The Truths we Burn (The Hollow Boys Book 2)

by Monty Jay

  I refill the cup and spin on the ball of my foot to take a step, but then I see him standing there. Rook is cloaked in darkness as he leans against the refrigerator door, staring at me. My grip on the glass loosens, the cup tumbling to the ground and crashing onto the tiled floor. Large and tiny pieces of glass scatter across the space, and the sound coupled with his presence in the shadows makes me jump.

  A needlelike pinch makes me lift my foot from the ground, cursing in discomfort as I do. With what little light is inside the kitchen, I can see a piece of the glittering glass has sliced the bottom of my sole open.

  I hear his footsteps approach me, knowing the sound of his walk. I look up to see the moonlight casting a dim glow on his face, and my entire being starts to ache.

  His brown hair is tossed from sleep, eyes hooded and hazy, but somehow his gaze remains sharp and keen. The shadows of the night contrast his naked upper torso, highlighting every cut and grove. Those narrow lines of his body look like they’d been etched in stone. Everything from his shoulders to his lower abdomen that flexes every time he inhales is hard and defined.

  My core throbs so badly, I could cry.

  I run my tongue across my chapped lips as he starts to come closer, my hand reaching out to stop him before he steps on the sharp pieces that lie between us.

  “Don’t,” I whisper, but he does what Rook does best.

  Ignores me.

  He takes another step, unbothered by the glass as he curls an arm around my waist, hauling me up and into his warm frame. My eyes follow the snake tattoo that adorns the side of his neck and disappears down his back.

  I sink my teeth into my bottom lip, having to physically stop myself from pressing my nose into his skin and inhaling his scent. The leftover cologne from the day and the earthy smell of cannabis stick to him like a glove.

  His hoodies used to be my favorite thing to sleep in because of the smell, because of the warmth, the comfort. With surprising gentleness, he places me onto the island, my feet dangling over the edge.

  “Stay here,” he orders, his voice gravelly probably from just waking up or because he’d been smoking. Either way, I wanted to hear more of it.

  When he turns away from me, the moonlight catches his back, and this time it’s not the toned muscles I’m caught off guard by.

  It’s not even the tattoo that spans from shoulder blade to shoulder blade. The wings of the angel kissing each tip of his shoulder and the body of the tethered man they are attached to are inked down the center of his spine.

  No, it’s not the way it fits his body beautifully.

  It’s the scars.

  Some are healed completely, sunken, and slightly discolored. Others are a dusty pink, indicating that they’ve just started the process of mending. But there are a few that are still scarlet red from irritation, barely scabbed over, and they look like they could bust open any second.

  They run from just below the tattoo, all the way down to the dip in his spine. Multiple ones, some that look like they have been reopened too many times to be healthy.

  When he returns, he is carrying a first aid kit that has already been opened, sliding it beside me as he takes some materials from inside.

  “I’m fine. You don’t need to do that.”

  “Shut up. It’s my fault you dropped the glass. Let me fix it.” He reaches down, curling his fingers around my ankle and lifting it upwards so he can examine the damage better.

  Silence falls between us. It’s not awkward or strained. It’s a comfortable one.

  Using his teeth, he rips open an alcohol swab, the pungent smell immediately making my nose burn. I hate that smell so much it makes me quiver.

  “You alright?”

  I nod. “Yeah. Just hate that smell. Reminds me of Monarch. I swear they soaked the halls with that shit every night.” He rubs the pads against my skin, causing a sting to buzz through my foot. I look down at him. “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.”

  Ouch. I suppose I deserve that.

  “You seem to be pretty good at this. Used to cleaning up wounds?”

  A smirk appears on his face. “Alistair has busted his knuckles open quite a few times in the years we’ve been friends. Had to learn at some point, or he’d probably bleed out.”

  “And the scars on your back? You clean those up too?” I ask, knowing I have absolutely no right to know the truth behind them but wanting it anyway.

  He presses a little harder into my fresh wound, making me jerk a little.

  “Don’t ask questions you’re not ready to hear the answers to, Theatre Geek.”

  My chest spasms hearing him call me that. At one point, I’d hated hearing it, but when I was inside those four walls, I would have given anything to hear him say it again.

  “Who says I’m not ready for them? I begged you for them at one point and barely got anything from you. I have always been ready for your truths, Rook.”

  The closer we’d gotten last year, the more I felt like he was hiding from me, only giving me the pieces that he wanted to while I had shown him all my skeletons in the closet. I don’t think he’d ever really trusted me to begin with.

  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.

  “What happened to you?” I ask, hoping he will give me something. Anything.

  “Nothing happened to me. I did it to myself,” he grunts, grabbing the gauze next to me, “Well, Thatcher did the cutting, but I asked for it.”

  “What? Why?” I furrow my eyebrows, confused.

  When I’d first seen them, I’d thought the abuse from his father had escalated to more than just busted lips and black eyes. I hadn’t been expecting him to say one of his best friends.

  Their relationships with one another are an enigma. It doesn’t matter how much they tell you, you would still never be able to comprehend the depths they would be willing to go for one another.

  And Rook is the trickiest of them all.

  A puzzle that only gets more confusing with added pieces.

  But even still, I want to unravel him. To probe and decipher every part of him, searching for answers to his mystery every day, because that’s what he deserves.

  Someone who would never give up the search in finding him.

  With gentle movements, he wraps the gauze around my foot a few times, tying the ends together at the top when he is finished.

  “It was a punishment,” he says, still fighting me before he returns the first aid kit back to where he grabbed it earlier. He comes back into the kitchen to lean against the counter across from me, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

  “Why would Thatch need to punish you? What did you do to him?”

  “Besides annoying the shit out of him? Nothing.” He tilts his head to the left, cracking his neck violently. “I wanted to punish myself. I wanted him to cut me. I could’ve done it on my own, but that felt selfish. So I let him do it.”

  A cold chill racks my bones, and goosebumps scatter across my skin.

  “For what?”

  He looks me dead in the eyes, and even in the dark, they are still so fucking luminous.

  “You.”

  The emptiness in my chest throbs. I didn’t think it was possible for anything else inside of me to break, but something did. It shattered.

  “I asked him to cut me because I needed to be punished for trusting you. For allowing myself to be weak.”

  “Rook, I don’t understand,” I mutter.

  “If my father taught me anything, it’s that we all have sins we have to answer for. Repercussion for our actions. I’d rather be in control of the punishment that happens to me for the things I’ve done.”
r />   There are just some things that don’t deserve forgiveness, Sage.

  All this time, he’d been hurting himself for what? Because he trusted me? Because of the things he’d done?

  “That’s why you let him beat you?”

  “I like the pain. I live for it.” He shrugs, and his admission slices me raw. He’s been going his entire life hurting himself just to pay for mistakes that he himself didn’t even make. He’s so damaged, so broken, that the pain was the only release he had.

  “I don’t believe that. That can’t be the reason—”

  “Because I killed my mother.” His nostrils flare. “Is that what you want me to tell you? Do you want that ugly, bitter fucking truth, Sage? I killed my mom.”

  He releases a sober breath, raking his fingers through his hair. “We were on the way home from school. She was on the phone with my dad talking about picking up Thai food for dinner. It was such a normal day, I never thought something bad could happen on a day like that.” He shakes his head. “It’s not supposed to happen. Not to people like her.”

  I sit there, frozen, absorbing every single word, feeling every single bit of his past inside my bones.

  “I was being an asshole, kicking the back of her seat. And she turned around to scold me for it.” His gruff voice cracks a little. “There was no way for her to have seen the car in front of us hit their brakes. There wasn’t enough time to slow down. Everything was fuzzy because my head was hurting, but I remember someone had pulled me out of my car seat, carrying me to safety just before the entire vehicle went up in flames. It was consumed in an orange blaze and smoke, so much that I couldn’t even see her inside. I’d thought she’d made it out. That someone had saved her.”

  That’s what he’s been carrying around on his shoulders most of his life. The sin he thought he’d committed. That is the root of all his pain, blaming himself for his mother’s death.

  “I did that.” He pokes himself in the chest. “I took my mother’s life, and I deserve to pay for that. So yeah, I let him beat me. But it’s a small price to pay when I’m the reason he lost the love of his life.”

  I slide off the counter, walking towards him, not caring that he doesn’t like me right now. Not caring about anything that happened before this moment right here.

  When I was inside Monarch’s facility, there was a young girl in one of my groups. She’d struggled with depression and severe self-harm, using her thighs and wrists to deal with the problems she had within herself.

  It’s a nasty battle to fight, especially when you’re alone.

  Rook, he’d been going to war against it, not even knowing who the enemy was.

  But him letting his father hit him, making Alistair fight with him, having Thatcher cut him open, it’s the same as her sitting in her room with a razor blade pressed into her skin. He wants to see the pain on the inside reflected on the outside.

  He’d become addicted to self-inflicted wounds as a way to cope with the death of his mother, to cope with everything he’d ever lost. Including me.

  “Rook,” I almost whisper, reaching my fingers out to touch him, “you did not kill your mom. Was it a horrible accident? Yes, but that’s exactly what it was. An accident.”

  With quick reflexes, he snatches my wrist in his hand, squeezing tightly,

  “Don’t make excuses for me. I know what I did.” His jaw twitches as he grinds his teeth, and I catch one single tear leak from the corner of his eye. “I know what I am.”

  I use my other hand to touch it, the wet drop soaking the tip of my finger. 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.

  Because Rook hadn’t just lost his mom, he’d lost his father that day too. Everything he’d once known had burned with that car, and he did the best he could with what he had.

  He built himself in the chaos and pain, feeling it was better to rule in the darkness than be damned in the light.

  “You are human—that is what you are. One that feels pain and sorrow. One that does not deserve what you have been allowing others to put you through. You are not the devil, Rook.”

  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.

  He drops my wrist, grabbing the back of my neck. He gathers my hair at the base and presses up, sewing his hand there. With little power, he drags me into his chest, holding me there, wrapping me in his smell.

  “I never wanted to be,” he whispers.

  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.

  Rook

  The Graveyard.

  During the weekends, it’s lively and reeks of illicit activities. It’s where the rich kids get their fix, living life as dangerously as they can without reaping any consequences. The chaos amongst the crowd roars nearly as loud as the engines on the track.

  It’s a living, breathing beast that feeds off adrenaline.

  Fights. Drugs. Sex.

  The only place to find trouble when you’re actively searching for it.

  “I did not sign up to be the pack mule,” Thatcher heaves as he helps Alistair drags Cain’s unconscious body onto the empty track.

  “Stop bitching,” Alistair curses through gritted teeth.

  Together, they drop him onto the asphalt, his unsupported head knocking against the hard ground, his eyes twitching as he starts to become more alert. The punch Alistair had delivered to the side of his head had been enough to knock him out, giving us just enough time to get him here with no issues—well, besides the fact he’s dead weight and heavy.

  Tonight, The Graveyard is vacant. But it still has that lingering smell of burnt rubber and oil that I love so much. It’s a normal Wednesday, and everyone is out living their orderly lives, itching for when the time comes to escape here in the anarchy, but for us, the mayhem coexists in our everyday lives.

  Tonight, The Graveyard is the altar for a monster who will be answering to his crimes. Even if he doesn’t want to confess them willingly. He will pay the price for touching her with his life.

  As he wakes up, he is instantly aware of his tethered predicament. The ropes knotting his hands and feet together keep him on the ground. And I doubt he’ll be able to slither away from me fast enough. He’d gotten away with his sick offense for too long already.

  Alistair walks towards me, placing his hand on my shoulder. “He’s all yours.”

  I bite down on the match in my mouth, my thumb tapping my thigh. I don’t need his approval but appreciate his support.

  Thatcher takes a deep breath, then spits onto Cain’s chest before looking over at me. “You better make him bleed for trying to shoot me.”

  I scoff, smirking lightly as I shake my head.

  Okay, so maybe grabbing Cain from his apartment hadn’t gone that smoothly. He’d pulled a gun on Thatch, just before he’d been knocked out cold. And I have a feeling Thatcher isn’t going to let it go anytime soon.

  Cain tries to shout behind the duct tape on his mouth, only succeeding in reminding me that he’s still breathing the same air as her. I’m caught between wanting him to die quickly and prolonging his torture for as long as his human body can take it.

  I turn my head, seeing Silas. He stands still for a long time, just
watching me before scooping a set of chains off the ground and reaching them towards me.

  “Make him beg for it,” he says simply, dropping the hefty links into my hands.

  I nod, knowing what he’s telling me without needing a full explanation. With a deep breath, I crack my neck, zeroing in on Cain’s body.

  He’s not stupid—I can see him trying to calculate ways to get out of this. It makes this even better for me because it doesn’t matter what solution he comes up with, there is no escaping me. I’m his reckoning.

  Every time I look at him, the madness inside of me only stirs more violently. The pressure inside my head increases, and all I can see are images of a small version of Sage. Her tiny body curled into a tight cocoon as she cries silently into her sheets, feeling tainted and hollow.

  All her dreams of the future, all the joy that comes from being blissfully unaware of the darkness that awaits you in life, it had all been stolen from her.

  She needed a savior.

  And when one never came, she became her own, forged from the wickedness that had been done to her. She became what she had to in order to endure.

  I—we—of all people know what that’s like.

  Better than anyone.

  Sage doesn’t need anyone to slay her demons. I know that.

  But her inner child did, and even though she probably prayed for an angel instead of an angry man with horns, I’m still going to do what no one else had been able to.

  Protect her.

  My shoes thud against the track as I make my way to his body. I take my time to look him up and down before speaking.

  “Before I take this tape off your mouth, I want to get a few questions out of the way.” I squat down to the left of his head. “Why am I here? Well, Cain McKay, you’re a filthy fucking pedophile.”

  His eyes widen, head immediately shaking as he tries to deny my claims against him.

  “No, no.” I tilt my head as I click my tongue. “Lying isn’t going to help you. Nothing is going to help you. So when I take this off, don’t waste your last words on trying to convince me otherwise.”

  I reach into my back pocket, pulling out two of the items I’d brought specifically for this moment. One of them is my Zippo, and the other is a set of pliers that I jacked from Thatcher’s collection of tools.