by K. V. Rose
I kind of feel like one.
“Do you want to talk?” he asks in that raspy voice that makes my toes curl, even against my will.
I shake my head.
He nods. I watch him swallow, that beautiful vein in his neck drawing my eye. He looks down at the floor, lashes nearly fanning his cheeks. Even when he had skeleton paint on, even when he was masquerading around as Lucifer from hell, I knew he was beautiful. When he had taken my hand the first time we met, at that intersection I had planned to walk through the last time, I had known his beauty.
I’d thought that was what had lured me into him, what had gotten me into that mess I woke up in after Halloween. I had cursed myself for it, for being taken by his charm. Especially when I had seen the warning signs: how his friends spoke about him. How he spoke about his friends. Julie. The pregnancy. The Unsaints, who are all in this house right now. Or at least, they were last night.
But I hadn’t been taken in. I’d seen him. As he was, that night. The scars around his torso show me that now. He had been what I needed that night. But I have no time to think that through. After Halloween, I’m leaving. I will never come back to Alexandria. I will never see my brother again. If he doesn’t survive Halloween night, even better.
I’ll never see Lucifer or the Unsaints again either.
That thought pierces my broken heart a little more. But I can handle it. If I can handle my brother, I can handle this.
“What are you thinking about?” Lucifer asks me quietly, still looking at the floor. He moves his foot, clad in a black sock, back and forth over the wood, as if he can’t stand still.
I laugh. It sounds fakes even to my own ears. It is fake. Full of spite and anger and pain.
“I’m thinking about what it will be like to get out of here and never come back.”
Lucifer’s eyes snap up to mine. “Out of where?” he asks, frowning.
I look back out the window, at the sliver of light I can see. I draw my knees to my chest, blankets still pulled up over me. “Out of this city.”
I could have sworn I hear him exhale. I turn back to look at him, tilting my head in a silent question.
“I thought you meant…” he runs a hand over his black curls. “I thought you meant you might…like you did when we first met…that you would leave here.”
Suicide.
He doesn’t want to say it.
“How did you know?” I ask him. My voice sounds detached. I try to keep it that way. I clear my throat. “How did you know when you met me?”
He smiles a little, dimple flashing, but the spark doesn’t meet his eyes. “I saw the gun,” he says, as he had the night before. “I know what a real gun looks like. And you had that air about you…”
“Depressed?” I ask, arching a brow.
He laughs, a sweet raspy sound that makes my chest tighten. “No, no. You weren’t depressed. Not then. You were…excited. I knew that was a sign. It always is, at the end.”
I frown. “How did you know that?” I had been excited. Knowing my next adventure was coming. That this life would be done. That I could start new somewhere else. Or in darkness.
He shrugs. “My stepmom barely tolerated me most of the time, when I lived with her. I got my money and got away from my family when I graduated university a few months ago.” He blows out a breath, looking around this room. He forces a laugh. “I swear to God my house is better than this shit.”
I frown. “Your stepmom?” I ask him.
He nods. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me. The Unsaints. Society of 6. But what happened to you, Sid…” He clears his throat, reaches inside his pocket and draws out both a cigarette and a lighter. But he just holds them in his hand, clenching them in his fist. “I can’t imagine,” he finally says. “But my stepmom…when she wasn’t screaming at me…she was…fond of me.”
The air in my lungs goes out.
I don’t want to hear this. I close my eyes, lean my head back against the headboard. I can’t hear this. Can’t think of the pain Lucifer had been through before he met me.
“Anyway,” he continues, rushing on, “I knew that excitement because I’d felt it before myself. I knew because I’d thought of it before.”
I crack open my eyes at that. “What stopped you?”
He holds the cigarette to his lips, lights it and takes a long inhale. He slips the black lighter back in his pocket, exhales a cloud of smoke. When it clears, he finally answers me.
“The gun wasn’t loaded.” He laughs, shaking his head. Like this is all a joke. It kind of is, our lives. One horrible, awful punchline after another. “I pulled the trigger, not knowing much about guns then, when I was just a kid. It clicked, and I flinched.” He takes another drag, blows it out. Taps the ashes right onto the floor. He glances out the window. “When I flinched, I knew. I wasn’t really ready to go yet.”
I sigh. “You know, Lucifer,” I say, drawing out his name. He stares at me, almost as if he’s waiting for something. Desperately hoping that whatever I’m going to say next is going to fix this. Fix us. “You were my flinch,” I tell him, and I mean it. “When you slipped your hand in mine…” I smile, raking a hand through my short hair. “You were my flinch.”
Jeremiah doesn’t come. He doesn’t come that day, or the next. Or the week after. I jog every day in Raven Park, buy some clothes, but otherwise, I don’t leave. I don’t need to. I know all of my brother’s hiding spots, or rather, I know enough of them to hit him where it hurts. I know Brooklin. I know her schedule. I know, too, that if I came back to the Rain mansion, they’d let me in.
It’s what I’m counting on.
My plan is easy. Deceptively simple.
But it will have to wait.
The Unsaints bring food to the house we’re staying in. They even cook. Other people I don’t know come too. Men with guns. Men who I know are guards. But they never stay the night. Lucifer dismisses them at sundown every single day.
He told me he owns this house. Not the park, because the city wouldn’t sell it to him, but the house. The one he’d taken me to, too. Where I’d learned the truth about Jeremiah. And the one Julie and the kid stay in.
We sit on the back porch of the old home, on the steps, looking out at Raven River a few feet from us. The soft sound of the gurgling stream in the darkness is soothing in its own way. Lucifer is smoking, and I relish in the scent of it. It feels…comfortable somehow.
We haven’t touched one another since we’ve come here. Ezra has been giving me a cold shoulder which is odd, considering he was the first to attack my brother. Atlas has clapped me on the back a few times, and Mayhem is always staring at me. Cain is quiet and stays in his room most days. I wonder what they’re missing out on. They don’t bring girls here. I wonder if they still keep in touch with Ria, or any of the girls from Unsaints’ Night. I wonder what happened to all of the ones that were poisoned.
Lucifer knows what I plan to do. Or rather, he knows I plan to do something. He hasn’t pressed me on what, exactly. He hasn’t mentioned Jeremiah again at all to me, although I heard him speaking with his guards about him in hushed tones when he thought I couldn’t hear.
I’ve heard Atlas curse my brother even more than I have in my own mind. I can’t blame them. They knew him for years. He betrayed them, and me.
But I haven’t spoken to Lucifer about it. I haven’t wanted to.
“Tell me about Julie,” I say, staring out into the night. I’m not sure what I want to hear. I know she’s still alive, that my brother hasn’t finished that job yet. I hope he isn’t so fucked in the head since our last meeting that he screws up so badly someone else kills him before I can get to him.
Lucifer is quiet, blowing out a ring of smoke. I start to think he might just ignore me. I start to think that might be for the best.
“Julie is…she was something like a friend. When I was in high school.”
I swallow. Even though Lucifer and I haven’t touched one another, I want to. But every n
ight, he had bid me goodnight after silent, moody dinners with the Unsaints. He had more or less tucked me in to bed, without literally doing so. He had a gun on his hip most days, and his room was right beside mine. During the night, I heard him tossing and turning just like I was. I knew he was taking care of me. And giving me space.
I wonder if he thinks I’m tainted now.
I don’t want to ask him.
“We hooked up once,” he continues.
No shit, I think, but don’t say anything.
“She got pregnant.” He takes another drag from his cigarette. I want to snap it in half or put it out on my own eyes. “She said it was mine.” I see him, out of the corner of my eye, shrug. “It was a mistake, the sex. We were drunk. Young. And stupid.” He was twenty-one when we met. Twenty-two now. Not that young.
But this isn’t what I care about. I don’t want to know any of this. I want to know the outcome. What came next. What happens now.
He snuffs out the cigarette on the porch, grinding it down to nothing, with a little more force than is probably necessary. He leaves it there, between us, and clasps his hands together, hanging his head.
“I believed her, you know?” he asks. He turns his head and looks up at me, hands still clasped. “Hell, she probably believed it, too.”
I say nothing. I’m holding my breath.
“I believed it was mine. But after that night, we fought like cats and dogs. She seemed to hate me, for not wanting to be with her. To be a family.” He says the last word with a sneer. Knowing what he had been through, with his own family, or what little I knew of it, I can’t blame him.
Knowing my own family, I can’t blame him. I’m not even sure what that word is supposed to mean anymore. Family.
“She treated me like shit. I let her. It was my fuck up as much as hers.”
My pulse quickens. I need to know. I want to scream at him to tell me, to answer the most important question. But I can’t. I won’t. He deserves this time. My silence. So he can tell me. I’ve spent a year hating him for something he hadn’t done. Hating him over Julie, too. Thinking that was part of his fucking evil persona.
Now I know better.
So I wait.
“Anyhow,” he scrubs a hand over his face. “The baby was born. She named him Finn.” He huffs a laugh, shaking his head, as if he doesn’t like the name. “Good thing, too. Because his father, Finley, wasn’t going to have anything to do with him. At least the kid got named after him.”
I blink, trying to process what he’s saying. Those words mean…that the kid isn’t his. Julie’s kid isn’t his. She hadn’t been pregnant with his baby.
But I’m missing something. The story isn’t over.
“I don’t act like the kid’s dad. More like an uncle or a godfather.” He meets my gaze again. He looks as if he might be asking me a question, the way his brow is furrowed. But he keeps talking. “I paid for the house they live in. I’m not hiding them there. Julie wanted to live there, away from this place. Away from Finley. I paid for it, and I help her with expenses, too. Because even though it isn’t my kid…well, it could have been, right? And Julie and I don’t particularly like one another, but it could have been mine just as easily as it was Finley’s. Finley doesn’t have anything to do with his son, although he does sign child support checks, which I guess is better than nothing. But not much better.”
He hangs his head again.
I exhale, letting my eyes trail to the river, the dark water rushing past us, just feet away from where I sit. I feel like I’ve been swept up in a faster current than that this past year, just waiting to drown. Now, though…I feel like someone has thrown me a life preserver. I’m still in the water, still flowing down the stream, but maybe now I won’t drown.
“I knew Jeremiah knew I wasn’t sure,” he continues quietly. “But I figured he’d come after them. That’s why I was there, when you were. I didn’t expect to see you there. I wasn’t sure why you hated me, but when I met you here, after I’d been looking for a sign of you all this time…I knew you didn’t know. You couldn’t possibly have known.”
He rubs his hands together, as if trying to get warm. He’s wearing grey basketball shorts and a black tank. I want to move closer to him. But I don’t. What’s the point?
“I knew Jeremiah recognized you,” he continues softly. “That night. But I didn’t know what you were. A lost love?” He coughs. “And I knew you were an escort.” He flashes me a small smile, white teeth nearly gleaming in the darkness. “I wasn’t sure until we met here, in the woods. I wasn’t sure you didn’t love him or something. But then when I realized you hated me…it clicked. And I knew you wouldn’t have been with him if you knew. I don’t know much about sex work,” he admits. “But I know consent is a big fucking deal. And you didn’t seem like the type of girl who would be okay with what happened that night. And your anger toward me, it clicked it all into place.” He snaps his fingers, emphasizing the point.
“I had no idea though, that he was your…” He can’t say the word. I don’t want him to. “Mayhem burned down Brooklin’s house, to pay him back for what he did to us and to warn her. And his club, too. But I wanted to find you. I just needed to know you were alive and okay.” He sighs. “He never mentioned a sister. I knew what he did to his foster family. I thought it proved his loyalty; that he’d do whatever it took, no matter what.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “It did, I guess. But his loyalty is to you.”
I breathe a little laugh, feeling my throat tighten. I run my hand along the back of my neck. “It wouldn’t have worked before, you know,” I say, my voice quiet. But he’s staring at me. He looks as if he’s hanging onto every word. “I wouldn’t have left Jeremiah. He wouldn’t have stopped looking for me. He still won’t. I’m sure he knows I’m here.” I swallow but force myself to keep going. “It never would have been a choice for us. Ties that bind and all that.” Even as I say the words, my heart cracks in two.
There’s a silence between us a moment.
“These are monstrous ties,” Lucifer finally says, his words heavy. I watch him swallow. And I want to move to him. To fling my arms around his neck. To pull his wiry, lean body into me. To figure out what could happen between us.
But I can’t. It will only make it hurt worse. For both of us. No matter that Julie’s child isn’t his. That isn’t the deal breaker. It never had been.
It is, as he said, these monstrous ties. This tainted history. Lucifer had saved my life that Halloween night. But I had broken him. My brother had broken us both. He’d betrayed the Unsaints, and I couldn’t deal with being a living reminder of that betrayal to them, even if I was only an estranged sister.
This could never be.
I want to ask him how far it got. I want to ask exactly what he saw, what he watched. But I also don’t want to know.
So instead of going to him, instead of touching him, I get up and start to walk inside. And even as he whispers my name like a desperate plea, I don’t look back.
Instead, I run right into Atlas, the door closing behind me.
Atlas takes my upper arms in his calloused hands and grins. It’s goofy.
“Get that fucking frown off your face,” he says lightly. “Tomorrow night we’re having a goddamned party.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Present
I protest. I complain. I bitch. I moan. But it turns out the Unsaints don’t give a flying fuck about my feelings, because the next day, when the sun begins to fall behind the river, the little house in the park is fucking packed.
I work up the nerve to ask Mayhem if Ria is coming. He’s wearing black, ripped jeans, and his baby blue eyes narrow on me.
“No,” he answers, then takes a hit from his blunt as he walks down the stairs of the porch, wandering off.
Well, then.
That officially means I won’t know anyone here. But the Unsaints.
I take a drink from Atlas, who shoves a black plastic cup in my hand. All of this remin
ds me too much of that night, but we’re not going to the asylum, Lucifer promised me. He said that’s for Unsaint night. And Halloween night is still two days away.
I drink all of the vodka soda Atlas gave me, while he watches.
He blinks at me, a girl hanging off his arm, grinning at me with narrowed pupils. I wonder what drug she’s on, and if I can have some.
“You just…” Atlas trails off, his dark eyes going from the empty drink in my hand to my face. “You just slammed that down.”
I nod. “Didn’t you go to university? That’s what kids do, right?”
He scoffs. “We’re older than you.”
Apparently, they are. By a few years, but who’s counting? I don’t give a fuck.
I hold my cup out to him, shake it a little. “More?” I plead.
He grins and takes the cup. “My kinda girl.” He turns, disentangling himself from the girl on his arm. He smacks her ass and winks. “Be right back.” He looks to me. “Oh, uh, Sid, this is Natalie, Nat, Sid.”
She frowns at him and he smacks her ass again. She releases a giggle, then stumbles toward me on the porch. There are people scattered about the lawn, talking and drinking, and a fire is starting up under Ezra’s hands, which is unsurprising. I’m sure he’s the one that started it that night. Someone—one of the Unsaints—brought half a dozen kegs here, and there’s a goddamn butler wearing white fucking gloves in the middle of the park handing out drinks, too.
Not to mention the men in guns lining it. Because this is still a public park.
But these are the Unsaints. They’ve funded all of it.
I haven’t seen Lucifer since I left him on the porch yesterday, and I haven’t looked for him. I hope he has fun. Without me.
“How do you know Atlas?” Natalie asks me, a little breathlessly. I really want to know what she’s having, and how I can get some, too. She takes my hand and pulls me to the porch steps. I sink down beside her, feeling dizzy from the vodka.
