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The ache of losing him is brutal. I don’t miss him, the way you miss a pair of shoes that you grew out of, a memory of a glowing summer, or even a pet you’d lost. I do not miss him. He is missing from me. A vital organ torn from my gut. A severed limb.
My heart and soul were never mine. They had always been his, and now they belong to no one. They are lost, forgotten, alone.
“We swear on the River Styx.”
I warned them what I would become if they took him from me. Now there is no need to fear the reaper. They should fear the woman who loves him.
“Hello, darling phantom.”
screaming
“Divine,” I breathe. I’ve never meant anything more. Never been more honest.
A knock at the door steals my voice, even though I’m not even sure what I was about to say. I turn to look over my shoulder, seeing a head of red hair popping in. “Bad timing?” “Perfect as always, TG,” Rook breathes, like he hadn’t been able to until she was around. “Come here, baby.”
rooksage my loves❤️🩹
“But you’ll be hidden. You’ll be safe.” “You won’t be.”
I want her, I won’t deny that to myself. She’s the only person I’ve had any form of physical pull to, but that is all it is—a physical, biological response. That’s all it can be. Eyes are on my back, all with different questions, but none of them will get an answer. I can barely admit it inside my own mind that the reason I’d left, why I disappeared and why I came back, was because of her. All because of Lyra. To protect my bloody, cherry-flavored girl. If the copycat went after May, she is next on his list. If Odette Marshall figured it out, it won’t take him long. I can’t risk her. The
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He’s not allowed to have her either. No one is. Because even though I can’t have her, she’s still my ghost. She still haunts me. And every single murderous inch belongs to me.
“You fuel more than my ego, knowing how far you’d go for me. You’d give me anything. You and that pretty, dark heart.”
“If I asked, you’d die for me, darling phantom. Wouldn’t you?”
It’s these moments where I can quietly admire all she is, not having to worry about hiding my appreciation of her peculiar ways. It’s in these hours of the morning that I give myself some leeway, and I am soft. Weak for her.
It’s easy to stand out amongst the world of the living, but Lyra, sweet Scarlett, she is life that spins through graveyards. A face that echoes across the dead. Beauty so divine death can’t bring himself to touch her.
“I’m curious, how much do you know about me, pet?” “You’re an asshole.” “And you’re a stalker. My stalker.
No one had noticed her, that was correct. But I had. I’d noticed her long before she started following me around.
“My dislike never had anything to do with you, darling phantom. You were a reminder of what my father wanted me to become,” I tell her candidly. “Until one day, you weren’t.” “And now? What am I a reminder of now?” “All the things I can never have.”
It’s misery, pure agonizing misery, how badly I crave her.
I never thought there would be anything stronger than the urge to kill. Until I tasted her.
“It’s not even that scary,” she murmurs behind me, and I lean my back against the couch, looking over at her face. I snort. “Your boyfriend tried to kill you. Of course the demon in the forest doesn’t freak out the girl with a fear fetish.” Briar gasps, a grin on her face as she playfully nudges the back of my head with her foot. “Low fucking blow, Abbott.”
“I don’t think finding you attractive is the problem for Thatcher,” Briar adds. “Huh?” I ask with a huff, passing the bottle in her direction. “He looks at you like he wants to be beneath your skin.” Too late for that. Far too late. He’s already there, even if he doesn’t want to be, buried deep within the cords of my veins and constantly moving through me. He’s always there.
I look at both of them waiting for me, and I can’t think of many other places I’d want to be than right here, surrounded by two people I’d never planned to meet but can’t live without. The kind of friends you dream of as a lonely kid.
i need this kind of friendship
Thatcher was perfectly made, but I was made perfect for him.
“What I would do if I caught another man touching you. Are you picturing me slicing him to pieces while he begs for his life? How I would make him apologize to me for ever laying his eyes on you. For stupidly thinking you belonged to anyone but me, pet.”
“Darling.” He traces the front of his white teeth with his tongue, a starved animal ready to feast. “I’d rid the world of men who breathe the same air as you.”
“I own you, Lyra Abbott. Your body, your soul, your heart. Even if I can’t have it, I own you.”
“I wish you’d stop me from hurting you, darling phantom,” he whispers, “because I cannot stop myself.”
I stood no chance the moment I saw her. The nail in my coffin of control had been my name coming from those lips. How could anyone walk away from that? From her?
But last night, I’d raised a white flag. Maybe it’s the isolation, the lack of human contact, or maybe I’d just accepted that I am, in fact, weak for one dark-haired girl with eyes that tell stories of the dead. That someone had found a way inside, and I don’t want her to come out.
She’s mine.
Snow is still sprinkled throughout the curls of her ebony hair. Winter’s favorite rose.
“What is this?” The words shake in my mind but come out smoothly. “A digital piano.” She shifts her weight, trying to hold it up, but her weak arms are struggling, “I couldn’t get a grand piano quick enough, and I wasn’t sure how I’d get it into the house. So I thought this was the next best thing.”
No one had been so outwardly kind to me. I am the man made of nightmares. People pull their children tighter when I walk by. I’d never even held someone with warm intentions before Lyra. I am not a man who deserves compassion. Especially from her.
“I just—I think I broke you.” Yeah, I think you broke me too.
I’m trying, to no avail, to keep her at a distance so I don’t have to admit that she scares me. A man who fears nothing is afraid of all she is. All she makes me want. All she makes me feel.
“Your gift,” I state, that fluttering from earlier coming back, and I pause before I continue. “You’re sunlight.”
“Why are you sleeping out here?” I ask her sleepy state. Still half-asleep and unguarded, she answers me. “You have nightmares,” she mutters groggily, taking her sweet time to sit up. “I sleep out here when they start, just in case you need anything when you wake up.”
“Why!” she exclaims. “What are you protecting me from, Thatcher? Just tell me!” One last push and the dam inside of me falls. It shatters, exploding into small pieces and leaving no chance for rebuilding. “Me!” I yell, the sound echoing in my chest. I barely recognize my own voice. I grab the sides of her head, caging her between my palms as my fingers tangle into the hair at the back of her neck. “Me, you stubborn fucking girl. I’m protecting you from me.”
“I crave you,” I exhale, the admission slicing my throat on its way out. “My body wants you every second of the day and twice as much at night. I want you in the most unhinged ways, ways that would scare you.”
“Then take me. Have me, Thatcher. Let me give myself to you.”
“You don’t need to protect me, not even from you.” She holds me tighter, as if her touch will make the words soak into my skin. “I’ll take what you can give me, don’t you see that? I would rather have you like this than live without you. There is no one else out there for me. I was made for you.”
She is all things chaotic and peculiar in a way that makes you want to believe in things like destiny. Because no one is simply born this beautiful. This unbearably beautiful.
I don’t want to leave Thatcher. Not now, never. But I keep that truth tucked away for myself.
He’d come for me. I am his, and he’d come for me.
“Oh, darling,” he purrs, swallowing my tears, “you’re worth it. Bloodshed and all.”
“Let me make this clear. Don’t ever touch her again. Don’t breathe near her. Do not exist in the same space as her. Or I will rip your fucking head from your shoulders.”
He lets out a heavy sigh. “Was he worth it?” I look at the girl in front of me. Waves of ebony curls frame her delicate face. She tugs off the chunky black sweater she’d been wearing, leaving her in an unholy tight T-shirt and brown pleated skirt that hangs off her waist. “No.” I press my fingers on the bridge of my nose as my eyes close. “But she was.”
“No one is allowed to touch you,” I say honestly. My chest tightens as her finger drags lower, rubbing against the material of my belt, fiddling with the clasp. “Except you?” A smirk pulls across my lips. “Except me.”
Nothing has been as beautiful.
My lack of a soul wasn’t because of the evil that had infested my mother’s womb or my father’s corrupt DNA. No, I didn’t have one because it belonged to her. I think when we were created, instead of splitting our spirits in half, they gave both of them to her in order to keep them safe. To remind me, when the time was right, that all I am is hers to carry.
