The Lies We Steal (The Hollow Boys, #1)

by Monty Jay

They should learn to warn others about the children who are left to cultivate with the absence of light. When you take away their luster, the darkness doesn’t just become a part of them, they become the darkness.

That’s my not-so-secret secret. I’m always, always angry.

“We saw her body. I don’t know about you two, but I’ve got twenty-twenty vision. Rose was not there of her own free will. She never even went to parties with us, made Si stay home with her all the time. Is Ponderosa Springs really trying to hide the murder of the mayor’s daughter?” Rook comments, taking another puff of his cancer stick. One that I’m about to steal for myself. Rose was not only Silas’s girlfriend, she’d become…one of us. Slowly she’d weaseled her way into our group, making herself a friend. We wouldn’t admit it out loud, but we all cared for her like a sister. Her death was eating at all of us. “Wouldn’t be the worst scandal here.”

We made a deal. A promise to one of our best friends, that we’d figure out who did this to his girl. Left her dead and dirty. All of us giving up our plans to leave this toxic place for an entire year, just to get the revenge he needed. Not even God could save the people who got in the way of that.

She likes bugs and I steal things, who am I judge?

“Welcome to the loner society, Briar Lowell. I’m the president, but there is an opening for a VP.”

“I’m not an amateur. Broken bulb in the oven, turned it to high, took ten minutes before it exploded. However, we have to make this quick, he’s got a lab in the back bedroom, and I hear meth is highly flammable.” Goddammit.

Red flashes in my eyes, knowing I can do nothing but watch him in pain right now. I can’t help him, not yet anyway. But I can slaughter the people involved in her death. I can’t bring her back, but I can avenge her. For Silas.

“Then we’ll watch the whole town burn for that mistake. For Rose.”

“Love is real. A tangible thing you can run your fingers over, warm and safe. Obsession is living a fantasy in your head, over and over again. Obsession is living in a nightmare, but never wanting to wake up.”

“Thatcher Pierson. Death manifested into one perfectly-made human.” Lyra breathes the same way she does when she’s admiring one of her dead bugs. With excitement. “Capable of choking you with his bare hands and not feeling anything in his cold, dark heart. He is incapable of feeling anything. Which is why it’s believed the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. His father was Ponderosa Springs’s one and only serial killer.”

“The sons of the torturously wealthy. Ponderosa Springs’s worst nightmare. They are the Black Death of this town. Not because they are popular, but because they have the power to scare people. Legends. Pretentious and they own every single bit of it.

I turn to Rook, tossing my arm around his shoulder, “Can we kill him yet?” “I second that and, speaking for the mute, he thirds it,” Thatcher adds.

Alistair is gorgeous in a sinister kind of way. Reckless abandon, turmoil, broken hearts, but you'll never leave him because the way his mouth travels on your body while you’re chained to his bed is enough to make any woman stay.

It’s not like they could do anything to me. Nothing too damaging. However, I'm not sure that's true as I count the ticks in his jaw. One, does he work his jaw muscle out? Two, he should shave his stubble. Three, fuck.

I find it almost unfair that the boys stitched together with dark magic and cruel intentions always have the prettiest eyes.

“Yes, wife?” I hear a scoff. “If I was your wife, you wouldn’t dress like a retired motorcycle club president with a drinking problem,” Thatcher informs me. “You sure do bitch like a wife.”

“If you needed to know, I’d tell you.” Running a hand through my hair because I know he’s about to catch an attitude with me. I can practically hear his teeth grinding. I’m not even sure why he concerns himself with what I do, it’s not like he’s capable of actually caring about someone. Everything inside of Thatcher is dead. All emotion. Feeling. Remorse. Everything.

It was remarkably impressive, yet she was so unaware of it that she didn’t come off as a know-it-all. Just a girl who enjoyed talking about creepy crawly things.

“It’s a mausoleum.” Oh, fuck that. Absolutely fucking not.

“So, why bugs?” I ask, grabbing a wooden crate and turning it on its top so I can sit down on it. “Why not bugs?” “Touché.”

“Is your mom still…?” I ask, dragging it out, hoping I haven't brought up a sensitive topic. Every time she talks about her, it’s always in the past tense and I assumed that she had passed. “Nope. Dead as a doornail.”

I’d never had a real friend before, and this was starting to feel a lot like a friendship that would last all through college.

My little red riding hood running from the big bad wolf. Our story is inevitable. I catch her. I feast.

Alistair Caldwell’s hands felt like the worst kind of relapse. I hated him most for that.

For the past two days I’d done nothing but bug her about telling someone, anyone, needing to release this off my chest, but I never realized what this might be doing to her. How opening my mouth to the wrong people who affect her life and mine. I'd never been in this position before, at the mercy of someone else. There was nothing I could do to protect myself or Lyra. We couldn't call for help or reach out. We were all alone in this.

I rip the note off the wall, peering down at the words scribbled in dark red, no doubt blood. There was no signature, nothing, because he knew I would identify who it was from. It wasn't from Rook, not Thatcher, or Silas. No, it was from the one with the dark eyes. I’m coming for what’s mine, Little Thief. Until then, keep quiet.

My knuckles instantly throb, my face flashing hot when I see a swoosh of golden strung hair. Oh God. “What the fuck!” Easton hisses, holding his jaw where I’d thrown the best right hook of my life. Ronda Rousey would be proud.

I’ve stolen a lot of things. A blender, a TV, a watch, I even stole batteries out of remotes. Someone’s boyfriend isn’t one of the things I plan on adding to the list.

It was cute the way Lyra was such a paradox. She wore plaid skirts and corduroy pants to collect creepy insects from the mud. Always coming into the dorm with dirt dusting her knees and palms. The way she crossed her legs when she sat with a book in her lap yet burped louder than any grown man I’d heard after downing a can of Coke. How she could be so soft, so feminine, yet do something that would be viewed as tomboyish. I admired the way she was able to balance out the pieces of herself so easily.

I was done being the puppet. I was done being the mouse in this cat-dominated game. If they want to play, then fine. I’ll play, too.

“Cockroaches. A bit juvenile, even for a bum like you.” “Clothes on in the pool. A bit insecure, even for a guy with a small dick.”

I was hanging on the swing of life or death in Alistair’s arms. Seeking pleasure from the one who seeks silence from me.

“For me, love shouldn’t be comfortable. Love should make you uncomfortable, it should challenge you, it should push your limits, make you grow as person and all of those things you have to be out of your comfort zone to do. So, I don’t think you can have both, no.”

Everywhere I turn here, there is something dark, something morbid and sad. Why the hell does anyone live here?

I’d done a lot for my friends. This was the hardest. We held him down like a wild animal, nothing we could say would calm him down. He just kept howling her name into the night. Like the moon would hear his pleas and restore her life. I wanted that for him.

“Because it’s our safest bet. We know where all the teachers and students will be. It will give us more time just in case your pet tries to do something ignorant.” My pet. She’s the worst behaved pet ever. A beaten dog that won’t stop pissing on the couch just to make me angry.

I can’t help but roll my eyes. Yeah, the pyromaniac is burning shit down in your ten-thousand-dollar cashmere shirts. But now that I think about it, Rook’s probably using it for flint.

“Should I be offended that I wasn’t invited to this study session?” Easton Sinclair’s voice reminds me of coffee in the morning. Smooth, warm, everything you need to start your day. I lift my head, looking over at him with a smile, “Extremely offended.” I joke, “I lost your number or I would have invited you.” Small white lie. I did lose it. After purposely throwing it away.

“Say her name again,” Alistair bites, “and I’ll make you swallow your fucking teeth.”

“Looks like someone is stealing your signature color, Thatch.” I mutter, leaning back into him covertly. “Evidently,” he breathes, like it took all his oxygen just to say that simple word.

By all accounts she’s right. I don’t know what it’s like to be poor. I have always had money, I’ve always had food in the house when I was hungry. I had the basic necessities of life and then some. But what she doesn’t know, what she doesn’t deserve to know with her snotty, woe is me attitude, is that when I was a kid, I begged to trade all the money I had for parents who loved me. For a family who cared. I would have rather been starved and loved, than starving for love.

“Lyra’s fine.” The human in his eyes is gone, returned are the black orbs that leave no room for anything but darkness. “Yeah? And you know that how?” I argue. A knowing smirk builds onto his face, twisting his face into the stunning villain he is. My stomach rolls. God, I had sex with him. I had the best sex of my life with him and now what? “Because she helped Rook set the fire.”

“Can I tell you something?” I ignore her questions completely. “No.” I don’t listen, I grab her belt loops hooking my fingers into them and slowly pulling her into me. My mouth breathing the same air as she is, our noses brushing each other. “They look at me like that, too,”

We can never be clean of each other again. I want my words to soak into her skin. Seep into her system so that she understands what damage she can do when she recognizes the dark and twisty pieces of her are not something that need to be hidden away. They need to be what propels her forward. It’s the only way she’ll make it out of this place alive.

I showed up to his dorm with a plan. Thank him for not killing my rat and returning her unharmed, she actually looked a little chunkier which meant he was feeding her a little too much, but I thought that was kinda cute.

“I’ll look over your tasteless, moronic comments because Alistair likes handling you himself and he's made it very clear no one else can touch you, but if you get in my way, I'll kill you and dye your hair after.”

This sort of molten anger rolled through his body, leaking from all his pores so it was all you could see. A cruel volcano of human rage that incinerated anyone he touched, yet you still stood there admiring how nature could be so incredible, even when it was wreaking havoc. A god of wrath.

“That was you trying to scare me?” My fingers rest beneath her chin, tilting her head up towards me as I lean down, “You’re gonna have to do better than that, Little Thief.” And I do the one thing I’d been dying to do since I saw her in the stands at The Graveyard. The only thing I wanted for my birthday. I press my mouth to hers, molding us together and tasting her on my tongue immediately.

“This how you steal men’s wallets?” My tongue rests against my upper lip hiding a smile. “Good technique,” I add.