Page 111 of Creeping Lily
The agony of that lie steals my breath. I feel only a fraction of her grief, but it’s enough to splinter me. My own pain coils tight—not for myself, but for a friend now gone. For a boy who spent his life believing he was one piece of a complete family, when in truth he’d always been adrift—someone else’s lost child. My heart caves under the weight of it.
And what now? What good is knowing? Linc is gone. The fire took him before he could ever hear the truth. Before he could find the mother who never stopped waiting.
A sob catches in my throat, sharp and sudden. My hand flies to my mouth, but another forces its way up, breaking loose. Then another. I try to hold it together, but the cracks are already spreading, and soon I’m shaking—tears spilling faster than I can swallow them back.
Titan’s there in an instant. His arms steady me, strong and unyielding, holding me upright as my knees threaten to give. Icling to him, not because I want to, but because I can’t stand without something solid to anchor me.
I’m sprawledacross the bed, face turned into the pillow, my tears soaking through the fabric until it’s damp and cool against my skin. They slip silently down my temples, pooling at my jaw, and I let them. It feels like drowning—like the grief is a river pulling me under, and I’m too tired to fight it.
It shouldn’t cut this deep, but it does. Linc is gone. No second chances. No miraculous return. The knowledge gnaws at me—the truth that he was a stolen child, that he died without ever meeting his real mother, without even knowing she existed. I tell myself thinking about it will only tear me apart more, but the pain presses in anyway, full and crushing, until it’s the only thing I can feel.
Time loses shape. I don’t know if it’s minutes or hours before I sense Titan. His presence is heavy in the air, a shadow that makes the room feel smaller. I turn slowly, shifting onto my back until he’s above me, his hair falling into his face as he looks down.
“You want to tell me what’s got you so upset?”
A broken sound escapes me—a whimper I didn’t mean to let out. I shake my head. No. I can’t unwrap the wound again, not when it’s still bleeding.
He doesn’t push. Instead, he circles the bed, the mattress dipping as he lies down beside me. We face each other, our bodies only inches apart, separated by nothing but air and the fragile, wordless understanding we’ve been building since the day we met.
His beauty hides behind the mask, but it’s his eyes that stop me. They’re dark, fathomless, the kind of eyes that have seen toomuch and survived it anyway. There’s a crack in them—just enough to glimpse the wreckage inside. Rage and hurt, sorrow and steel, all twisted together. He is a contradiction—both storm and shelter.
I can’t look away.
Titan reaches out, fingers brushing my hair back from my damp face. His palm slides along my cheek, catching stray tears. Without thinking, my own hand rises to hold his in place, pressing it to my lips. I breathe him in—smoke, rain, and something I can’t name but know I’d recognize anywhere. My eyelids grow heavy under the weight of his nearness, my head tipping slightly toward his touch.
My fingertips graze the planes of his face—slow, searching. The hard line of his jaw, the faint tremor beneath his skin, the ridges that hint at old battles. Each one a story I’ll never fully know. He’s not just a man; he’s a scarred monument to survival, shaped by violence yet still standing.
We don’t speak. The silence between us hums, thick and alive, carrying more than words could hold. It’s an unspoken pact, a shared truth neither of us dares to break. And somehow, in that silence, I find comfort.
“I feel like I knew you in another life,” I whisper. My voice is so quiet I’m not sure I meant to say it aloud.Why am I not afraid of you?
He doesn’t answer right away. The pause stretches until I can feel his breath against my lips. Then, his voice comes—low and certain:
“Maybe you did. Maybe we’re twin flames, destined for one another.”
“Or maybe we were never meant to meet, but chance?—”
He cuts me off with a scoff, his gaze sharp. “No. One way or another, we were bound to find our way to each other.”
The air between us feels different now—thicker, heavier. Hiswords hang there like a vow, like a line neither of us can step back from. I’m aware of every beat of my heart, of the space between our mouths, of the way his gaze has shifted from my eyes to my lips and back again.
I don’t know who moves first. Maybe it’s both of us. One second we’re just breathing the same air, the next he’s closer, his hand at the curve of my jaw, his thumb brushing over my skin like he’s memorizing it. My pulse spikes.
Titan doesn’t kiss me right away. He studies me, as though looking for permission in places I didn’t know I kept it. And then—slowly, deliberately—he closes the gap. His mouth finds mine, and it’s nothing like I expected. It’s deeper, hungrier, as if he’s been holding himself back for far too long.
By the time he pulls away, I’m breathless, my body trembling with the knowledge that whatever happens next, I’m not stopping it. I don’t want to.
He rises from where he’s been half-hovering over me and stands. His gaze rakes down my body, slow and unhurried, before returning to my face. There’s no question in his eyes anymore—just intent.
When he offers me his hand, I take it.
57
TITAN
Lily stands in front of me, bare and unflinching, the soft glow from the lamp brushing over every inch of her like it’s worshipping her. She doesn’t shy away, doesn’t cover herself. She offers herself to me—wordless, certain—and something deep inside me splinters.
She wants me.
