The Truths we Burn (The Hollow Boys Book 2)

Rook

“Come on, Silas, pick up.”

The dial tone just keeps going and going until I get the same result—a voicemail message telling me his inbox is too full.

“Goddammit.”

I stare down at the multiple texts I’ve sent that have yet to be replied to.

Dread boils inside my gut.

When I left class and went to our dorm to find him gone, I knew something was wrong. Something wasn’t right, and although for some people it’s normal to ghost their friends every once in a while, he always lets me know where he is headed.

He knows what it does to me when I don’t know.

When I’m left with my own mind for too long.

Neither Alistair nor Thatcher had heard from him all day, and with the anniversary of Rosemary’s death only a few days away, I’m convinced he’s doing something he shouldn’t.

Something that he might not regret but would be the end of me.

And maybe that makes me a selfish fucking friend, knowing he wants to die but not letting him. I just…I can’t do it.

I can’t let him go like that.

I shove my hat on backwards, tucking my helmet beneath my arm as I jog towards my bike. I notice right away there are two people standing near it, inspecting it, and they shouldn’t be. I hate when people touch my bike.

“Can I fucking help you?” I bite out, irritated with the world.

Worried about Silas.

Pissed about Sage.

These assholes are going to get the blunt end of my frustration.

They both turn to face me. One is distinctly older than the other, sporting a gray porn stash and a dull gray suit that doesn’t fit him properly. Government wages—they’re a bitch.

He looks hardened, like he won’t be too keen on the attitude I plan on giving him. Which, of course, makes me want to up the ante.

The other one looks about my father’s age, maybe a little younger, wearing a gun around his waist. A grown-up frat boy with a weapon—how charming. Although, I would be more afraid of a hungry toddler than him.

“Just admiring your wheels,” the younger one says. “I’m Detective McKay, and this is my partner, Detective Breck.”

He reaches into his jacket, retrieving a flashy badge, “FBI” written in large letters at the top.

There could be a multitude of reasons as to why they’re here waiting for me. I’d done a lot of illegal things in the last few years,

but if I have to guess, it’s because Easton didn’t keep his mouth shut.

After I’d burned the side of his cheek off, he’d cried and screamed about telling his father. How we were all going to rot in prison. But Alistair informed him that if he told anyone, the entire town would find out that Easton’s mom still pays visits to Alistair’s dad.

A Sinclair family secret that they had no clue we knew about, and if that got out? It would ruin the dean’s reputation for good. They couldn’t have a man who barely kept his wife in check being in charge of the great minds of the future, could they?

He’d lose his position. The money. Their name.

It would all melt away just like Easton’s flesh, and that was the last thing he wanted.

But apparently, it hadn’t been enough to scare him.

“So a badge means you can search my property without a warrant?” I arch my eyebrow.

Having a lawyer as a father has its perks. I would be the first to admit it.

Were those perks worth what happened behind closed doors with my old man? Absolutely fucking not.

“Didn’t know you were taking up law, following in the old man’s footsteps?”

My jaw ticks as I eye McKay carefully. Was that a dig? It’s not like he would know about my relationship with my father, but the way he’s staring at me tells me it was more than a random comment.

I’m not in the mood to play this good cop/bad cop bullshit. I don’t have the time for it. If they’re going to arrest me, they need to get on with it.

“If you have something to ask me, I suggest you ask it.”

“You like fire, Rook?” The older guy, Detective Breck, addresses me for the first time. I can feel his eyes searing into my skull, so I turn my attention to him. I meet his gaze, unmoving, giving him what he wants—a challenge.

If he thinks he’s intimidating me, he can think again.

I arch my eyebrow, rolling the match in my mouth to the left side. “Fire is one of the most life-changing discoveries. I recognize when something needs a certain…appreciation.”

“I think you do a little more than appreciate it.” He reaches into the inside of his suit, pulling out a small Ziplock baggie. “You want to tell me why we found this at St. Gabriel’s church?”

I look at the contents, containing what used to be my favorite Zippo. The fire had turned the shiny metal into a charcoal stain. The wheel had melted completely off, and the top is detached. But I can still faintly see RVD carved into the front.

“So that’s where it went,” I say sarcastically. “I mean, I’ve regularly attended that place since I was a kid. Must’ve fallen from my pocket.”

I stare at the engraving a little harder.

RVD.

I would do just about anything to hear Rose call me that again. Even if it was just one time.

I’d burnt down that church after her death. After her funeral, where it was held. Where they refused to abide by Rosie’s wishes. She never wanted to be buried; she wanted to be cremated and given to the people who loved her.

But her parents were convinced by St. Gabriel’s that it was an eternal sin. So her piece-of-shit hypocrite of a father, who’d been the reason she died, buried her in the ground. All of those people crowded inside the cathedral, holding tissues, crying bogus-ass tears.

They didn’t even fucking know her. They didn’t even like her.

All of those people inside that church had no clue just how special Rosie was because half of them hadn’t spoken a word to her. Yet, her friends, the ones who knew her fears and her dreams, they weren’t allowed to come inside.

We had been banned from her funeral, from her burial. The man who loved her more than life wasn’t able to say goodbye.

My thumb twitches.

That hurt, that bitterness, it starts to fill me up again, and if given the chance, I would torch that place all over again. I just wish they all would’ve gone down in flames with it.

I can feel my toes curling. I can smell the fabric inside melting. Watching as the foundation fell apart piece by piece underneath the heat of the fire. I felt like a child standing in front of a campfire, letting it warm me.

Every memory I had with Rose danced in the smoke like a hologram. And when the smoke cleared, so did she.

When the fire hit its peak, I tossed the lighter in with it, because I didn’t want another reminder that I’d never hear “RVD” ever again.

“So you just dropped it? It wouldn’t have anything to do with the fire that happened there a year ago?”

“The FBI is investigating fires now?”

So they aren’t here about Easton, but I highly doubt they’re here to just talk to me about a fire.

They’re baiting me.

“Most people like you would have used gasoline.” Breck chooses his words carefully. Everything he says is methodical, and I’m hyperaware that he wants to get me riled up.

He wants me to be impulsive, push me past the point of caring. Because as much as I hate it, pyromaniacs are predictable in their unpredictability.

“People like me?” I bite into the bait, like a fish on a hook, giving him what he wants from me.

“Little boys with mommy issues who think the world is to blame for all their problems and deal with it by setting fires. How old were you when your mom died? Six or seven? Did the urges start before or after?”

There is something I respect about a man willing to speak how he feels without fear of repercussion. I smirk, enjoying the way he stands there thinking he has me all figured out.

My fascination with fire is something I’ve always had—always standing too close to the fireplace, playing with matches. I was born with that desire; my mother’s death was only confirmation of it.

But what he doesn’t take into consideration is there is no one who does pyromania quite like me.

“Whoa, did you come up with that all by yourself?”

Breck scolds me with his eyes, probably annoyed with my lack of reaction, with my attitude.

“Arson is three years in prison, smartass, you know that?”

I sigh, grabbing my helmet from beneath my shoulder and tugging it onto my head. I walk closer towards my bike, towards them.

The longer I stand here pussyfooting with them, the more time Silas is out there alone.

“Good thing I didn’t do anything, then.”

“Listen.” McKay puts his hand on my shoulder as I sling my leg over my bike, straddling the seat. “We don’t care if you did it or not. We don’t want you. You’re a good kid with a bright future, straight A’s your first semester. That a tough thing to do at Hollow Heights.”

I look down at his hand, rolling my tongue on the inside of my cheek as I look back up at him.

“We don’t care about you. We want to know about Thatcher Pierson.”

The match in my mouth snaps clean in two, the abrupt grind of my jaw too much force on the weak twig.

Thatcher?

If they want to come after me, fine. I can take this kind of heat, especially when I know they don’t have a leg to stand on. But coming for them isn’t going to happen.

I would take the blame for it all before something happened to any of them.

“Don’t we all,” I say, shrugging his hand off my body. “How about this. You and your ancient-ass partner go to hell, yeah?”

I turn the key over on my bike, but it only runs for a few seconds before Breck leans over and hits the kill switch, making my jaw tighten.

“Cut the shit, punk. You want to go to prison for arson, I’m fine with that. We’re giving you an out here. A witness has come forward, saying Thatcher was involved in Greg West’s murder, and all we wanna know is if there is any truth to that.”

A witness?

To a crime that was committed in the middle of nowhere?

Bull-fucking-shit.

If that were true, they would have seen all of us there. They wouldn’t just want to know about Thatch. Which leads me to believe they’re playing a guessing game.

They found a body all cut up and went with the guy whose father was known for the same kind of crimes, trying to see if the apple fell close to the tree.

Wait. Wait a minute.

Realization hits me like a bus.

It took me longer than I would have liked, but I know these two. They’re the same men I saw Sage talking to outside of the theatre the other day.

Witness? You mean a dirty, fucking snitch.

Once a liar, always a liar.

“You want the truth?” I offer, nodding my head. “If you touch me or my bike again, I’ll break your fucking hands. You don’t have shit on me or anyone else. You got me on arson, then here.” I hold my hands out. “Arrest me.”

You could hear a pin drop as both of them stand there staring at me, hard as statues as they try to figure out another way to get me to talk.

“That’s what I thought. I’m done here. The next time you want to talk, do it with my lawyer.”

I turn the key, revving the engine loudly and pulling my wrist back to warmup the engine before pulling out of the parking lot, leaving them behind me.

My mind is racing, anger throbbing in my veins.

I knew we shouldn’t have trusted her. I knew it didn’t feel right, that she was lying. I tried to convince Silas not to let her be a part of anything, but he was insistent.

I pull the throttle hard when I drive from the gates of Hollow Heights.

I need to make sure Silas is okay right now, that he’s alright.

And then I’ll deal with Sage.

I don’t believe in Heaven or Hell.

Which is an odd revelation for the guy everyone believes is the product of worshiping Satan.

I believe when we die, we die. That’s it.

We cease to exist, and we begin to decay until we are nothing but another piece of the Earth.

There is no eternal damnation or heavenly gates.

Just darkness.

That’s what I believe.

However, my mom didn’t think that.

She would drag me to the cemetery every holiday, every birthday, to pay my respects to the grandparents I’d never even met. Because she believed that visiting graves was a way to let the dead know we hadn’t forgotten about them in the land of the living.

By making me go, it was her way of passing on their memory, in hopes that I would one day do the same with my children, so that even though they were long gone, their memory stayed breathing.

She’d be sad to know that I don’t visit my grandparents anymore. I stopped when she died, but I do visit her, and I visit Rosie.

My mother was buried in my father’s family cemetery, but Rose was buried at the Ponderosa Springs’ local one. Where they leave all the bodies of this town to decay.

Everything is wet.

The ground is dense beneath my shoes, and the air feels moist when I inhale, all the fog that seems to stick to my clothes leaving water residue. The fog rolls with the hills, weaving in and out of the unremembered graves like a wool blanket.

Visitors are sparse during this time of the day, right before nightfall when the sun is starting to set. Personally, I think that’s the best time to go.

It feels almost like the land of the living is retreating and those far passed are waking up.

Silas’s back is towards me, resting against her tombstone, a bouquet of peonies on the ground next to him.

The worry falls off my shoulders because I know he’s breathing. He’s alive.

But the ache doesn’t leave because I know he is hurting.

“You are here some days,” I hear him whisper, his voice cracked from sorrow. “I can feel you, smell you in the air. I hear your laugh in my ears and turn around expecting you to be there, but you aren’t. Not the way I want you to be. Sometimes at night, I see you and we talk, but I know it’s not really you. It’s my mind playing tricks.”

I swallow nervously, knowing this isn’t the time to grill him about his medication, but I won’t let this disease take him. Not when I know with the right treatment he can live a long life.

“They like to see me in pain. So they send me visions of you. They feed off my pain, baby. And they get stronger every single day I’m here without you. They are trying to get out.” He presses his hands into the sides of his head. “And I don’t know how to stop them anymore. So, I need you to come back, okay? Please, I just need you to come back. Baby, I need you to save me.”

His head drops down, and his shoulders shake, vibrating with the weight of his sadness.

It’s then I step up next to him, falling onto the wet ground and letting it soak through my jeans. He doesn’t have to look up to know I’m here. He feels my presence.

I look over at her tombstone, my eyes burning with emotion.

Rosemary Paige Donahue

Beloved daughter, sister, and friend.

It’s been cleaned recently, the white marble bright compared to the more weather-eroded markers. A little glimpse at just how much light she put into the world when she was in it.

How had it been a year without her?

I think we’d filled our lives with so much chaos to prevent the ache of her loss, and today, we were forced to stop, to reflect on the person we’d lost.

Right now, I’m compelled to pull back the bandages I’d slapped over that emotional wound, only to find it still raw and nasty. There is no healing, still just a dirty gash across my soul.

It’s hard to think of anything other than the pain. I can’t think about Frank or Sage, only this melancholy feeling that suffocates me.

Death is inevitable, and I always knew that. It’s a rite of passage, but you think of it happening when you’re older. Death when you are this young, it’s nothing but a sick, sick tragedy. It’s an entirely different form of mourning.

Silas lifts his head, looking up at the sky, and I see the tears tracking his face.

“Rose, come back!” He screams a scream that makes chill bumps rise on my skin. It’s his heart begging for her. Pleading for her. “Why didn’t you take me with you?” he cries. “I would’ve gone with you.”

I lay my arm around his shoulder, tugging him closer to my side and wrapping him up in my arms.

I feel his body shaking from the screams, the shouts that ricochet off my body over and over again. And I absorb every single one of them.

That’s all I can do. All I can do is hold him as he sits there reliving the nightmare from a year ago. One we are all still waiting to wake up from.

I recall the agony I felt when I helped Alistair pull him away from her body, watching him carry her one last time to the ambulance.

How after it only got worse. So much fucking worse.

I sat outside his door, feeling useless, just listening desperately for the sound of his breath. Anything that would tell me he was alive. I couldn’t take it anymore. I was standing out there waiting on him to die.

When I broke the door down, splintering the hinges, I found him lying on his back.

Nothing in his room had been touched; he’d just walked inside and laid on the floor. That’s where he had been, on the floor with one of her jackets balled up to his chest. He hadn’t even changed out of the clothes he’d worn when we found her.

And he was just mumbling, about everything and anything. Muttering to himself, like he was having a conversation with his own mind.

I forced him into the shower. I made him eat and shoved his meds down his throat. I did that for weeks, until he was able to do it on his own again.

I would do it again, I would do it all over again for him because I’m not losing him too.

I’m keeping him. I’m keeping all of the boys.

I had lost too many people that I cared about, and I’m not losing any more.

“How long have you been out here?” I ask, speaking for the first time once his shoulders stop shaking.

“Since you left for class. I wanted to watch the sunrise with her, but I was late.” He swallows. “I’m always too fucking late.”

“Silas, you know I’d never lie to you, so I’m not going to say it gets easier from here. But I know over time, you will heal. It won’t be so sharp like it is right now.”

“I think that might be worse.” He lifts his head, staring at me. “Time doesn’t heal. It helps you forget, and she doesn’t deserve to be forgotten. Ten years from now, am I going to remember how she smelled? Or what she looked like when she smiled? No. She’ll become a memory, and she was more than a memory, Rook.”

That’s what grief is. It’s a double-edged sword.

“I know she was. And she’ll always be more to us. We’ll get through it, together. We always get through it.”

Silence passes through, a breeze sweeping around us, and I watch as one of the petals from the peonies gets picked up by the wind.

It floats in the air, flowing with the current.

Free and with wings.

And I think that’s Rosie’s way of telling us we will get through it and that she’s okay.