Page 2 of Creeping Lily
My attacker rises, knife flashing again.
The hooded man doesn’t flinch. He glances at me, voice sharp and low.
“Run!”
THE PAST
The past is a graveyard of broken names,
its tragedies carved deep in stone.
But you are not the tomb,
nor the ruin left behind.
You are the fire that walks away?—
scarred, yes,
but unclaimed.
1
LILY
Lincoln scoops me off the ground like I’m still a little kid, spinning me high into the air. The world blurs — sky, trees, and the glint of the pool tilting around me. I’m laughing and squealing at the same time, my fingers digging into his forearms in panic.
“Put me down, Lincoln!”
He does, eventually, lowering me until my sandals hit the patio stone. His grin stays fixed, a flash of white teeth against summer-browned skin.
“Look at you, all grown up, Lily bird.”
He ruffles my hair, deliberately wrecking the part I’d made neat down the middle.
Lincoln’s bigger than I remember. Broader shoulders, arms roped with muscle that weren’t there two years ago. He still towers over me, but the boy I used to know has been sharpened into a man.
“When are you coming to stay for good?” he asks, flopping into one of the sun lounges.
I follow him, pulling my knees up in the chair. “That’s irrelevant, isn’t it? You don’t even live here anymore.”
He grimaces, the truth sitting between us. He’s only here on college break. Same as me — visiting my mother during my spring break. My real life is across the country, with my grandmother, and school.
We’ve always been close. Summers here since I was eight, after my mom took the housekeeping job for Senator Walker and his wife, Olivia. At nineteen, Lincoln’s now in his second year at an Ivy League law program. I’m still serving time in high school.
“You skipped a year,” he says, pushing his sunglasses up into the mess of his dark hair. His ice-blue eyes catch the light, locking on me like he’s studying the difference two years can make. “Can’t believe how much you’ve changed.”
“Had to grow up sometime.”
He tilts his head, not buying it. “So why didn’t you come last summer?”
My fingers smooth over my thighs. Lincoln’s the one person I’ve always told everything… until now.
“Tell me,” he says, softer this time, like the words are meant to coax instead of press.
“I failed a class. Had to retake it.”
His brows lift — surprise flickering there. He doesn’t ask the obvious question, but it’s written across his face:How does Lily Snow fail anything?
