Page 83 of Crown of Thorns
He’s messing with my head.
Making me want things I’ve no right to want.
There’s a pouch in my drawer with a gift I bought weeks ago. Silver bracelets. It sits there like a loaded gun. I haven’t given it to him. I can’t. Because giving it would mean crossing a line. Admitting that something in me, the part I swore I buried, wants to give him beautiful things. Wants to keep him.
And I can’t risk that.
Can’t risk loving him.
Louis mutters when I try to shift. His arm flops to the mattress, but his thigh locks tighter around mine.
“Trying to get away already?”
His hand lingers briefly on my arm, then pulls back just a little, voice low and careful. “If you want me here… just say the word. No pressure.”
I sigh, kiss the top of his head, and breathe him in. Vanilla and citrus. Warm skin and stubbornness.
He lets me go when I wiggle free and tuck the blankets back around him. I pull on a hoodie, sweatpants, and boots. Dig through his jeans until I find the copper key. It’s heavy in my palm. Old. Slightly bent. It might as well be a relic.
Outside, fog clings low, coiling like cold breath. Dew glistens on the leaves like shattered glass. My boots crunch on wet gravel as I cross the grounds.
“This place gets heavier every time,” I mutter.
The vines are gone. Every last thorn stripped away.
The shack looks like a child’s drawing of a house. Crooked wood. Rusted tin. It should be harmless. But my chest tightens as I approach.
The key screeches in the lock. The door creaks open.
Smell hits first. Mold. Wet earth. Rot.
I step inside.
The air is thick. The windows are dust-frosted. In one corner, the ceiling leaks, leaving dark streaks on the planks.
A table sits beneath the window. Covered in stacks of paper. And photos.
My stomach drops.
One picture rests on top: my parents on their wedding day. Young. Radiant.
I shuffle forward. The walls are littered with more photos. My father holding a baby. Me, three months old, curled in his arms. My mother, pregnant again. Me again, this time about five years old, grinning at the camera in a red t-shirt with paint-streaked cheeks.
I remember that day. I remember her laugh. I remember how I used to want to be like him. My father. A soldier. Brave. Unshakable. I wore his medals like toys and dreamed of marching beside him. Now I can’t even look at his picture without flinching.
A wave rises in me. Hot. Choking.
They were happy.
With me.
“You ruined it,” I whisper. Not sure who I’m talking to.
I yank the photo from the wall. My knife slides from its sheath.
The knife hit the wood again and again, like punching through the quiet scream inside me.
I stab the wood. Once. Twice. Again. Words failed me years ago. This is what’s left. Blade to wood. Blood to truth. I don’t stop. I can’t. Not until I’ve carved the grief out of me with splinters and noise.
