Page 1 of Velvet Thorns
Prologue
PHOENIX
One,two, three, four, five… Breathe, Phoenix.
It’s October 31.
Halloween.
The devil’s holiday.
The one night a year everyone gets to hide behind a mask. But I’ve been wearing mine far longer than that. Mine isn’t stitched from fabric or bought from a store. It’s built from silence and forged in guilt, and now, I’m walking toward the girl who saw through it—the only person who ever looked at my darkness and didn’t turn away.
It’s too late.
I already know that.
The girl who was made for me—who still does, and always fucking will, belong to me—has learned how to survive without me.
I should admire that about her, but I don't.
I fucking loathe it.
When Ava ran her mouth and told me BrandonMichaelson was planning to ask Shannen to the dance just to rip her apart in front of everyone, I was two seconds away from snapping a neck.
His, hers. Didn’t fucking matter.
Maybe anyone dumb enough to think she’s fair game.
Bets were already being made on how fast they could make her cry, and Ava—fucking Ava—laughed when she said it. She blinked those fake lashes at me like she didn’t just toss a lit match straight into the heart of an obsession I’ve spent the last couple of years barely keeping under control.
Something final inside me snapped in that moment.
It was rage. The kind that tastes like copper and sounds like knuckles splitting bone. But underneath my fury lives shame—soul-sickening shame that I won’t ignore a minute longer.
I carved Shannen out of my life like she was the problem, when really it was me. I threw her away for locker room claps, fake smiles, and the illusion of power, like some pathetic, approval-starved little bitch begging to be loved by people who’d feed me to the wolves the second I stopped being useful. I’m pretty sure it comes from my deep-rooted daddy issues. Maybe all those years of getting beaten and being told I was a fucking disappointment rewired my brain until her friendship, as pure and unconditional as it was, felt insufficient.
But here’s the screwed-up part: It was always enough. She was more than enough.
It was Shannen’s voice that silenced the demons my father planted in my head, and yet I still threw her away like she meant nothing.
I didn’t set out to destroy her, but intention doesn’t matter when the result is the same. I broke the most beautiful thing I’ve ever touched and did it with my bare hands. That’s on me.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry.
The art room is dressed like a low-budget haunted house.Plastic bats dangle from the ceiling, while a rotting pumpkin slumps on the windowsill, its carved mouth sagging at one corner. Someone’s taped fake-blood handprints across the inside of the glass, and it drips red like the walls are crying.
Breathe. Just breathe.
In. Out. Again.
Shannen Clarke.
My beginning and my end, my heaven and my hell, all wrapped into one perfect, devastating package.
I move toward the easel—four down, three to the left—where she stands with a paintbrush clutched between her fingers. Her blonde hair is scraped back into a ponytail, with messy strands falling loosely around her face. Her black-rimmed glasses sit low on the bridge of her nose as they always do, like they’re one breath away from slipping off, but they never do. She’s needed a new pair for years, but when you grow up in a house where nobody gives a single fuck if you can see or even breathe, you learn real quick not to expect anyone to take care of you.
Nobody around here will hire her either. She’s the kid of the town’s waste-of-oxygen deadbeats, so the stain sticks. It doesn’t matter that she’s never touched a needle, never stolen anything, and never done half the shit they whisper about behind her back. People see her last name on an application and decide the poison must run in the bloodline.But Shannen’s nothing like her parents. She’s light in its purest form, and they’re the kind of rancid shit you can smell before you see.
