The Blood We Crave: Part Two (The Hollow Boys, #4)

by Monty Jay

“I’m fantastic with anything that requires a knife.”

Some stalker you are. Do you even know me?” My jaw drops. “You jerk!”

My mother wasn’t religious, I’m not religious, but if it meant keeping him forever, I’d pray.

“I’ve never had a home-cooked meal before,” I say abruptly, which may not be what I was thinking of, but it’s not a lie. “It’s a first for me.” Thatcher rests his hands on the edge of the island just in front of me, a smirk on his lips. “You can add it to the list of firsts I’ve stolen from you, then.”

“You’re not the only one intrigued by someone in this room, Lyra.”

“My firsts. I saved them for you.” Realization sparks in his eyes, and before I can say anything else, he moves the plates out of the way and grabs my hips, hauling me towards him. My knees are touching his chest, and he’s looming over me. “I think…” He trails off for a moment, as if to search for the right words. “I think I saved all my firsts for you too.”

“No matter the cruelty your hands are capable of, they will always be the one place I feel safe. How could I fear fingers that were made to touch me?”

Rook wraps his arms around Sage’s shoulders, pulling her into his body. “Do not make a joke about your dick.” She rolls her eyes, leaning into him further and kissing his arm softly. With her heels on, they are almost the same height. They fit so perfectly together, two puzzle pieces that click.

i love them sm

I smile behind my champagne glass as I watch Rook wrap Sage up in his arms, dancing more as one person than two separate people. They look so in love at this moment that I almost forgot the reason we came here.

my babies forever

“You’re invisible to most, this enigmatic ghost. You are a mystery to the world, Lyra, and you’ve let me solve you.”

“What are we doing?” I whisper as we sway in tune to the melody of the music, his hands on my body guiding us. “It would be a shame for you to look this beautiful and not have someone ask you to dance.” “We’ve danced before, Thatch.” “And just as I told you then, that was a distraction,” he corrects, stiffening his grip on my hand before pushing me outward. I squeak as my body spins, his arm raised high in order to keep me twirling. My dress lifts, fabric whirling in the star-soaked night. I don’t notice the smile on my lips until it makes the edge of my eyes crinkle. When he pulls me back into his chest, I land ungracefully, my palm laid flat just above his heart. “This,” he breathes across my lips, “is dancing, darling phantom.”

If I could live in one moment forever, it would be this one. This is a night you look back on if you’re lucky enough to make it to eighty. You long for it and wonder what you’d do to be young again. I want to exist with him like this forever. Just me and him.

When you live your life in black and white, it’s impossible to not be tainted by someone who exists in full color.

If it makes me weak to crave her, then let me be weak. Being strong means nothing if I can’t have her.

“Nothing about you could ever scare me, Lyra Abbott,” I mutter. “All your darkness is my own. We’re the same.”

I like that she’s infatuated with me, that she only has eyes for me—haunts, exists, breathes just for me. She is my obsessed angel, and I am her possessive god.

“You had me then; you just never realized it. You can have me now.” Lyra’s sneaky fingers pull at the buttons of my shirt, undoing it casually. “Forever, if you want.”

“I don’t want to be perfect if it means I have to live without you.”

Lyra’s hand moves, the tip of her finger drawing across my skin. When I glance down, I find her painting hearts with the blood that drips from her veins. Tiny bloody hearts. They connect and leak down my chest, drying in messy strokes. She’s covering me in them. Marking my skin with the proof of her obsession. And I let her because I’m tipsy. Blood drunk on a girl intent on loving me until it kills her. Until the grave. That’s what we are, have always been. The kind of connection that began in death and would last far beyond it.

Whatever she wants, she will have it. I’d give her the world if she asked me for it.

“Your heart is racing,” she whispers, placing a hand over my chest as if to steady the thrumming in my chest. I laugh, pieces of my damp hair falling in front of my face. “No one told you? I don’t have one.” She smiles, bright and blinding. All Lyra and all mine. Her lips kiss the hickeys on my neck, and she preens beneath me, so proud of her claim on me, admiring the dried bloody hearts still staining my skin. My chest aches uncomfortably when she speaks again. “You can take mine.”

It would have been much easier to fall in love with literally anyone else. But I don’t want easy. I’ve never wanted easy. I want a love that’s worth the fight. Consumption, unhealthy entanglement. The kind where you can’t really tell where one person ends and the other begins. I want love that hurts because it’s real. I’d always known Thatcher would be the only person who’d give that to me.

“Will you tell me about them?” “My dreams?” “Yeah.” “Why?” I sigh, rolling my eyes. He can be so difficult sometimes. Everything in his mind has some twisted ulterior motive. As if the idea of someone just wanting to be kind isn’t plausible. “Because I care about you, Thatcher.”

“Easy, Little Miss Death.” He drops his forehead to mine, his fingers rubbing circles into my lower back. “Knives away. I’m not going anywhere. I’m right here.”

“Such a pretty little thing. Such a good girl for me, darling.”

“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.”

“Where have you been?” “Hell.”

rook chapter?! hello?!?!

There isn’t a thing in the world I wouldn’t risk for her, including myself. I would blaze through hell to get back to her if they tried to take her. I want to get her out of this toxic place, push her to chase her dreams and breathe all the lives they stole back into her. I want everything for Sage Donahue because she deserves it. I’d grab the world with my bare hands, burnt and bloody, for her.

rooksage no one loves you like i do

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.

It could only ever be her that gave me my ending, because it had been me that gave Lyra her beginning.

Of course she would slay her own monsters. My girl is a knife; brutal, unforgiving, beautiful.

I hate the world for what it had done to her. 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.

We are two halves of a broken hole. Two mangled people trying to find solace in all the darkness we’d been given. For years, I wished I’d never met her. That the night we met could be erased and forgotten. But now, all that matters is the girl inside the closet and the woman who came out of it alive. 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.

“To the Styx?” I offer. “To the Styx,” they echo.

In here, he’s mine, and I’m his. The end. In here, we get our happily ever after.

We do this, back and forth, for a while. Him explaining what each of these feelings is and me trying to identify them.

stop he didnt understand emotions so she explained them to him?! 😭❤️‍🩹

If I could, I’d stay here forever with him, just like this.

“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?” My chest expands, and I roll my lips together. I know what it means for me. I know that emotion so well it feels like I was born to experience it. I’m afraid of what it means for him though. “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.”

Alistair had made a joke the other day that I might have to invest in a leash for the killer queen, or else I’d spend the rest of my life getting rid of bodies. I’d only smiled because I knew I’d bury bodies forever if that’s what she wanted. If that’s what she needed.

“I guess you’re not interested in playing the good guy? The hero?” she snips. I laugh, cold and distant. “Not when morally gray looks this good on me.”

KING

There is no dream, no goal, no hope. It’s just her. Her dreams are mine. Her goals are mine. She is my hope.

“Thank you for loving me with what remained.” “Thank you for letting me be your ghost. For seeing me,” I tell him. “I can’t wait to haunt you for the rest of our lives and the ones after that.”

We finally got our grim fairy tale. Our happily ever after. The ghost and the boy who was winter.

I don’t want to be a hero. But I do want the girl, and all of this led me straight back to her.

“Do you wanna leave?” I shake my head. “I’m content where you are. Location is only semantics.” “What about if I said to the grave?” My darling phantom. How does she not realize yet that I would follow her anywhere? That she will never be alone again. My ghost. All of those grim fairy tales had only prepared her to love me. To accept the love I give her. She is made of nightmares and crimson kisses.

If she wanted my heart, I’d give it to her. She could keep it on a shelf in one of her jars—it was never mine to begin with. Not when it’s always been hers.

“Death is trivial. He can’t keep you from me. I’ll follow you to the grave every time and fi...