The Truths we Burn (The Hollow Boys Book 2)

Sage

Stomach acid pours from my throat, splashing into the toilet beneath me. I grip onto whatever’s beside me, trying to brace myself for the pain.

There’s nothing left inside of me to vomit. Every time my chest heaves, my organs tighten and shift, expelling only a few puddles of greenish-yellow bile. I’d made myself comfortable on the floor of my bathroom, having left school and come directly here, wanting to avoid contact with all human life.

No amount of makeup or snarky bite could hide what was happening inside.

I’d used up all my energy keeping a straight face with Rook, keeping it all shoved down deep, and now it’s forcing its way back up.

My body is punishing me for what I had done to him.

Another wave of nausea hits as warm tears streak down my face. All I can see are his eyes.

How they cracked and splintered open with so much pain and spite. I physically witnessed him torch every single positive feeling associated with me in his body.

All the good that I’d worked so hard to bring to the surface vanished with every single lie from my lips. With one conversation, I took what we had and buried it ten feet under.

It’s dead now. I’m dead now.

Dead to him.

Left to rot with my own regret and the bugs, with no tombstone to mark my grave, because I know he’ll never return. There’s no need for him to know where I’m left to rest.

In that moment, I proved to him what he always believed to be true.

This life is not meant to hold anything but contempt and suffering for him.

“Is it done?”

I lift my heavy eyes to the door, barely glancing before trying to pretend he doesn’t exist. I’m hoping if I ignore Easton long enough, he’ll simply disappear from the face of the earth.

“Yes.” I cough. “You can get the hell out of my house now.”

His footsteps come closer before I feel his presence next to my hunched-over frame. Bravely, his fingers push a few strands of hair out of my face and over my shoulder. Not like it really matters now since there is already puke in them.

“Are you lying to me, Sage?” he purrs gently, voice soothing but his hand is the opposite. It greedily palms at the back of my head, clasping a fistful of hair, snapping my head back so I’m looking at him. “For your sake, you better not be lying to me.”

“Get your hands off me!” I shout, pushing my hands deep into his chest. He falls back from his squatting position straight to his ass, a weird grin on his face the whole time. “I told you I did it. It’s done, you smug bastard.”

“Tsk, tsk,” he clicks, shaking his head. “I had always found our relationship quite vanilla before. I think this is going to really spice things up for us in the future, babe.”

“You make me sick,” I spit at him, a look of disgust on my face.

A fresh wave of emotions bubbles inside of me, and I desperately want to curl into a ball on this floor and cry.

But I’m not giving Easton that. He’s getting ready to take everything I am; I won’t give him the pleasure of watching me break any more than I already have.

Had I really thought I could break away from all this? Leave and actually end up with Rook? Had I really allowed love to make me that naive all over again?

“You know what makes me sick?” He stands up from the floor and dusts his pants off. “Knowing you let that fucking lowlife touch you. It makes you look pathetic. You should be thankful that I’m still agreeing to this marriage with you. When I could just as easily take Ro—”

“Don’t you dare, you prick,” I warn him, matching his stance. It’s funny how even though he’s taller, his little-dick syndrome makes it feel like I’m talking down to him. “We had a deal, and I held up my end of it.”

A few days after the rave party, Easton had stolen my phone. Imagine me finding out the psycho had snuck into my house while I was sleeping to do it. According to him, he was being a considerate boyfriend and taking action.

It wasn’t hard for him to find the messages between me and Rook or figure out who they were from.

When he confronted me about it, I thought, how perfect. Isn’t that stupid? I thought this meant I could tell him to fuck off sooner than I’d expected. That Rook and I would be together publicly before graduation.

I ran before I could walk. I got overly excited about the time ahead instead of focusing on what stood in front of us.

They couldn’t force me or Rose to do this. It’s illegal, and we’re already eighteen. We could leave and never look back. Silas would do it for her in a heartbeat, and I’d placed my trust completely in Rook.

That he would be there. That when I told him, he’d refuse to let me. He’d fight for me.

Easton nods, rubbing his hand on his chin as he looks around. “I just have to know; did you really think you could get away with it? That I wouldn’t find out you were fucking him?”

“You found out ’cause you’re crazy and stole my phone.” I push past him, moving to my disaster of a room, searching through the floor of clothes for one thing in particular. “Don’t give yourself the credit of figuring it out on your own. You’re not that smart.”

I want to leave. I want this conversation to be over so I can pack a bag and head to the lake house. Stay there a few days and pretend everything is okay.

If I tried hard enough, I could close my eyes, sink deeper into his hoodie, and it would feel like he was there.

I just—I just.

I wish I knew the last time touching him was the last time.

That the Monday after the rave party when he’d shoved me inside the back of my car in the school parking lot was the last time I would feel him against me. His hips between my legs, the smoke from his blunt, and our heavy breathing fogging up the windows.

I grab at my heart, fisting my hand in my shirt, trying to comfort the organ inside. The water had already been up to my chest, waiting hungrily for the dam to break so that it could sink me entirely. I’d been fighting all day, fighting to keep my head above the waves, but I’m so tired of fighting.

The pain of remembering was the dam, and it had just broken.

I can still feel his fingers running along my collarbone as his ear rested on my chest. His long hair tickled me, but I didn’t mind. I liked it, how warm he felt pressed into me, even though he was all sticky from the sweat we’d both produced.

“What is this scar from?” His hazy tone rubbed against my skin like velvet, the pads of his fingers brushing the raised skin.

I told him the story of me falling off a merry-go-round as a kid and how after, my mom stopped letting me play on the playground. She was afraid I’d cause permanent damage to my face, and God forbid you look anything less than perfect.

“Rosie thinks it’ll tell me who my soul mate is,” I finished. “I think she just tells me that to make me feel better about it.”

“Why does she think that?”

“Silas has a scar on his pinky finger in the exact same place her birthmark is. Soul marks. That’s what she calls them.” My hands raked through his hair, twirling a few pieces, and I pressed my nails into his scalp, knowing how much he loved it.

He moved suddenly, leaning back a bit so there was some space between us. With deliberate movements, he flipped the burning end of the blunt towards him, lifting it to my mouth so I could inhale.

I filled my lungs, and when I was finished, he drove the cherry into his skin. The sizzling of skin made my spine rattle. Even though I was high, I knew what he did was real.

Jesus, he didn’t even flinch. He barely moved.

My eyes widened briefly. “What the fuck are you doing?” I cursed, snatching his wrist to tug the heat away from his body, in shock that one person could handle so much pain so abruptly. He didn’t even think about it; he just did it.

A nasty, crimson burn was left behind, just above his collarbone. The angry mark was dusted with ashes from the smoke, and I knew it had to hurt, but he gave me no reaction.

He kept staring up at me, eyes blazing through the vapor.

“Proving Rose right.”

There is no number of deep breaths that would calm me. The water is rushing too high, too fast. I’m done for.

I frantically search for the hoodie, thinking that if I can just smell him, just a brief whiff, it might help the ache inside my chest. There’s the feeling of my skin splitting open, my nerve endings all exposed to the oxygen.

No one tells you how painful panic attacks can be.

I scratch at my neck, feeling how searing hot it is. My hand rolls across the scar on my neck, knowing I’ll never be able to look at it in the mirror the same again.

“Did you hear me?” Easton says with urgency, grabbing at my forearm only to have me try to jerk it from his grip.

“Stop touching me, Sinclair. I told you, I did what you asked. Now leave me alone.”

“Disrespect me all you’d like, Sage.” He tightens his grip, heaving me into his body, making my panic only increase. “In a few months, it won’t matter, because I’m going to own you. I’m going to turn you into a pretty little trophy, a submissive wife, and I don’t care if I have to break that bitchy mouth to do it.”

Saliva spews from his mouth, splattering across my face. I grind my teeth, glaring up at him and fighting against his hold, but he only squeezes me tighter.

A whimper tries to fall from my lips at the growing pain from the pressure.

“It’ll be a cold day in hell when you break me, but by all means, give it your best shot,” I grit out, struggling to keep my facade up with everything going on.

With my heart aching, my anger flaring, and the feeling of suffocation, I’m going to lose my mind.

“God help you if you didn’t break his heart, and I mean demolish it until there is nothing left.” Easton presses his forehead aggressively into mine, knocking our faces together harshly. “I will make sure my father takes care of Rose. It would take nothing for him to pull a little string and poof.” He wiggles his fingers on his free hand. “She is gone. Wiped from existence, never to be heard of again.”

I swallow bile, knowing that’s the exact reason I even agreed to do this in the first place. I’m not sure if Easton is bluffing, but would I be willing to bet Rose’s life on it?

I can’t. Not when I know how much money Stephen Sinclair makes. Not when I know how powerful he is. I can’t risk it. I can’t risk her getting hurt or worse, dying because of me being selfish.

I’d been selfish my entire life.

It’s best for everyone involved if I just shut up and did as I’m told. Rook’s life would be easier, and Rose would be happy.

That’s what matters.

“You don’t have the balls,” I hiss.

“Try me, cunt.”

My palm snaps across his cheek without a second thought, so hard that it forces his head to turn in the opposite direction.

“It doesn’t matter what you do to me, Easton.” I laugh in his face, just as I did to Rook today, but this time, I mean it. I mean this bitter, sour laughter that pours from me like venom. “It doesn’t matter how much of daddy’s money you have or his control. You will never be Rook. You will never have me like he did. Not even close. So go ahead, break me, because I will slice your wrists open while you try.”

My chest heaves up and down, pulling in air and releasing it faster as the moments tick by. Easton’s changed—I’ve changed. Even though I always felt he had this darkness inside of him from the second we’d met, he had once been a decent human.

High school, expectations, his father. They turned him into something else entirely.

It did the exact same thing to me.

We are the same, Easton and I.

Scheming, fake, ego-filled humans with no regard for others.

Maybe it was fate that we had ended up here together.

I had expected it. Honestly, I did.

I had pushed him too far over the edge, but even still, I gulp when I watch him elevate his arm, ready to strike me.

My body tenses, stiffening up to prepare for the blow, but it doesn’t come. Instead, I hear my door opening and my father’s voice.

“Sage, where are the keys to your car—” He stops. “Am I interrupting something?”

Easton clears his throat, putting his arm down. “No, sir.”

I retract from his space now that my father is here, wrapping my arms around myself.

“Why do you need my keys?”

He sighs, running a hand down his face. “I have to go to Portland, and your mother wants the car with her. Apparently, someone set the lake house on fire. The fire department is waiting for me to arrive so I can file a police report. Whoever did it obviously wanted us to know it wasn’t an accident.”

And it’s then that everything really falls apart. When my entire soul obliterates onto the floor in front of me.

I let the tears fall freely. I let them run past my ducts and layer my cheeks with their warmth.

He couldn’t even let me have this one thing.

I had broken him, so he took everything from me. He left me with nothing.

The lake house was mine before it was ours. If anyone deserved to burn it down, it should have been me.

I know I have no right to be upset. I said awful things to him; I said what I had to to get him to believe me so that he wouldn’t try and come back.

But I thought…I thought I could keep the lake house. I could use it as a time capsule of us, going there when I needed to remember what it felt like to be with him.

And now I can’t even do that.

I have nothing left.

The last of us had been torched inside that house.

I hate him for doing that, for taking what we were and making it cease to exist. Burning all the evidence, all the laughter, all the memories.

As if they had never even happened in the first place.

I hate him for this.

I hate him.

I fucking hate him.

But not nearly as much as he hates me.