by Monty Jay
But she is oxygen, constantly fueling me, for better or for worse. She built me higher, made me burn hotter, gave me strength.
I’d been through hell—we had gone through hell—but I was appreciative of that. Because I’d never been able to recognize her grace, had never known what sin was.
You never really know how damaged you are until you try to love someone.
Her eyes shine a bright blue, and it makes me tilt my head,
“What are you thinking about?” I ask, practically seeing the wheels spinning.
“Your eyes,” she mutters. “It was the first thing I noticed when I came back here. They looked so empty, but now they are different. Less vacant.”
“That’s the thing, baby.” I tuck a piece of hair behind her ear. “When we ended, you reminded me how empty I am. How so goddamn empty I have always been. The only thing that fills me is you, and it shows.”
It’s true.
Every bit of it.
“How did that go?” she asks, wrapping her arms around my waist.
“I’m not bleeding, so it’s a start,” I laugh. “I’m not worried about me though. Are you ready for this?”
With soft fingers, she reaches up to fiddle with my hair. “I’m pissed he is going to be buried beside my sister, but I think I’m ready for anything with you by my side.”
A grin spreads across her cheeks as she leans closer to me, her lips brushing my own.
“My fire god.”
“Fire god, huh?”
“Yup,” she hums, smiling at me behind her long lashes. “Always ready to burn. So bright. If anything happens, I know you’ll be there to hand me the match.”
The gold necklace she wears glitters in the sun.
“I’ll always be there. Always. No matter what happens, you will always have me.”
“Because you decided to keep me?” she whispers.
There are mountains ahead of us, things that are out of our control, and even though we’d taken care of everything on our end, there are people out there who know about us. Who know that we are after them.
It won’t be long before they send more obstacles to stop us. To try and rip us apart. We are no longer the hunters; we would soon become the hunted. But we’re all ready for whatever is coming.
Even if they didn’t come for us, we would make sure those missing girls’ families got answers. That no matter how nasty, we would make sure the right people found out about what was happening here and they could stop it. Even if that meant ending ourselves in the process.
It was a small victory. Ending the life of the person who’d thrown Rose into this mess, but it wasn’t the end. Not with everything we knew now. There were too many lives on the line and even though I’d never considered myself a hero, I was a decent human being, despite my reputation.
Whatever hell they brought, we would always bring more. There is no one who could out-chaos us. Not when we had been born from it, not when we lived in it.
I would do anything to protect my family. No matter how fucked and dysfunctional, they are mine. And there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for them.
And fuck do I know that Sage and I came together in a hurricane of rash decisions and lustful disarray, but what we have found beneath all that pain, all the lies, all the truths, was something real.
It’s a love that would be painted in a gruesome light, and the whispers would speak of how sinful it was, the narrative spelled out simply as the wicked child of Satan corrupting Ponderosa Springs’ most cherished angel. They would say I crept into her room at night and stole her away to my kingdom of eternal damnation, keeping her here forever.
Our story would be a villainous one for as long as we live here.
But they don’t know what we did.
They don’t know that she is more than just a flimsy angel.
She is a force with the power to destroy anything in her way. A phoenix from the ashes.
The Lilith to my Lucifer.
The one I would burn the entire goddamn planet down for.
In the opaque darkness, we found a love that could never be contained.
So to some, our love would be seen as unholy, an act against God himself, but to us?
It’s more.
It’s ours.
She was right. Tomorrow the birds will sing, and they will continue to as long as we’re together.
“Because you were the only one worthy of keeping.”
Sage
I look down at the hole dug into the wet ground, filled with a chestnut-brown coffin and covered in a thin layer of flowers.
I thought it was a waste of money to bury a person who had already been cremated for free, but it was written inside of his will that he was to be buried in the plot he’d already purchased years ago.
Funerals are a place where you’re supposed to feel emotion. I’d felt broken and empty at Rosemary’s, so much sadness inside of me that I could barely breathe.
But today, I feel nothing.
It’s another Friday in Ponderosa Springs.
Maybe because my father had been dead to me far before he’d stopped breathing. I’d killed everything attached to him a long time ago, probably before I found out the deal he’d made.
Today, people cried for a man they thought was a hero. One who had died after falling asleep while cooking.
Today, the bad guy lost. Two of them.
But to the town, it was a tragic accident, one that Detective Finn Breck had bravely tried to prevent but had become trapped within the flames while trying to save my dad. Or at least, that’s what I told police when they showed up.
I said exactly what Rook told me, that my father had invited Finn over along with Cain who wasn’t able to make it, and I’d received an alert on my phone from the home security system that there was a fire detected.
We drove as fast as we could, but by the time we arrived, the house was engorged in flames. There was nothing we could do.
I was worried about what an autopsy might show, but apparently Doctor Howard Discil, our town’s mortician owed a favor to the boys. No record of blunt force trauma or stab wounds were ever reported.
I made my eyes water with crocodile tears and sobbed like I was going for an Academy Award for best picture.
I didn’t act today, I kept a passive look on my face the entire service as Rook stood beside me, holding my hand. To others, he was a supportive boyfriend, standing strong next to a girl in shock. I mean, I’d lost everything in their eyes.
My mother, my father, my sister.
They were all gone; they could understand my numbness. I was the girl who had nothing left.
But they were wrong.
Rook did not hold my hand for support.
I held his.
Because it felt good to stand in front of all the people who’d damned him and claim him as my own. Every broken, twisted piece. It was mine.
And yes, I had lost everything. But I had gained so much more.
“You okay?”
I look over at Briar and Lyra, seeing a friendship that I had desperately needed for so long. Two people who’d stood by me, who supported me. One of whom had stabbed a man in the neck. If that wasn’t proof of loyalty, I wasn’t sure what was.
I nod. “Are you alright?”
Lyra hadn’t signed up for any of this, and yet now she had blood on her hands, forever living with the fact that she had taken a life in order to protect the people she cared about.
“I barely blinked,” she mutters, biting the inside of her cheek. “I didn’t even think about it before I did it. I just—”
“You did what you had to do,” I reassure her, furrowing my eyebrows. “You don’t need to make any apologies for doing what you need to in order to survive, Lyra.”
“I’m not. It’s not something I’m sorry for. I was just surprised…” She takes a breath. “How easy it was.”
Lyra had always depicted herself as the shy bug nerd who enjoyed her life of invisibility. She wa
s a ghost, and to everyone else, that was it. Floating around, hovering, blending in.
But I was starting to gather that was only what she wanted people to think.
“I can’t believe Pierson hasn’t even thanked you for it,” Briar huffs, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “I get it, he’s a little fucked in the head, but it’s not hard to say, ‘Hey, thanks for saving my life.’”
“It’s Thatcher. He has no emotion. It would have been weird if he did say thank you,” I say with a laugh, having this weird moment of happiness even though I’m standing above my father’s grave.
“He does,” Lyra says, rocking on her heels a bit. “Death has a heart when it takes those who are suffering or the ones who are bad. If death has emotions, then so does he.”
There is a silence that falls for a moment.
“Well, he’s still an asshole,” Briar mumbles below her breath, and all of us do something that feels so foreign but so good.
We laugh.
It’s odd that one of my only real laughs happens while I’m standing above my father’s grave. But that’s what our friendship is.
Happiness even in moments of darkness.
I twirl the flower in my fingers, the one I’m supposed to drop inside of his grave, but instead, I walk a few steps to the right, standing in front of Rose’s grave, looking at her tombstone. I drag my fingers across the top and sigh.
Through everything, the only thing that had stayed constant was my desire for Rosie to be here. There was so much I wanted to tell her, so many things I never got to say. Lyra was right—death can be merciful, but it’s also cold.
It takes the ones we aren’t ready to lose with no compassion.
Gently, I lay the white rose on top of her tombstone because the other grave doesn’t deserve it.
Fingers lace with my own, and I don’t bother pulling away because I know that touch. Our skin melts together like clay, molding into one cohesive piece of art.
“Rose knew you liked me,” I say, turning to look at Rook’s handsome face.
“You told her about us?” His eyebrows furrow, and pain strikes my gut.
“No, I never…” I bite my bottom lip. “I never got the chance to tell her. I thought I would have more time.”
I hate that I thought I had more time. That she never knew how I felt about him. The man who’d brought the old Sage back to life and gave purpose to a new one.
“But she knew you liked me. After that day at Tilly’s, she said you don’t show interest in things that don’t excite you. I think she knew before we did.” I look at her tombstone. “She was good at knowing what people needed before they realized it themselves.”
“Yeah, she was,” he breathes, giving my hand a tight squeeze.
We stand there and I can feel him remembering her, just like I am. We bask in her memory, letting her light cover us in a second of happiness. I know she wouldn’t be angry at me for what happened to Silas, but I do know she would want me to be there for him.
Which I plan to do, come hell or high water.
Silas Hawthorne will not die a sad man.
She would not have wanted him to be alone for the rest of his life, and as perfect as they were together, I knew there was someone out there that could love him, just as Rosie had. I would make sure, no matter what, her request was met.
That no matter what, even if it’s without her, he will be happy.
“What about all those missing girls, Rook? We can’t just sit here with all we know, and not do something. They are just going to keep taking them. Girls just like Rose, stolen from their lives.” I breathe, imagining just how many families would never be able to find peace until their daughters were found.
“We are going to do something. We just need to figure out who we can trust, TG. When we do that, we will come clean about all we know.”
“But what about—”
“Even if it means we are caught for what we did. We won’t let them get away with it. I promise you.” He tells me, and his eyes burn with the only truth I’ll ever need.
I trusted him. No matter what, I trusted him.
“When we die, can we be buried together?” I ask.
A look of shock washes over his features. “You plan on dying sometime soon?”
I laugh. “No, but when we do eventually die, can we be buried together with our hands like this?” I raise our conjoined palms up in the air.
“As much as I’d love to cop a feel in a coffin, I’m being cremated, Theatre Geek.”
Of course he wants to go out in a blaze of fire.
I wouldn’t have him any other way though.
“Well, I want us to be mixed together, then. How I’m taken care of after I die doesn’t matter, I just, I don’t want to be alone.” I look at him, catching the embers in his eyes with my heart. “My biggest regret is knowing Rosie died alone. We came into the world together and left it separately. I don’t want to be alone.”
He brings our hands to his mouth, pressing a searing kiss to the top of my fingers.
“You will never be alone again. Never. Our ashes will be combined,” He pulls me close with the leverage of his grip, and I can smell his smokey scent on my tongue. “So that no matter where we rise from them, we will do it together. Fate might not have chosen me to bear your soul mark, but I will make sure it knows that in this life and all the ones after, I will always be yours. I always have been.”
Somewhere, I can hear Shakespeare crying that we’d defied his odds. We are the star-crossed lovers who were doomed from the start, and here we stand.
Hand in hand.
All the dead poets who wrote of sweet, gentle love cry out in disgust at our sick, twisted version of the emotion.
But it’s us.
And we are the eternal flame.
Forever.
Thatcher
My father writes me letters.
Articulate, well-structured accounts of what his days are like. How they drag by and what he spends his free time doing. Sometimes, it feels like he’s merely on a superficial vacation on a stranded island.
That’s how regular the conversation is.
If someone else were to pick them up and follow his cursive writing to the very last line, they would never suspect he was locked inside of a concrete box biding his time on death row.
That’s how normal he is. How normal he has always been.
When will society learn that the monsters of the world are not ones with yellow teeth and sharp claws? How many documentaries must we watch until we see the truth, see us for what we really are?
We are the leaders of the free world. Your neighbor who hosts summer BBQs, husbands with families, politicians, doctors.
We don’t live underneath your bed or in your closet—that’s too easy. It’s not complex enough for us.
No, we stand in the daylight of your homes, out in the open. Examining your lives, learning every single day how to chameleon ourselves into what you deem a “good person.” The kind of person you trust, the person you let inside your home for coffee, the person you least expect to ruthlessly murder you on your bedroom floor.
The longer it takes for humanity to comprehend these things, the more of an advantage we have over them.
The earth gives beneath the weight of my walk. Mud tints the sides of my Dior derby shoes, and I am already planning on throwing these away as soon as I can get them off my feet.
I do not like being contaminated. Clutter and dirt physically repulse me.
I live for cleanliness. Organization. Structure.
White satin sheets, white blanket that is bleached on Sundays at precisely ten in the morning. A strict workout that occurs every day just before sunrise. The same breakfast, the same routine, an unwavering agenda that I never stray from.
My life is a series of skillfully designed moments. Everything I do, everything I say, has an objective.
Why waste time, breath, money on something that isn’t?
Much to my
distaste, I wade through the trees anyway. Because there is something I need to…dissect.
I sense a summer breeze brush across my face, a hint of a floral scent that is overrun by the musky scent of pine. These are things I notice but don’t feel. Not the way most people do.
The forest begins to open up, the dated mausoleum catching the sun. All those people are forgotten, rotting inside. It’s a shame they never removed the bodies.
Just outside the door to the macabre structure, I see what I have come here for.
She’s kneeling on the wet ground, little yellow rainboots peeking out from beneath. That horrendous fisherman’s hat she wears adorns the top of her head, doing a terrible job at containing those disobedient curls she very clearly does not maintain.
Lyra Abbott nauseates me.
Always walking around with dirt on her clothing, sticky fingers from those cherries she inhales by the dozen, and she has this strange fixation with insects that makes me ill. Everything she does, everything she is, counteracts me.
She is sodium, and I am potassium.
She is ammonium hydroxide, and I am acetic acid.
Seeing her live so proudly with her mucky habits and contaminated interests makes me want to drown myself in bleach. Scrub my eyeballs with it until I can’t see her. Until she is wiped clean from me entirely.
I don’t like the way she looks at me and how every time it makes me feel tainted.
The way she stood over me as Finn’s blood spurted from his jugular vein made me feel unsettled, soaking me in the thick, decadent, crimson liquid I’m so fond of. I might have enjoyed that moment had I not seen the look on her face.
People should not have that sort of reaction after killing someone.
She should have gone into shock, cried, passed out.
Not her.
No, Lyra looked relieved. Delight sparkled on her face, and a sense of calm descended on her shoulders. She enjoyed killing him, and I think if given the opportunity, she would do it again. It was that face that made me need answers.
I’d done a well enough job at blatantly ignoring her, even when I could detect her near me, feel her stare on my skin. I’m too curious to disregard her now.
