The Truths We Burn (The Hollow Boys, #2)

by Monty Jay

Thinking of him, putting myself back there, makes my senses tingle. I can smell him again or rather, the smoke. I can smell weed, f...

I know there’s no way to mend what had been broken between the two of us—the damage had been done. But I’m tired of pretending to hate him, even if he truly does despise me. I’m still angry that I never got more of him, and I’d given him all of me. But I don’t hate him. I never did. There isn’t any way I could. For a long time, I thought hating him would be easier. It was a way to keep his fire close to my heart. A way for me to avoid mourning the loss of him, of us. Now, I’m just too tired to fake it. To fake anything.

Anything and everything I tell Rook Van Doren will never be taken as the truth. Ever again.

Through the haze of the smoke, I see his irises. Hellfire eyes. So fucking bright and always burning.

It makes his comment prick even more. Knowing he’s looked at other girls with those eyes, been inside of them, and more than that, they’ve touched him. That makes me ill. Thinking of them running their fingers across his collarbone and asking where he got that scar. I wonder if he tells them the truth. That at one point he thought we were soul mates and tried to force fate into agreeing with us. That there’s a matching one on a girl he used to care about.

“You watch all the girls you’ve fucked?” “Just the ones who are a threat to my family.” There is an indescribable throbbing in my chest. I wrecked him so fucking hard that he genuinely believes I would do something to hurt his friends. When he says family, he is referring to the guys. They are the only family he has ever known.

He’s so close, his smell all around me. And God, his eyes—they’re incinerating me, never wavering from my concerned gaze.

What is he doing? What is he doing to me? My mind and body are at odds. My body, which had received nothing but pleasure from him in the past, trusts him, but my mind knows just how far he’s willing to go for revenge.

He’s playing with me, pulling me in just so he can drop me on my face. I know that. I know what he’s doing. But I still want it. I want whatever he gives me because this feels good. Even when I know it would end in him leaving, still bitter towards me. It is so good. Too good.

The way he speaks is so vulgar, but coming from his mouth, it sounds like music. Caressing my body all over, wrapping me up with passion, Rook is an aphrodisiac. From his hard glare to his steamy scent, he is intoxicating.

“I’m glad you remember. I’m glad you thought about it, because that’s all you’ll ever get from me, Sage.” Releasing the smoke from his lungs, he stares at me hard, retreating up the aisle. “Memories.”

Thatcher? If they want to come after me, fine. I can take this kind of heat, especially when I know they don’t have a leg to stand on. But coming for them isn’t going to happen. I would take the blame for it all before something happened to any of them.

I don’t believe in Heaven or Hell.

He presses his hands into the sides of his head. “And I don’t know how to stop them anymore. So, I need you to come back, okay? Please, I just need you to come back. Baby, I need you to save me.”

i’m a mess

“Rose, come back!” He screams a scream that makes chill bumps rise on my skin. It’s his heart begging for her. Pleading for her. “Why didn’t you take me with you?” he cries. “I would’ve gone with you.”

I’m keeping him. I’m keeping all of the boys. I had lost too many people that I cared about, and I’m not losing any more.

It’s this realization that you’re older than your twin. This monumental stab in the gut because it’s been 365 days without her. That’s a birthday, a Christmas, all of these memories she never got to create. Another reminder that when she died, I did too. I just happened to keep existing.

I mean, the only person I’m protecting at this point is Rook. Defending the devil.

We’re two people who never should’ve touched one another. We’re both too hardheaded, too stubborn, two flames constantly trying to burn higher than the other. We weren’t made for longevity. I’d wanted him too quick. Too much. It wouldn’t have been healthy; it never would have worked. No matter how many times my heart tries to tell me differently. Maybe all we were meant to be was that. Two star-crossed lovers that made it out before Shakespeare had enough time to kill us.

“He doesn’t pay attention to things he doesn’t care about. Yet, every time you’re around each other, the only thing he can focus on is you.”

folklore,

TAYLOR SWIFT

For an entire year, I’d been trying to get her out of my bloodstream. Trying to cut her out like some flesh-eating disease, trying to penalize myself for having faith in someone like her. I realize now, I can’t cut her out.

I’m at my end. I’m starting to malfunction. Because of her eyes. They are fucking glowing. Bright blue like scalding flames, shining the way they did when we were together. When I thought she was something more. When the words that came from her mouth were ones coated in holy water. They are so goddamn beautiful, and it hurts.

I realize she had never been Eve. I hadn’t slithered into the Garden of Eden and stolen her, coerced her with the fruit. No, that would have been too easy. She had always been my Lilith. The reason I fell from grace, tumbling through the clouds and thrown into the pits of hell. Damned to live an eternity in the flames because of her.

She is so fucking intoxicating.

“I wanted to be with you so bad, Rook.”

Her pain. Her sorrow. Her anger. I felt all of it as if it were my own, and to some degree, it was.

They’d ripped her wings from her back, but she replaced them with ashes and eternal wings made of the hottest blue flame. And in order for her to fly, I’m going to cut the chains keeping her rooted to the ground.

After I’d threatened to slash all four of her tires and drag her here against her will, she agreed to come with me.

I can see just how badly she wants to fall apart. And my hands shake because they want to catch her. I want to deny it, but I can’t. I’m desperate to see the girl behind the mask again. To peel back those hardened layers and soak myself in her.

I will torture that sorry excuse of man until he’s crying for his mother and begging me to give him the mercy of death. Even if it means taking the fall on my own. I would do it. Because no one, not even me, deserves the kind of pain Sage harbors on her soul from what he did to her.

Sage may not be a friend—we may hate one another—but it’s ours. And she is mine.

The phoenix. There she is, glowing, bright, destructive. They tried to make her into dust, and look at her now. A goddamn force.

Being different will mean you will feel alone at times. But when you find the people who accept those differences, they will be with you for a lifetime.”

I felt a lot of things when my mother died. But alone wasn’t one of them. Because I had them, and from the moment we all met, I felt like I was understood. I never had to explain myself to fit in; they just got me. They accepted me. Scars, trauma, and all. And just like my mother said, they would be with me for a lifetime.

“How long?” Alistair asks as he walks onto the patio, with Thatcher and Silas close behind. “Nine inches.” I pull the cigarette from my lips. “That’s hard. Do you need to know soft measurements too or?”

Keeping her from them was never with malicious intent or because I didn’t want them to know. I think it was because I was afraid to say it out loud. If I spoke on our history, on her, then it made it real. And that makes the loss of her even more real.

How do you explain that someone was everything and nothing at the same time? That she had been the first person since the guys and Rose I’d wanted to see me. To see all of me, know everything. Because I’d thought she’d accept it.

My truth to burn going up in smoke. My pretty poison all out in the open.

The fool who’d fallen for a girl who didn’t give a shit about him, and the worst part is I knew. I knew Sage was a dangerous creature. That she was wrapped in caution tape. Seamlessly made. Designed for deception.

“Don’t be an asshole,” he says. “I’m not pissed about you and Sage. I’m pissed that you felt you needed to hide it.” “I just didn’t think you’d understand.” “We don’t need to, Rook. We’ve never needed to.”

I look at them, all of them. Each of them represents a part of my life that I wouldn’t know what to do without. It is dysfunctional, and we don’t always see eye to eye. We fight probably more than we do anything else. But they are my home. A dark, bloody, haunted house, but still my home.

“Do you love her?” he asks bluntly. I know what love is. I felt it for my mother and at one point for my father—sometimes I still do. I feel it towards the guys even though I’ve never spoken those words out loud to any of them. I’m aware of what it feels like. But nothing feels like Sage does. I’ve never experienced anything like her in my life, and it makes this question difficult. “I don’t know what it is I feel towards Sage.” Lightning strikes hard, shaking the ground. “But whatever it is, it’s mine.”

Silas Hawthorne is the prime example of love not being enough. If love was enough, he wouldn’t seek out trouble and darkness. His parents’ love should have been enough to keep him grounded. Keep him in line. But it isn’t.

If only love were enough.

“What are you doing here?” “Making sure you’re safe.” My heart thuds a little. “Wasn’t aware you cared.” “I wish I didn’t.”

But all I had wanted was to understand him better. To know him and not just his name, like everyone else. I wanted to know what made him tick. His dreams if he had any left at this point. His nightmares. I just wanted to know him.

A scorned angel, filled with so much anger and hatred, but on the inside, he’s still that same angel. One that had lost everything when he was cast out of heaven, out of his father’s good graces.

The walls crumble, and for the very first time, I see nothing but his vulnerability. His eyes are so pure and so raw that it takes my breath away. I see him for everything he is, and it’s so beautiful.

It’s quiet. For the first time in a long time. There isn’t anything that needs to be said. No argument to win. I know the harsh reality that awaits us outside of this space, but it doesn’t need to come until morning. For right now, I let him hold me. I let myself fall for him. Unabashedly in love even if I’ll never be able to say it out loud. And it’s not perfect. It’s ugly, broken, and when the sun pierces the clouds, he very well could return to hating me. I know that. But it’s us, and for right now, in this brutal moment of despair, that is enough.