Flock (The Ravenhood, #1)

by Kate Stewart

I grew up believing that real love stories include a martyr or demand great sacrifice to be worthy.

When I lived this story, my own twisted fairy tale, it was unbeknownst to me at the time because I was young and naïve. I gave into temptation and fed that beating beast, which grew thirstier with every slash, every strike, every blow.

That’s the novelty of fiction versus reality. You can’t re-live your own love story because, by the time you’ve realized you’re living it, it’s over. At least that was the case for me.

That’s why I’m here, to feed, to grieve, and maybe to cure my sickness. It’s here that it started and it’s here where I have to end it.

Now at twenty-six, I’m still living in it.

When everything happened, I was determined I’d never return. But the infuriating truth I’ve discovered is that I’ll never be able to move on. It’s the reason I’m back. To make peace with my fate.

For years, I’ve tried to convince myself that life exists after love.

I can still feel them all, my boys of summer.

Most consider knowing all-consuming love a blessing, but I consider it a curse. A curse I’ll never be able to lift. I’ll never know love again as I did here all those years ago. And I don’t want to. I can’t. I’m still sick with it. There is no question in my mind that for me, it was love.

What other pull could be so strong? What other feeling could addict me to the point of insanity? Of doing the things I did and living with these memories within this ghost story.

Well over six years have passed, and I’m back to square one, back to the life I fled, my feelings running rampant as I reason with myself that leaving Collin wasn’t a mistake, but a necessary evil to free him from the lies I told. I’d wronged him making promises I could never keep, and there was no way I was making more, to love and cherish in both sickness and in health because I hadn’t disclosed just how sick I am.

The only love I’ve ever known or craved is the kind that keeps me sick, sick with longing, sick with lust, sick with need, sick with grief. The distorted kind that leaves scars and jaded hearts.

The hardest part of all of this isn’t the fiancé whose heart I broke. It’s the knowledge that the one and only man my heart’s ever been faithful to, I will never have.

My mother is…or was until recently, a free spirit with plenty of vices. My father is a conservative with a critical tongue and militant self-discipline.

He owns a Fortune 500 company that used to deal in chemicals but now manufactures electronics. His high rise is a little over an hour away in Charlotte, his primary manufacturing plant here in Triple Falls.

“Hello, I’m Cecelia Horner.

I’ve never taken pride in my last name.

I was a spill Roman made years ago that he had enough money to clean up.

“Sean, no relation to the man upstairs, and this

is my second time working for Horner Tech. I left briefly. And I would very much enjoy some afternoon delight in the janitor’s closet.”

I’ve always been more of an introvert, an onlooker, bearing witness to the goings-on while too afraid of making any mistakes and losing face.

“She’s a fucking baby, your boss’s daughter, and she’s done drinking. Here anyway.” He turns to me. “Time to go.”

He’s ripped, in every sense, from head to toe, from the razor-sharp cut of unruly hair to his obscene pecs, to the extra pebbled muscle flaring just next to his ribs.

Dom graduated from college and came back to claim my spot.”

“Just got his masters from MIT. Computer geek. He’s an evil genius with a keyboard.”

Those feelings and memories, I swore would remain the hottest moments of my life, until I

walked outside, juice in hand, to see Sean lift his sunglasses.

“You be careful with him. And steer clear of his friends, that dark one they call the Frenchman,” she leans in, “I’ve heard…things about him.”

I’d been introduced to that infuriatingly gorgeous, dark cloud last night. He’s the mirror opposite of the spiked sunray that’s been taking up my thoughts today.

“I hear they share women.”

“Those boys, pretty as they are, I think might have the devil inside them.”

I imagine the damage they could do or the pleasure they could give. As if he can sense me watching, he looks up, and our eyes meet.

“What are you doing here?”

“Allow me to uninvite you.”

“Why?”

“You don’t belong here.”

“That’s because you’re trying to be someone you’re not. You can’t stay, Cecelia.”

“Do what you will, sweetheart, but not here.”

“Come on, Dominic, let’s be friends.”

“Don’t make me regret this.”

“Cecelia.”

I could live every day of my life listening to the curl of his faint accent around my name.

“I’ll say this once. It’s not smart, you being here.”

raven tattoos.

Sean had said they were a promise, but I can’t imagine what that means.

Dom...

He’s the quietest, making him the most enigma...

S...

not natural for a man to be so fuck...

Tyler