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

by Monty Jay

“Happy birthday, Alistair,” she whispered, a huff of a laugh trickling into the air. For the first time… It actually was.

There shouldn’t have been a reason I was so affected by this. Why should I? Alistair Caldwell is bad news. He is trouble. He tormented me. He is involved in murders and sex rings. There is nothing redeemable about him. But there was a brief time between the wrath, between the hate, that he was my bad news. My trouble.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” “As a unit?” Thatcher asks. “Too many things to count.”

I’d been waiting months for this. Spent sleepless nights thinking about what I would do if given the opportunity to get my hands on the person who took Rosemary from us. Bursts of memories play in my mind. Of Silas, of Rose, all the good, all the bad. That was what no one was getting. We knew she was gone. We knew that no matter how much blood we spilled, she wouldn’t come back. She was truly gone. We just didn’t fucking care. I stride forward, “No, it won’t,” twisting the axe in my hands so the blunt end points outward. “But it’ll make me feel a fuck-ton better.” I slam the end of the weapon into his throat.

“Alistair?” she whispers, halting my stroll to the door with just the sound of her voice. “Yeah?” “I’m sorry.” I’m sorry. As if this had been her fault.

We stood there while I held her face, staring at one another and I thought about everything I’d done to her up to that point. How beneath it all, I was just attempting to destroy her because she represented what I could never have. And similar to Dorian, if I couldn’t have her, no one could. How right now, all I wanted was to really have her. Not just to toy with, more than a game. But I wanted to have her laughs.

“And right now, I could stay here for a lifetime just feeling your heartbeat. I’m not sure what I can give you, but whatever is left of me, whatever I have, it’s yours, for as long as you want it.”

“Whatever you have to give, I want all of it. All the dark, all the scary. I want it. Forever.” Just like that, the shadow child learned that you don’t have to step into the light to find happiness. You just need to find the person willing to step into the gray area. “It’s yours. Every warped part of me. It’s yours, Little Thief. I hope you like playing in the shadows, we will be staying here for a while.”

Alistair Caldwell will never be the man who will shower me with pretty words and love poems. The man who says every emotion he feels or the one who says I love you. But he is the man who will walk through a blizzard just to get me pie from Tilly’s Diner during finals. The man who will break the noses of men like Easton Sinclair for not leaving me alone.

Alistair Caldwell was mine, mine, mine.

“Mine,” I groan, as I look into the mirror, making eye contact with her. “Yours,” she mumbles.

“Who is that?” I ask Lyra in a whisper. I hear the clock on the wall tick. One. Two. Three. “Sage Donahue.”

My greatest-kept secret. My worst mistake. The girl who once burned my sad memories, only to become the gasoline that fueled them. Tomorrow the birds will sing, Sage. I repeated the words her voice said the last time we spoke. And I will set every last one of them on fucking fire.