throat.

  And for the first time in my life, I want the pain to stop. I need it to fucking stop.

  No, no, no, I repeat to myself.

  “Because all you are is a treacherous fucking poison. I trusted you, and look what that fucking did.”

  Do not let her do this to you again, Rook. Don’t fall for this. It’s a fucking trick. Pretty poison—it’s the venom that’s still pumping in your veins.

  I take her fragile neck in my grasp, using the leverage to forcefully jerk her closer to me. Her scent gets all up close and personal with my nose, making it tingle. I press my waist into hers, feeling just how soft she is against me. Feeling just how easy she would be to break.

  My cock stiffens, straining against my jeans.

  I’d once thought she felt angelic in my arms. An angel that had wandered too far from home and found herself in the clutches of something sinister.