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“No one told you? I don’t have one.”
“You can take mine.”
History will not repeat itself this time. I will not lose her to another Pierson. Not this time. They do not win this time. This time, I get the girl.
I grieve for her, just as I had grieved for Rosemary. I’m angry that two people who warranted a better ending never got it. It makes no sense to me that people like me could still breathe and people like Rosie and May would never feel their own heart beat again.
My father knows exactly who the copycat killer is. The body parts, the notes left in the skin, those were for the police. Those were for the boys. The roses? Henry told him to leave those for me. He knew I’d figure it out. And now he has left me no choice. It’s the last option I have if I want the people around me to make it out alive. It’s time to pay daddy dearest a visit.
*Rook removed Alistair from group chat* Rook: Now that Dad’s gone. Rook: Let’s fucking torch this place.
“The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history.” “To be seen as ivory and gold”—that’s what I’d written on the page years ago in this copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray. The world is changed because you are made of midnights and crimson. The curves of your lips rewrite my purpose.—T.
“I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter, and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain.” I’d left little hearts around the quote. This is a novel about a narcissist whose self-obsession killed him. And this is what you underline? You’re an incurable romantic, darling. How did I become your fixation?—T.
“If you forget who you are in there,” I whisper, swirling my hips against the bulge in his boxers, “remember what it feels like to be with me.” The left side of his mouth tilts up. “How could I ever forget?”
For him, I’d bleed. For him, it’s worth it.
“Such a pretty little thing. Such a good girl for me, darling.”
“Be a good girl, baby. Give me one more,” he coos, hitting that spot deep inside of me. “I wanna feel your pretty cunt tighten around me. Milk my come from me.”
“That’s it,” he bites into my shoulder. “You feel my cock begging your pussy to come? You’re so very sweet for me, pet. Such a pretty girl coming all over me.”
“I think I knew you in a past life. Do you think that’s crazy?” My fingertips trace the lines of his collarbone. “No.” I can hear the smile in his voice. “But me wanting to know you in every life after this one might be.”
I wouldn’t flinch to sacrifice myself if it meant she made it out unscathed, alive. Briar, she’s strong, she’d survive my death, she’d move on eventually and find the happiness she’s earned. If anything happened to her, though? I would not say the same for me. I’d always been comfortable in the darkness; I’d been born in it. But now? I don’t know how to live in a world without the light she gives.
Getting ready to stand up, prepared to get to the car and get away as quick as possible, I hear a voice. The reason we’d started this. Why we stayed in Ponderosa Springs. It’s the voice that never asked us to go through with this, but we refused to let him do it alone. His revenge had become ours. His pain was something we shared. The fourth and final member of Ponderosa Springs’s bastard founding sons. “I leave and you let Rook take the lead?” His voice is smoke, quiet, lingering. “You’ve lost your edge, Caldwell.” Welcome home, Silas.
“The Abbott women have a nasty habit of seeking things that are bad for them. Does she taste as sweet as Phoebe did?”
“Careful, son. It looks like you’ve given her the power to end you.” He scoffs. “Lyra Abbott cannot fix what you were born to become. She will run from it like they all do. No one will ever be able to love what I have created in you.”
It wouldn’t matter to me if Lyra could love me or not. I would take her obsession. I would take it and feed it every day of our lives. And if she is the reason for my downfall? So be it. I’d let her do it. Hand her the knife myself and let her finish this legacy. The Pierson line could die with me. It could only ever be her that gave me my ending, because it had been me that gave Lyra her beginning.
“Do you know how I repay you for all that nurturing you did, Dad? All your rules? All the cleaning?” I grab his face in my hand, squeezing his jaw between my fingers. “I kill men who are just like you. Sad. Pathetic. Weak-minded scum. I outsmart them, overpower them, I butcher them. Every single time I watch the light drain from their eyes, it’s always you on the table. When I skin them, remove their organs, it is always you dying at my hand.”
“You did not train a protégé. You created your demise.”
hear his voice once more just before the door to his coffin shuts again, and I leave him to rot. One last gift from the Butcher of the Spring. It might very well be my favorite. “Conner Godfrey.”
Conner Godfrey is the Imitator.
“Miss the quiet yet?” I ask the person in my back seat, who still hasn’t made a move for the door. “I never minded the noise,” he says lowly. “As long as it’s not in my head.”
Fate had gifted Lyra with a bleeding heart. A beautiful, tortured, bleeding heart that feels everything a little too much. The world had abused it until it became a weapon, forcing her to become this version of death reincarnate to cope with feeling too much. The look in her eyes is ghastly. But a little carnage never scared me. Nothing about Lyra Abbott would ever make me fear her.
I wish I could’ve done more to save her mother, if only so I could thank her. For creating the only person on Earth I can’t bear to live without. I wish I would’ve stopped my father, if only so I could tell Phoebe Abbott that her daughter would never be alone again. That no matter what end we meet, she will always have me. In life and in death.
Rosie’s death had put us on pause, and tonight, in this moment, we’d press Play again. But now, we are different. Changed. We will never be those people again, who we once were.
And me, well, I hadn’t been entirely sure what I was going to do after graduation. I knew I wanted to study medicine somewhere far away from Ponderosa Springs. Only because I refused to accept who I was. Now? I don’t really care where I end up. As long as darling phantom is there with me. I want to spend lifetimes beside her, and I’ve wasted too much of our time already.
“Who else would have protected you three if I didn’t hang around?”
“I just know Rosemary is so fucking pissed she missed out on Thatcher becoming a decent human being,”
“Would you stab me if I said Lyra freaks me out?” “No.” A sigh leaves me as I look at Rook. “But she might.”
We had seen each other through days so dark it felt like the sun never existed. Our bonds had been forged from hellfire and bloody knuckles. We don’t love each other or care in a way the world would ever understand. We’d found each other as children, each of us stained with a mark we never wanted, and together, we learned how to own them. Four bastard sons who found comfort in each other’s chaos.
I know May told me his father had crushed all the soft things about him long ago. But I don’t think that’s true. I think he just became an expert at hiding it. He is soft. In ways you wouldn’t expect. He’s soft in the mornings, just before he’s had his coffee and his gaze is still sleepy. That’s when he picks out which mugs we’re drinking from that day, and somehow, he always makes sure they go together. Soft when he cooks us dinner, and even more so when he’s annotating my books. He couldn’t be anything but that. Not when the only thing he’s ever loved is the sound black and white keys make.
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“Can I ask you a question, Lyra?”
“I—” He stops, his throat working as he finds the words. “I feel things sometimes, I think. They’re these physical reactions to certain situations, but I can never identify them.”
“Okay, so tell me what they feel like to you.”
“What do you mean?”
“When you woke up from your dream and realized it was me beneath you. What did it feel like?”
“It felt wet. Slippery, like raindrops on clothed skin,” he answers candidly.
“Sadness, sorrow, despair,” I tell him, trying to think about what they feel like for me. “It varies depending on how hard the rain is. Give me another one.” “Fizzling. Bubbles floating around in my stomach. I felt it when you gave me the digital piano. It’s a constant popping.” I smile, wide and bright. “Happiness.”
We do this, back and forth, for a while. Him explaining what each of these feelings is and me trying to identify them. We talk for hours, shifting around the bed multiple times. At one point, his head is in my lap, and the...
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“I want you to make me bleed.” The words float in the air and heat my skin. I lick the taste of him off my lips. “Make me yours.” He swivels between my thighs, the head of his cock brushing my clit. The friction from our clothes heightens the pleasure. “I want to be yours.”
I’ve belonged to Thatcher for years. My entire life, it feels like. But I’ve never known what it’s like to own another person. To look at them and know they want you to stake your claim. For the world to recognize you are a part of them.
“Are you sure?” I find myself asking as I drag the edge of the metal across his chest.
“I want a constant reminder of who my home is.” He brushes the bridge of his nose against mine, holding himself up with his hands. “I want to look at your mark every day so that I never forget the parts of me that have always belonged to you, darling phantom.”
“The sting of this blade. I feel this when I touch you. When I’m around you, it’s like fresh cuts. Painful in a way I crave,” he mutters. “What is that one?”
“I—” “Tell me,” he urges. “What is it for you?” “Love.” I say it on an exhale. “That’s what love feels like for me. It stings, it hurts, because it’s real and you’re afraid of losing it. But it stays with you. It scars.”
He glances down at the bleeding letter, dragging a finger through the steady stream of blood before bringing it to my mouth. “Taste how good your brand feels,” he orders, pressing against the seam of my lips.
“I want you,” I breathe, my hands sinking into his hair, pushing my hips up to drive to my point. “Please.” “You beg so sweetly,” he murmurs against my skin, taking his time to pull back from me.
“I love the way you look taking my cock, pet,” he hisses through clenched teeth. “I could live inside this tight pussy.” “Then do it.” I hum in the back of my throat. “Don’t fucking tempt me.” He finishes his sentence with a punishing thrust. “You think I won’t? That I won’t keep you locked in this room for days? Feed you only my cock? Make you drink down my come?”
