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Always a serpent curled in the grass, waiting to strike, just like his piece-of-shit dad.
A flame, a blaze, an inferno. I wanted people to be afraid of touching me.
I’d get the book thrown at me. My dad is a lot of things, but a crooked man isn’t one of them.
Andromeda Van Doren is the epitome of beauty, and I’ve never known her to be bad at anything. Music, art, sports, academics, the list could go on and on for hours.
“Unless you plan on jumping, you’re not dying tonight. This water tower’s been here for years. Hasn’t fallen yet.”
body plastered to the front of this tank. “You gonna be my knight in shining armor and try to stop me?”
“Never been the kinda guy who keeps a girl from what she wants.”
“And they say chivalry is dead.” A scoff shakes my chest. “I’m not jumping, but I’m not sure it matters. Life is meaningless anyway.”
Endlessness has no end. It keeps growing regardless of whether I jump, this falls, or I live till a hundred and three.
There’s no difference. None of it matters to the universe.”
“Oh yeah, just for you. The random stranger I can’t see, who only spoke to me because I fucked up his peace and quiet with my crying. Totally for you. It’s serendipitous, kismet even.”
“With feelings. Science can’t touch emotion, Einstein.”
This is the most connected I’ve felt to another person in four years.
That I’m still going to be just a girl scared of heights, and he’s just a boy smoking a cigarette. Our gazes clash.
The Capulets and Montagues may have been Shakespeare’s famous foes, but in Ponderosa Springs? It was the Van Dorens and Sinclairs.
The red line on my gauge is topping out, shaking violently. My heart is hammering in my chest, and it’s not fear. It’s locked-up desire that is being lured out of its cage.
Hair red as crimson, tongue sharp as knives, and a heart made of ice. Ponderosa Springs’s infamous Queen of Disaster.
“It’s real dangerous for you to talk shit when there is no one around to hear you scream, Seraphina.”
I muse, nodding my head toward the ground. “A broken doll, all twisted up. You’ll leave a pretty corpse.”
Exiles have no kingdom, and I have no need for a crown.
“Fuck you.” So tiny yet so violent. “Already did. The sweet-ass memory of you becoming a traitor for dick is one I’ll cherish for a long time.”
Tonight, the Queen of Ponderosa Spring was my exile.
I am not angry at God. I don’t respect him. His toughest battle was bestowed upon a child. Gifted a father with weaponized hands. I was demanded to honor. Blessed with a patriarch who stoked violence in my throat. Heaven’s gates rattled as he shouted, “Don’t choke.” I am not angry at God. I don’t understand him. Fire and brimstone blister my blasphemous feet. Are his words not a salve for disbelief? I am threatened with hellfire for a fury that is not mine. Is it not a gift from the divine? I am not angry at God. I am wrathful with him. The eternal kingdom worships the sacrilegious
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When heroin wraps her cold, slithering arms around you, she whispers. Fills your ear with sweet words and promises of no pain. She makes you believe all you need is her before she takes away everything you once knew, and she’s all that is left. You follow her, believe her, until she carries you to a cemetery and drops you face down in a grave you dug all by yourself.
Checked into a graveyard, that swallows people whole, Sinks its teeth into weary souls. I’m just a name that time forgot, A boy that’s been left to rot. Ripped from a life I used to know. Nowhere to stay, nowhere to go. The perfect guest for this motel. No one will miss, no one will tell. Checked in for the night. I’ll stay for life. My tomb will read, Final resting place, room 13. -E
“I’ll show you why Ponderosa Springs called me the Devil long before they ever called me Judge.”
Specifically, that one artist who sculpted Lucifer so beautifully that it was too tempting for the church, so they commissioned his brother to try again—and
Love is the only drug I’ve ever wanted in my bloodstream. Craved and crippled my heart for it. It’s the core of human existence. Forever wanting what we will never have.
“The natural state of things. Everything falls into disorder over time. That’s what the universe does—it moves toward chaos. You get used to the fact that nothing stays in place. Being alone is just part of the breakdown. Part of the disorder we all fall into eventually.”
Lost and just trying to find where he belongs.
I’m going to make it crystal fucking clear that I’m not the villain in her story.
Jude Sinclair just killed someone. For me.
“Sorta. It buys your way back home. If you ever get lost.”
“Never had a home to get lost from.”
I was the thief in the shadows, Reaching for a light I never owned, A fire meant to warm the world— But in my hands, it seared through bone. Prometheus knew the weight of chains, But mine were forged by blood and name, Bound not to rocks but to a place Where love was given in the shape of pain. I was given this marble heart. Heavy, cold, unbreakable. At least that’s what they told me, Like it was something to be proud of. Like it was a weapon. Not a weight I’d have to carry. The echo of a sinner crossed. A spitting image of vengeance lost. Fate’s cruel hand carved me in stone. Cursed to
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“To destroy is to make room for creation,” Jude murmurs, a subtle edge in the words. “Destruction strips everything to the bone. That’s where art comes from.” Note to self: When Jude gets writer’s block, people die.
Because Seraphina Van Doren was made to be watched.
“History has a way of repeating itself. Remember, Sinclair, you don’t get the girl. You break her.”
The only name I have left is the one I was warned away from. The one I was never supposed to trust. Jude Sinclair is all I have right now. The worst part? I don’t feel like a traitor for needing him.
“Pain can turn us into people we were never meant to be.”
“You ever think about parallel universes?” I scoff, shaking my head with a small laugh. “No, Miss Eternal Damnation, but I’m sure you have, and you’re about to tell me all about it.” Phi doesn’t lift her head, doesn’t even shift in my arms, but I feel her smile against my shoulder, soft and fleeting, like she’s still with me, even if her mind’s somewhere far away. “It’s this idea that every choice we make creates another universe,” she murmurs, her voice low and steady, like she’s thought about this a thousand times before. “When I’m stoned, I like to think there’s a version of me out there
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“I gave up hoping on a better existence a long time ago, Geeks.”
until she finally understands that in our twisted little universe? She belongs to me. Only me.
“No, I get off on breaking you.” I snarl, my tone razor-sharp, almost vicious. “Until all that’s left is what’s real. The girl who is so fucking achy for me. The dirty fucking whore that is desperate for her foster brother’s cock.”
“You don’t get it, do you? I always see you.”
“I’m always fucking seeing you, Phi. In every room, no matter how much I want to ignore you, you burn too fucking bright. You’re the goddamn sun, and I hate that I can’t stop looking at you.”
“There’s my girl,” I murmur, pressing my forehead to hers, “How’s our universe?”
“You didn’t know? No man’s ever survived me.” She tears it open with her teeth, her eyes blazing. “Dead men tell no tales, J.”
I’m drawn to her—this undying need to shield the ones she loves is just another piece of her alluring puzzle. She wouldn’t be Phi if she chose me. But it’s okay. It’s fine. I’ll just sit here, stealing pieces of her like a thief.
She’s warm, and I’m ice-cold. She hates pickles, so I eat them for her. She’s day, and I’m night. Sun, moon. Phi is everything I’m not, but in all the ways that count, she feels familiar, like I’ve known her all my life.
