by Monty Jay
Both look like an odd pairing but so different in their own ways that they actually blend perfectly. They seem to balance each other out almost. The way good friends should.
I lift an eyebrow at them both. “Can I help you?” It comes off way harsher than I wanted, but a tiger can’t always change its stripes, and I’m even warier about people than I ever was before.
“Oh sorry, I’m Briar.” The lumberjack points at her chest. “The Hollow Boys’ whore.”
“And I’m Lyra, bug freak.” Her kinky curls bounce a little as she talks, and it makes me look at her face a little closer than before, now that the drama has calmed down.
“Wait, I know you. You’re Lyra Abbott, right? I think I had English with you junior year. You sat by the window?”
She nods. “You’ve actually had a lot of classes with me, but it’s fine. I’m surprised you remember that one. I don’t get noticed often.”
The way she says it isn’t sad; it’s just a fact. One that she has accepted.
I keep my words to myself, because the truth is, the only reason I noticed her in that English class was that I’d found out about what happened to her mother when she was a child.
My attention averts to Briar. “And you? Dating Alistair Caldwell? Are you incredibly brave or just naive?”
She isn’t from Ponderosa Springs. She’s probably aware of his history with his friends, but she wasn’t around while they were making it.
A part of her becomes defensive. I can see it in the way her shoulders tighten, and her jaw ticks a bit. The girl has fight, I can see it. She was unafraid to step in with Mary and Lizzy, their status not affecting her. And right now, she isn’t going to back down from defending her relationship.
Was that what made the infamous wrathful Alistair Caldwell fall? Or is there more to it?
She clicks her tongue, nodding a bit. “I’ve heard that a few times since moving here. The answer is neither. I just happened to find myself in his path and never left. Sometimes, you don’t know what you want until it’s right in front of you. He’s not like everyone says, not with me.”
“Yeah, that’s what—” I stop midsentence.
That’s what Rose tried to tell me about Silas. What I had learned about Rook.
If anyone understands what it’s like to fall for the things that linger in the dark, it’s me.
I look at them again as they start to eat their food, wondering just how much Briar knows about what Alistair is up to. If Lyra is involved at all. I’m so out of the loop that I have no way of knowing.
“Listen, I’m not really looking to make friends,” I say honestly, not needing to add friendship to my empty plate. I’d gotten used to how light it was without anything on it.
“We didn’t ask if you were looking,” Lyra speaks up. “You don’t fit into the spaces of Ponderosa Springs anymore. You fell from their standards, and now you’re one of the forgotten. But that doesn’t mean you have to be alone. Loners need friends too.”
She’s right. I don’t fit anymore, and a piece of me hates to hear it out loud. But the other part of me knows I never belonged in the first place.
“She gets deep sometimes. You get used to it.” Briar laughs. “But she’s right. You have no friends, and you could do worse than us. College is about meeting new people, making new bonds, right?”
“I—”
I don’t know how to be a friend.
That’s what I wanted to say.
I’m not sure how to be someone’s friend, not really. These two aren’t something superficial put in place to fit a certain image. They’re the kind of friends who share secrets and tears. I’ve never done that. I’ve never been that for someone, and I’m not sure I can.
But even if I can’t, this could help me.
They would be able to update me on everything that had changed. More importantly, Briar would be able to get me close enough to Alistair to talk to Silas.
And maybe, I don’t know, maybe I could—
No, Sage.
You have one goal, and building relationships is not it. You won’t even be here long enough to build trust with them. You’ll be gone and out of everyone’s hair as soon as your father is finished breathing. That’s it.
“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.”
Rook
“Is there a reason you’re being extra moody today, Rook?”
The edge of the axe splits through the center of the wood, sending two separate pieces flying in opposite directions. Sweat trickles down my exposed back as I raise my eyes to Thatcher, who is sitting on his overly dressed ass.
I drop the weapon to the ground, rubbing my wet hands on my jeans to dry them off. I’d been working my ass off splitting wood for this fucking fire that we were going to have. Sitting around like everything is back to normal and everything is fine.
As if we’re back in high school doing this every single weekend just to pass the time as if our lives hadn’t drastically changed since then.
“I’m not moody,” I grunt, picking up the logs and tossing them in the pit. “I just need to blow off some steam. Waiting around and fiddling our thumbs is apparently only bothering me.”
“That’s not true, and you know it,” Alistair chimes in, standing up from his spot. “We want his head on a spike just as much as you do. Stop acting like we don’t.”
I run a hand through my damp hair, shaking my head in disagreement. “Then why haven’t we talked about it? Thought of a plan? Not one goddamn time since Thatcher cut Greg into tiny pieces. It’s been two months, and break is over with. Two fucking months, Alistair.”
My temper is boiling over its limit, reaching its capacity, and it’s ready to explode on the nearest target. There are too many things happening inside of me. Too many things that had sent me into a downward spiral of rage lately.
“Or have you been too busy with your head up Briar’s pussy to notice?”
Three seconds.
That’s all it takes before one of my best friends is in my face, his height just above mine probably making him feel superior, so close to each other that our chests bump at the force.
I’d crossed a line. I knew what I was doing when I said it, and this is exactly what I wanted. For him to do something, hit me in the gut or take a swing at my face. I want it. I need it right now.
“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.”
I flex my jaw, placing my hands on his chest and shoving him back hard enough to jar him. “Stop trying to micromanage everything. I’m getting real sick and tired of taking orders from you, Caldwell.”
A tornado of emotions swirls inside of me, too many to control. I’m not good at this, at keeping everything at bay and under a lid. I’m a creature of explosion and low impulse. I can’t keep this up. It’s all becoming too fucking much.
“You sure it’s me you’re really pissed at here? Or are you tired of being your dad’s goddamn doormat?”
The dam inside of me breaks. It cracks straight down the middle, and all of my unchecked anger comes flowing out, ready to wreak havoc on everything in my way.
I charge him, wrapping my arms around his waist and burrowing my shoulder into his gut. A rush of air comes from his mouth as I piledrive him into the ground and send our bodies into the icy snow.
The cold bites into my naked skin as Alistair uses his weight to roll us. The healing cuts on my back sting with pain as he presses me into the ground. Our breaths are visible as we tumble with one another.
But he’s yet to lay a single punch on me, which only makes things worse. I want him to hur
t me. I need it right now.
“Rook,” he grunts, but I just keep going, shoving at his body, my fist throwing the first solid punch into the side of his ribs.
I had failed my mother, and now I’m failing Rosie. I’m failing Silas.
Why can’t I just help the ones I care about? Why can’t I keep them?
Every day, Silas slips further and further away, and all I can do is watch. It doesn’t matter how many times I tell him to take his meds, he still drifts from me, and it’s fucking killing me.
They’re all…
Leaving me.
“Rook!” This time it’s louder, and using both his hands, he grabs a hold of my shoulders and picks me up off the snow before slamming me back down. My body jolts, bones rattling inside of me and my head bouncing off the hard ground.
“Ah,” I cough as I feel my cuts start to break open, trickles of blood and melted snow sliding down my back. Those slices were made only a few days ago, and it’ll only take them longer to heal now.
One large hand latches onto the back of my neck and tugs me forward. My head rams into his chest, and he holds me there. My body is rigid and tense. I fight against his hold, but he just tightens his grip.
“Goddammit!” I growl.
Before coming to the Peak, I’d stopped by the gas station to grab lighter fluid, and that monstrous asshole Frank Donahue had the balls to speak to me in line. Asking if college was going well, having the nerve to mutter Silas’s name in regard to how he’s doing.
All I could imagine was ripping his tongue straight from his mouth for even thinking of Silas or Rose. I’d never practiced self-control like that before, and it had been almost impossible to walk away without blowing up that gas station with him inside of it.
It had been the cherry on the shit cake.
I can’t take this anymore.
I can’t wait any longer.
“I get it. I know what you’re feeling,” he mutters. “I miss her too. I know it doesn’t seem like we’re doing anything and we’re just letting that piece of shit walk around carefree, but we will have our time. His time will come, I promise you, Rook.”
In the years I’d known Alistair, he’d never once broken a promise to me. Ever.
Even when I came to him and asked him to go hard on me in the ring when we were sparring. The first few times on the mats, I could tell he was taking it easy on me, and I didn’t want that.
I didn’t need that.
And he’d been the first one to notice that. The one who knew what I needed was pain and punishment in order to make it through the days. Especially now, it doesn’t matter how many punches I take, there’s no stopping the constant guilt that floods my system every moment I’m alive and she isn’t.
Alistair always seems to know what everyone needs.
But what he doesn’t know is on top of all this, someone who should have stayed fucking dead and buried has just been resurrected—walked straight into my Latin class with her strawberry hair and cinnamon-dusted freckles, looking ten pounds lighter and twenty times deadlier.
She has nothing here, so the question is why the fuck did she come back? I knew she’d been committed to Monarch Mental Health Institution—not that I cared, it’s just what had made it through the grapevine. But if she’d been let out, why the hell did she come back here?
Isn’t she supposed to be in LA by now?
Why the fuck couldn’t she just stay gone?
“Do you two ever get along?” Thatcher interjects.
I place my hands on his chest, pressing into him, and he slips off my body. He extends his arm to me, and I take it, allowing him to help me up. We test each other often, more than the other guys.
Our emotions run too high, our blood too hot.
Silas and Thatcher can easily conceal their emotions. Hell, Thatch doesn’t even feel them.
Alistair and I, we live in the anger. In the feeling. We use it for fuel.
“Not really, but it works,” I say. “Sorry,” I direct towards Ali.
He swings his open palm at me, knocking me in the head. “Don’t ever say something like that about Briar again. She’s actually starting to like you.”
“As opposed to what? Me?”
We both look at Thatcher, who has the audacity to play dumb when he knows Briar Lowell can’t fucking stand him, and for some reason, he has no problem making sure it continues that way.
I hear footsteps approaching from behind me, already aware of who it is before he appears in my peripheral vision.
Silas stands, staring at the chair to the east of the fire pit, the one where he used to sit with Rosemary on his lap. His hands are shoved in his pockets as he looks vacantly at the space. I would say that I’d give anything to know what he’s thinking, but we all know.
It’s always her.
“Hey, man,” I call to him. “You been with your parents?”
It’s then he turns his attention to us, pulling the hood from his head and exposing his buzzed head. “Yeah.”
“Still trying to bribe you away from here?”
“Never stopped. Just gotten worse since Rose.”
I know they love him, his father especially, but he doesn’t need to leave. He doesn’t even need support. He just needs them to understand he isn’t going anywhere right now and accept that. The constant nagging about him going to a different state or school only makes it worse.
It only hurts him more. He knows that eventually, he’ll have to leave Ponderosa Springs, but leaving feels like leaving her now. Considering he can’t move her grave with him—trust me, he would try it—she’d be staying here while he was moving on.
That’s the last thing he wants right now. He isn’t ready for that.
No one is.
“Alright, Fire God, give us some light,” Thatcher pushes, sitting back down now that tempers have settled.
I nod, taking a deep breath. I start walking towards the pile of wood that I’d stacked, using the lighter fluid and the match from my mouth to start the blaze. Watching the flames climb higher soothes the blisters inside of me even if it’s just for a few seconds.
Tilting my head back, I let the fire heat my skin, inhaling the wood’s thick smoke that rolls from the pit. Standing this close, I can feel the little embers crackling against it, little gasoline kisses against my chest that make my toes curl.
All four of us take our seats and stay there in silence.
We don’t need to talk—we never really have. We don’t show up here to chat about our days or talk hair salon gossip.
We come here to exist.
It’s the only place in this town where we can just be. A small sliver of what the world outside of this place will be like. When we leave, people won’t stop in the street to stare and whisper. Parents won’t clutch their children’s hands tighter when they see us. No one will care, because they don’t know us.
To everyone else, we are just random guys living life.
Here, we are nothing but the bad apples they can blame their problems on.
And at the end of the day, all we really want is to exist in a world that doesn’t paint us as villains.
Headlights scatter through the trees, casting a glow onto Thatcher, who sits in front of me. I turn in my chair as if I’m going to be able to see the person who is getting out of their vehicle and heading towards us in the dark.
“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.”
I stand up at this and face the woods where they will have to walk through, my mind heading into defense mode.
You don’t just randomly stumble on this place. You would have to know it’s here in order to find it. Which means whoever is headed in this direction knew we would be here.
We wait, my fist tightening in the silence. Only the crackling of the fire fills the air
until we hear the crunching of snow, and soon our visitor is coming through the trees into the light and leaving the shadows.
“Well, I wasn’t expecting that,” Thatcher breathes, probably just as shocked as the rest of us.
Light red hair appears from the trees, her stylish bob swaying just beneath her chin. Her hands are shoved deep into her jacket pockets as she walks closer to the edge of the Peak where we all stand, almost too stunned to speak.
Soon that shock melts away, and I’m quickly heated with aggravation.
“How the fuck did you get here?”
Sage doesn’t even flinch at Alistair’s voice, just keeps her head up and continues her walk in our direction.
After everything she’s gone through, the asylum still hadn’t broken that fighting spirit. The one that refused to let her back down from anyone.
Good. I’m glad she still has her backbone.
It’ll make it that more satisfying when I rip it straight out from her flesh, breaking that spirit once and for all. I’ll crush her completely beneath my feet until she is nothing but dust that I can shove into the earth.
“I need to talk to Silas,” she says simply.
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“Your girlfriend, Briar, told me you guys were up here. She doesn’t know I came though. That a good enough answer, Alistair?”
When no one replies to her, she turns to Silas, who is still sitting in his seat, looking over at her. His eyes are glassy, stuck in some sort of trance.
“I know what you guys are up to,” she breathes, like it’s a relief to finally say it out loud. “And I want to help.”
I open my mouth to protest, spew some nasty comment about how she has no fucking clue what she is talking about, but I’m not fast enough.
“Not happening,” Silas mutters with a tight shake of his head. “Leave, Sage.”
“No.” She stands tall. “I know about the sex ring. I know about what really happened to Rosemary, and I know you four are cutting up bodies in retaliation. I know what my father did, and I deserve to make him bleed for it.”
My teeth grind until they are almost breaking apart.
