Page 12 of Creeping Lily
In the walls.
In my breath.
In the weight pressing down on my chest until every inhale feels like drowning in slow motion. It curls around my throat and squeezes until the only things left inside me are fear, contempt, self-loathing, and a loneliness so deep it feels bottomless.
I lie in bed staring at the chipped beige paint on the wall, measuring my life in breaths I wish I didn’t have to take. My only company is my mother. She’s here always—holding me when I shake, when the sobs come so hard my ribs ache. She presses her cheek to my hair and whispers words that don’t stick. She should be in the main house, tending to the Walkers like her jobdemands, but she won’t leave me. I think she’s afraid that if she turns her back for even a second, I’ll disappear entirely.
She can’t see that I’m already gone.
Time doesn’t move anymore. I can’t tell if hours have passed or days. Everything runs together in a dull, buzzing hum, my mind caught in that frozen moment when I lost my innocence.
When Lincoln finally comes, it’s like a ghost stepping into the doorway. He’s half-drunk—in a state I’ve never seen him before. His shirt is wrinkled, hair mussed, eyes shadowed. Lincoln doesn’t drink. Doesn’t let himself unravel.
I shift, pushing myself upright. Pain flares sharp and deep, dragging a hiss from my teeth. I wasn’t expecting him to come. I thought they’d send him away like they did Bentley, hiding every piece of what happened. I thought he’d fade out like the rest of them, pretending I’d never been here. PretendingInever happened.
He won’t look at me. Not once. His gaze clings to the ground, fixed on some meaningless crack in the corner of the room as though the floor has become more worthy of him than I am. The physical pain gnaws at me, sharp and relentless, but it’s nothing compared to this—his silence, his refusal to see me. That wound cuts deeper, carving into places no blade ever could.
I can’t even blame him. I feel it too—the ruin I’ve become. I’m not what I was. I’m a scattering of shards, sharp edges and hollow spaces, the broken remnants of a person who used to be whole. Nothing fits anymore. Every piece slices when I try to put it back together. And when he looks away, it only confirms what I already know: the girl he once knew is gone. What’s left is just a jagged fragment, trembling in the wreckage of her own skin.
I part my lips to speak, but nothing comes. He just stands there, shadow spilling around him like a smoky halo, too afraid to come closer. Too afraid to say the wrong thing.
His shoulders rise and fall in a shaky breath. Then they startto tremble. I see it in the way his hands clench. He’s hurting. Not the same hurt as mine, but close enough that it scrapes over my skin. He wears it like he lived every second of what I endured. Like the bruises on me are carved into him too.
“Lincoln…” My voice cracks.
He looks up. His eyes are dark and rimmed in red, holding nights without sleep and tears that never fell.
“I’m so fucking sorry, Lily.”
The words are raw, dragged from somewhere deep. He’s apologizing for something he didn’t do, something he couldn’t have stopped. His sorry won’t undo what happened, but I cling to it anyway, letting it soften the jagged edges inside me for just a breath.
“It’s not your fault, Lincoln.”
“I shouldn’t have left you alone.”
No one could have known. No one could have seen what was coming. No one could have predicted the way monsters can smile, can walk right into your home without warning.
“No,” I whisper, shaking my head. “They never should have touched me. It’s not your fault you weren’t here. Not my mother’s fault she wasn’t here. Not mine for not realizing they followed me. The blame is theirs and theirs alone.”
Something shifts in his gaze, like my conviction caught him off guard.
“Bentley…”
His name is a blade in my chest. I close my eyes and breathe through the pain. It’s him who hurts most—not the strangers, not the shadows. Him. Because maybe I could have survived the first violation, but Bentley’s betrayal splintered what was left of me.
“Don’t say his name.” My voice is a blade, too.
“He’s gone,” Lincoln says. “And in the morning, I’ll be gone, too.”
“Just like that?” My voice rises. “It happens, and you all leave? You just get on with things?”
Silence stretches between us, heavy and strange. He’s looking at me, but it’s like I’m already invisible. I can’t tell if the disgust in his eyes is for me or himself. Because for the first time since I met him, Lincoln is out of words.
“It was never meant to be this way, Lily.”
His voice scrapes like raw and brutal, low and ragged, heavy with everything he’ll never admit.
I force the words past the tightness in my throat, my whisper trembling but sharp enough to cut.
