The Truths we Burn (The Hollow Boys Book 2)

Sage

“Fucking mentally deranged rejects!”

My boyfriend of choice yells as he kicks the tire of his burnt Range Rover. I hated that car to begin with, so this almost seems like an improvement.

Our homecoming parade has officially gone up in smoke.

Pun intended.

Madness and confusion sweep over the rambunctious crowd that has gathered to watch their high school students celebrate before our rival football game tomorrow. Children scream for their parents, students speed away as quickly as possible.

Sure, it’s just a car on fire, but everyone knows who’s responsible, and no one, not a single soul, wants to wait around to see if they have more in store.

My friends, or lack thereof, had abandoned me as soon as danger was detected, and considering I had ridden with the target of their rage, I’m going to need to find a ride home.

Even as people dart past me and spectators whisper, I’m caught in a momentary daze watching the orange blaze overtake the vehicle, knowing deep in my stomach every cruel intention that was meant when they set that fire.

This is a warning.

A message.

One that should not be taken lightly.

“Watch your language in public, son.”

Stephen Sinclair’s voice means business as always. It has to, being the dean of a world-renowned university known for breeding some of the world’s most successful adults. There isn’t much he misses or lets his son get away with.

Dating Easton did leaps and bounds for my reputation, but the same energy isn’t reciprocated when it comes to anything outside the public image.

He cowers in situations where he should stand his ground. Always fading into the blur of normalcy. Nothing he ever did excited me.

Ignited me.

Yes, he’s blinding to look at, but he never made my heart skip or butteries flutter between my thighs. Which means breaking up with him after graduation will be a breeze.

Until then, I’ll continue letting him tote me around like a Pomeranian shoved inside a Prada bag.

“Dad, but my fu—” Easton starts but stops his sentence when Stephen’s eyes laser through him. A glare that says if you say another curse word, you’ll regret it.

People linger, watching from a safe distance but close enough to hear any form of drama they could scoop up. His father knows that; he’s always aware of prying eyes and open ears.

“My car is totaled, and don’t act like you don’t know who did it! I’m not letting his father get him out of this one.” He seethes. The nice boy who wears ties on game days is gone.

There is a moment of silence, one that hangs like a pendulum in the air, swaying back and forth, getting closer to Easton’s throat.

With practiced form, Stephen holds his phone to his ear with a tight smile, while the other hand dusts his son’s letterman jacket off before resting his fingers there.

“You let me worry about the car and who is responsible. And don’t you dare think of retaliating, do you understand?” he warns with a severe tone, squeezing Easton’s shoulder with a deeper grip.

Then like a switch, his smile is genuine as he turns to the rest of the remaining crowd.

“Plus, we have a football game to win tomorrow night, isn’t that right?” he booms.

The people clap and cheer, the fire completely out and forgotten about. This place is very good at covering up shit with fake happiness.

My boyfriend is overtaken by his football team, all of them scooping him up onto their shoulders like some sacrificial lamb, boosting his ego and rekindling his already huge God complex.

The sun has almost completely set, and my uniform is starting to itch. There’s a pint of Cherry Garcia ice cream and a rerun of Sixteen Candles calling my name.

I pull my phone out of my purse, knowing Rose won’t drive here, and my mother is getting a spa treatment, so that leaves my dad.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Easton approaches me with a grin, still laughing at his friends as they shove him in my direction.

“Well, considering your car looks like my mother’s attempts at cooking, I’m going to need a ride. I’m texted my dad to pick me up.” I wiggle my phone at him, smiling for a short minute.

“Mind cutting the attitude?” he says. “I thought girlfriends were supposed to comfort their boyfriends after tragic events, not act like spoiled brats. I thought you told me you were coming to the party?”

“Your Range Rover got set on fire, it’s not like your dog died,” I return with a snippy tone. If he wants an attitude, that’s what I’ll give him. “No, Easton, I told you I wasn’t going. I have homework, and I’m exhausted.”

“Babe, come on,” he whines as he grabs my waist and pulls me into his body. “It’ll be fun. It’s our last homecoming party before college and you’re gonna bail?” He drags his nose up and down the side of my neck.

“They’re fun for you,” I point out, laying my hand on his chest and pushing him back a bit. “I always end up making sure you get to the bathroom before you puke and driving you home. I’m just not interested tonight. I’ll text you later?”

His grip tightens around me like a python ready to eat its prey, his blue eyes turning a few shades too dark.

This is the truth of this place.

Everyone wears masks. Some are just more visible than others.

I hate this about him more than anything. It’s the hardest to put up with.

It isn’t that the sex lasts three minutes or how he always talks about himself. It’s when his father snaps at him, he becomes the worst version of himself. The man his father made him into.

As far as I know, Stephen never hits him, but he’s able to control him with the simplest of words. He makes his son feel weak and inferior to him.

So, because Easton refuses to stand up to his dad, he takes it out on the people around him when he doesn’t get what he wants—and it’s me who bears the brunt of it most of the time.

“Not interested?” he repeats, lowering his voice so others can’t hear. “Let me make something clear to you, Sage. I’m the quarterback of the football team, the future of Ponderosa Springs. I am the star of everyone’s eye in this town, and in a split second, I could demolish that cupcake reputation you cling to so tightly. If I want my girlfriend to be seen with me at a party, then she’s going to go.”

My molars grind together as he keeps running his mouth.

“So why don’t you do what you do best—hang off my arm, smile, and look pretty, alright?”

Those words trigger something deep inside me—events I locked up far, far, away—bringing them to the surface.

Sit still, smile, and look pretty, Sage, I hear in the back of my mind, whispering along my collarbone and wiggling beneath my skin like worms. I’m infested with haunted moments, thousands of little camera flashes inside my head to depict all those miserable days and nights.

I look around at the eyes, the observers, knowing I can’t do anything excessive. If I did, I have no doubt in two hours everyone would know, and it would be blown into something dramatic.

Breaking News!

All-star Easton Sinclair and Miss Ponderosa Springs have Called it Quits!

So in order to prevent any more fire damage today, I do what I do best.

I act.

A smile, sweet like honey, unfolds across my face. I lean my body closer into his, his chemically made scent wafting over me, and with gentle fingers, I run my hand up his chest, resting it there.

My breath is hot on his neck as I hover my lips close to his ear, using my tennis shoes to help me up onto my tippy-toes.

It’s a warm embrace, one that looks full of young love and butterflies. I’m nearly positive I hear a couple walk by muttering about how precious we are together.

“If you don’t take your hands off me in the next three seconds, Easton Sinclair, I will show you what ruining someone’s life really looks like. Do not underestimate the damage I can do with this pretty smile.”

Contrasting our outer appearance to a vicious extreme, my voice is deadly.

Cold.

Ruthless.

Lacking any emotion aside from resentment.

My smile grows wider as his arms retract, falling at his sides as he heeds my warning.

Which I think is the smartest thing he’s done this entire evening.

“Sage, I’m sorry,” he breathes, not because he means it, but because he knows I’m not bluffing. Not even a little.

Moving my face towards him, I peck his cheek quickly, chaste and straight to the point. The period at the end of this conversation.

Although my father has yet to reply to my text, I still back away. “Text you later, babe!”

I need out of here. Away from him. Away from the presumptions.

Despite the fact my house is several miles from Main Street, I look forward to the walk.

The fresh air, the quiet, the solitude.

Weaving my way through town, I wave to those who make eye contact and look at what’s left of the celebration, the fallen decorations and trash that will be gone by morning.

In times like these, if you catch Main Street at the right time, it almost feels like an abandoned location after an apocalyptic war.

Empty. Secluded. Forgotten.

Decades ago, this town stopped being a home, becoming less and less, until it turned into what it is now.

A ghost.

Lonely and heartbroken.

A ghost of everything that could have been and what never was.

The worst part is, it doesn’t haunt us like most people would argue.

It does not hide in the dark beneath your bed or draw messages on your foggy mirror.

It’s present, it’s alive, because we refuse to let go of it. Move on from it. Forget it.

My ears ring as they’re flocked with the sound of a lawnmower, or what sounds like a one.

The buzzing grows louder and louder before my curiosity makes me turn just in time to watch the gray motorcycle whiz past me, the rider turning his head from the road with reckless abandon to look over at me as I stand on the shoulder.

His matte helmet prevents me from seeing his eyes, but I know whose face lies beneath.

I refrain from flipping him the bird just in time for his brake lights to glow deep red.

I’ve never truly conformed to any one organized religion, although I attend Sunday mass each week, but in this very second, I would have been willing to convert to just about anything if it meant Rook Van Doren would keep driving.

Unfortunately, whatever god or gods are among us didn’t do an express lane to mercy or grace.

“Heard about your boyfriend’s car,” he says arrogantly as he removes the helmet from his head, pieces of straight brown hair falling down in front of his face, “A shame, really. No one should mess with a man’s ride.”

The grin that appears on his face makes me ill with irritational anger. Annoyance, like a fly that keeps hovering over your nicely planned picnic.

I try not to look at the way his thighs flex as he straddles the bike, how big and strong they look gripping the machine. It’s a flaw in me for giving in to the temptation, but I am only human, and it’s hard considering even when he’s wearing that thick hoodie, you can tell he is built beneath.

“Heard about it?” I cross my arms in front of my chest, “Oh, please, give me a break.”

If he thinks he’s going to front like he wasn’t behind it, he has another think coming. I am the sovereign of seeing past people’s bullshit.

“He must have pissed someone off, it would seem. Not hard to fathom when you think about it—he has a pretty big mouth on him. Probably ran it to the wrong person this time.”

“Cut the shit, Van Doren. We both know it was you and your looney bin–bound friends. No need to lie about it.”

His match moves across his lips, shifting with his smirk. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about. I didn’t even know the homecoming parade was today.”

I bite the inside of my cheek, tossing my thick curls over my shoulder as I walk closer to his stationary form.

“Does it get you off? Is that why you all do it?” I prod, wanting to see just how far I can tip the scales of his temper. See just what it takes to enter the bad side of one of the infamous Hollow Boys.

“I read somewhere that causing harm is the only way psychopaths can get off. Do you all go back to your spooky mansions and jerk each other off thinking about all the schizoid shit you do?”

There is a twitch.

It’s slight, and I barely catch it, but his hand jerks just a bit while I talk. It’s in his square jaw too, right near his cheekbone—it tightens before he releases it, meaning I’ve scored a hole in one.

I go from a girl he doesn’t like to a girl he really doesn’t like.

My eyes follow his tongue as it rolls in front of his teeth, his leg swinging over the bike so he’s standing up at his full height.

“Careful, princess.” He lifts his helmet upwards, pointing in my direction and putting it down before he walks closer. “Your friends and boyfriend are not around to defend you. You are all alone, after dark, near the woods. Not an ideal place to be for someone like you.”

The way his hooded eyes dial in on me, watching my every movement, the dirt cracking beneath his shoes—if I tried to run, he’d catch me before I even turned around.

And I’m not a runner.

Not from him. Not from anyone.

“I don’t need anyone to protect me. I can handle you myself.”

“Yeah?” He kicks his head to the right condescendingly. “You think a good little girl like you can handle me?” His eyes drop down the levels of my body with every word. “I suspect you’ve never even harmed a fly, never snuck out or done something that wasn’t laid out for you already. How do you expect to fend off someone as out of their mind as me?”

I swallow visibly when he stops walking. Another step and our knees would knock together. I refuse to back down even when he lifts his hand, one finger. The rough feeling of his skin on me as he drags the tip along my jawline makes me jerk from him. “Don’t touch me.”

I’m not surprised when he doesn’t listen, continuing to talk over me. “I mean, you’re the professional, correct? You read about it, about me?” he taunts me, his words cutting me down, trying to bury me, but his touch feels like hot coals. “Tell me, what do they say about sadistic pyromaniacs with bad tempers that people call the devil? Did your books tell you what I’ll do to you, what I like?”

His finger draws a path from my jaw down the column of my neck, the pads of his hand tracing the veins and muscles that make up my throat. It stops just above my collarbone, his thumb brushing against my pulse. I can smell him, mixtures of all things explosive, and it’s burning me from the inside out.

This is the closest I’ve ever been to one of them.

There is a reason you’re warned to keep your distance.

Because once you’re in their reach, you are no longer in control of anything anymore.

Mind, body, soul.

They own you.

“Are you threatening me right now?” I’m proud of how steady my voice sounds, considering my breath is coming out in shaky exhales, my tongue touching my upper lip as I keep making direct eye contact. That usually intimidates people enough to get them to back off, but not him. He matches my energy, refusing to let it go.

Removing the match from his mouth, he taps my bottom lip with the red tip before sparking the flame between his thumb and pointer finger. It burns high, flashing directly in front of me, so close I can feel the heat from it.

His face flickers in the dark, wearing the orange glow proudly.

“Nah.” It’s at that moment I comprehend the severity of this situation, of what is happening, that Rook’s hand hardens on my throat, fingers twining around me like vines around the base of a tree.

And it’s not a kinky hold where you press the sides of the neck to induce pleasure. No, it’s painful, tightening around my windpipe. His hand has a goal, and it’s not to get me hot—it’s to kill.

If any other man in the world was touching me like this, I’d already be ready to kill them. However, his hold feels different than anything I’ve experienced before. Something about this feeling, like he’s melting away any trace of anyone before him,

creates an entirely new feeling inside of me as he holds me here.

He leans the match towards my face, hellfire eyes glowing with hostility. “But if you keep mouthing about things you don’t know jack shit about, I will be.”

My mouth goes dry as I try to jerk my face away from his grip only for him to squeeze tighter. My air supply grows thinner and thinner as the seconds tick by.

He isn’t going to actually burn me, is he?

“And I can promise you, princess, there is no handling me without getting burned.”

A grin spreads on his face as he releases me, stepping back. With no fear, he sticks his tongue out, pressing the still-burning stick into it. The sizzling sound cuts through my haze.

I’m traumatized and amazed at how he doesn’t even flinch. Like it’s an everyday occasion for him to put out a match with his mouth.

It’s then I notice the car headed towards us, the one he must have heard that prevented him from continuing what had previously been assault on its way to homicide.

“You know where to find me when you realize just how bored you are in your glass house, Sage,” he says with a laugh in his tone, mounting his bike once again.

“Fuck you, prick,” I manage to croak out over the roar of his bike starting up.

There isn’t another word muttered after, only his back to me as he pulls back onto the road, darting off into the dark, and I have to ask myself if I’d hallucinated what just happened.

Raising my own fingers to my throat, I press into the places he’d just touched, still feeling his presence on my skin.

Had I been scared? Maybe.

But it was more than fear.

It felt like freedom.

The space between who I am expected to be and who I want to be, and he had shoved me into that place. Somewhere I didn’t know what would come next, something I couldn’t control, somewhere I could be liberated from carrying the weight of what people thought of me.

An escape of the mind.

My body tingles from the tip of my head to the soles of my feet.

I feel him everywhere.

And just like fire, he lingers far after he is out of sight.