More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Most say Lucifer fell due to his rebellion. I say God’s favorite of all the angels fell in love. Captivated, enthralled, consumed with the only woman he could never have. The only woman to exist. Adam’s first wife, Lilith.
The devil. El diablo. Lucifer.
The psycho. The vengeful one. The schizo. And the devil. The Hollow Boys.
“I can’t wait for the day you come searching for trouble, princess. I’m gonna have so much fun with you.”
“I love him, Sage. I love him so much it physically takes my breath away, and I can’t have him hate me.” With ease, I reach over, wiping her tears with my thumb. “No tears for boys. We are too pretty for that.”
Rook Van Doren does not get to make me blush.
“This has absolutely jack shit to do with chemistry. You can literally Google this. Four-year-olds could do it.”
There are only two people who can look the pits of hell in the eyes and not flinch. Those in Hell and those who already made their way out.
And that’s what Lucifer saw when he was cast out of Heaven. The green of our planet before entering the flames of Hell. The story behind Rook’s catastrophic nickname ties into him more and more.
“Can you do that, Rook? Can you keep your mouth shut and be my dirty little secret?”
“You want me to tell you—” “Confess,” he butts in, grabbing a fistful of my hair. “I want you to tell me the truth. You wanted me to find you like this, didn’t you? That you like being my dirty, fucking secret, my dirty slut. Confess all your sins to your very own devil.”
“Wouldn’t have my dick this close to your raw pussy if I wasn’t, Sage.”
“Because I’d become a serial killer trying to fend off men falling in love with you.”
I’m not allowed to love people. But thinking of anyone else trying? It makes my blood sizzle. This is mine. Her truths. Her quirks. They’re mine. She is mine. Unable to love or not.
“What isn’t?” I snap, turning to face her as she approaches, her body jumping from my sudden movement. “Is it the fact I’m sitting here with you reading scripts, watching movies every other day, and making your cunt squirt on my cock, all the while he gets to parade you around school like you’re some piece of glorified meat?”
But when you kill your own mother, all the good you are ever given dies with her.
“I’m with you,” I whisper, meaning it more than I’ve ever meant anything before. “I’m always with you. Even when I’m with him, I’m still with you.”
“You going to fuck the bitch out of me?”
I’m used to their crude comments; their words do nothing to me. My only focus is on making Rook feel good, showing him just how little I care for the man outside of this stall. How much I care for him. Showing him how worthy he is of this.
“I don’t need it to go anywhere. I know how to handle the bitch in you.”
“I missed you, too,” I snicker, my voice raw and scratchy. “I did miss you. It’s just…” he whispers softly. “Can I keep you?” And my soul breaks because of
“You can keep me, Rook.”
I promised myself, and I have broken it, because now I think I’ve fallen in love with the devil.
She’s in me, everywhere, and I want her the fuck out, right now.
“Let’s go back to pyro, yeah? Rook is for people who don’t blatantly lie to my goddamn face.”
“Please fucking tell me the engagement is a hoax, that it’s not true. That this is what your parents wanted for you. Tell me the truth, and I swear I’ll shred the world in half to save you from it, to protect you.” I keep going. “Tell me the you that clings to my hoodie when she sleeps is the real you. Tell me I got the real Sage.” Hoping this will be the straw to break her from her trance, I step forward, placing my hands on either side of her head. “Just tell me it’s a lie, baby,” I whisper.
“Proving Rose right.”
He couldn’t even let me have this one thing. I had broken him, so he took everything from me. He left me with nothing.
Sitting next to each other, across the room from me, are two of the men I hate most in this world. Two faces I had never wanted to see again, two faces that I want to obliterate off the face of this fucking planet.
“Leave.” I glare. “There is nothing I can do to help you and nothing you can say that will change my mi—” “Rook Van Doren.”
“No.” I shake my head, chuckling. “They found out what you did to Rose. There is nothing I can do to help any of you now. Silas Hawthorne is not just some heartbroken boyfriend. He will slaughter anyone who had a fraction of involvement, and his friends will be right behind him.” I roll my tongue across my bottom lip, meeting my father’s gaze. “You killed the wrong twin, Dad.”
Hollow Heights University. They invite success. The college of all colleges.
I thought I had prepared myself for how he would look, to see what the past several months had done to him. I’d run through so many situations in my head, but there is nothing that could really prepare me for Rook.
He’s lost all emotion in regard to me, and that hurts the most. Knowing that he feels absolutely nothing towards me. The Rook I’d once known. The one who’d so desperately wanted to keep me. The boy I thought could love me… Is gone. * * * It’s amazing how things change while you’re away.
“I don’t give a shit about you fucking my ex. I’m really happy you have my sloppy seconds, Mary. That way he will leave me the hell alone.”
“I’m Sage. Sage Donahue,” I offer them, aware that they already know me, but I feel like I need to say it out loud for myself. “Nice to meet you, officially,” Lyra says. “Welcome to the Loner Society, Sage.”
“Watch your fucking mouth, Rook. I’m warning you.” He seethes, brown eyes turning an impossible shade of black. “I’m not rocking your shit because I know we are all on edge about this, and I’m betting a part of you wants me to. Don’t think you care more about getting justice for Rose than I do.”
“Don’t ever say something like that about Briar again. She’s actually starting to like you.” “As opposed to what? Me?”
“Did you invite the pet?” Thatcher asks Alistair. “I told you if you kept calling her that I was going to crack your skull, Thatch. Knock it the fuck off,” he grunts. “And no, she’s with Lyra studying in her dorm tonight.”
They wanted evil, so I became the king of it. The ruler of it all. I’d become Lucifer himself.
“I had always been curious about why you showed up at my door that day, Van Doren,” he says suddenly, starting another wide line from one side of my back. “And I believe I have a solid theory now. Do you want me to share? Or do you want to tell me yourself?”
“Sweetheart Sage Donahue,” he says keenly, always so smug, especially when he knows he’s right about something. “How long did you plan on keeping her from us?”
“Don’t you fucking go there, you pretentious cunt,” I bite out. “I would never do anything that would put you all at risk. She is nothing, has always been nothing.”
I want to believe it—that she is nothing. Goddamn, I would give anything for her to be nothing. But she’s still living inside of me like a parasite, feeding on me.
“Go eat another dictionary, fucking prick,” I grunt. “I don’t need to be a robot in order to be in control.”
“If I figured it out, it won’t be long before the others do. Don’t let them, us, find out from someone else, Rook. If we don’t have trust, then we have nothing,” he says to my back, making me pause at the top of the stairs. I rotate
“I get to hurt you. Alistair can hurt you. Even Silas can. But no one else.” He stops, just a moment before continuing. “No one else gets to hurt you, Van Doren. No one.”
He looks so ruined yet so beautiful. Such a pretty boy, but even Lucifer was pretty once upon a time. The most beautiful. An angel.
“What the hell were you thinking?” he growls, shaking her body as he speaks. “You’re nothing but fucking selfish. You almost got her killed.”
By a girl with torn wings. She’d fallen hard, so quickly I wasn’t even sure I’d seen it.
