Page 79 of These Monstrous Ties
Looking at the ceiling above my head in the old house at the edge of Raven Park makes me feel sick. Rolling over in the twin bed to glance out the window, a crack of light coming from the edge of the curtains, makes me feel sick.
I’ll need a drink soon. What does it matter if I feel sick sober or drunk? At least drunk, maybe I can forget. Maybe I won’t dream about Jeremiah on top of me. About Lucifer screaming my name while he watched.
For several minutes, I try not to think. About anything at all. Nothing. Blackness. What I might experience when I’m dead. What I might feel. Weightless. Unburdened. This is exactly why I’d planned to kill myself the night I met Lucifer. Because being in infinite nothingness is much better than feeling.
There’s a soft knock on the door to my borrowed room.
I sit up, pulling the pale cream sheets up to my chest. I’m in my bra and shorts, the same clothes I’d worn the night before, minus the hoodie, which is on the floor of this ancient room. The hardwoods are scuffed and rickety, the wallpaper some atrocious floral print. But it feels good being here, hiding in plain sight. My brother knows about this house. He knows Lucifer has been staying here. But he won’t come. He wants to give me space right now. He thinks this might be over soon. That I’ll come crawling back to him, demand his forgiveness, and then the Rain siblings will move on together.
He always underestimates me.
“Come in,” I call out, even as the door is opening without my words.
Lucifer stands in the doorway, shirtless.
My eyes find his sculpted muscles, the veins in his forearms, his impressive six-pack. And the scars around his torso, from the rope my brother had tied around him. His sweatpants hang low on his hips, but I force my gaze up to his, ignoring the deep V cut just above the waistband of his pants.
His eyes are hooded, midnight blue and full of exhaustion. He has circles beneath them, shadows that probably match my own. I didn’t sleep well. He probably hasn’t slept well. His hands are in his pockets as he watches me, as if he’s uncertain how I might behave. As if I’m a wild animal.
I kind of feel like one.
“Do you want to talk?” he asks in that raspy voice that makes my toes curl, even against my will.
I shake my head.
He nods. I watch him swallow, that beautiful vein in his neck drawing my eye. He looks down at the floor, lashes nearly fanning his cheeks. Even when he had skeleton paint on, even when he was masquerading around as Lucifer from hell, I knew he was beautiful. When he had taken my hand the first time we met, at that intersection I had planned to walk through the last time, I had known his beauty.
I’d thought that was what had lured me into him, what had gotten me into that mess I woke up in after Halloween. I had cursed myself for it, for being taken by his charm. Especially when I had seen the warning signs: how his friends spoke about him. How he spoke about his friends. Julie. The pregnancy. The Unsaints, who are all in this house right now. Or at least, they were last night.
But I hadn’t been taken in. I’d seen him. As he was, that night. The scars around his torso show me that now. He had been what I needed that night. But I have no time to think that through. After Halloween, I’m leaving. I will never come back to Alexandria. I will never see my brother again. If he doesn’t survive Halloween night, even better.
I’ll never see Lucifer or the Unsaints again either.
That thought pierces my broken heart a little more. But I can handle it. If I can handle my brother, I can handle this.
“What are you thinking about?” Lucifer asks me quietly, still looking at the floor. He moves his foot, clad in a black sock, back and forth over the wood, as if he can’t stand still.
I laugh. It sounds fakes even to my own ears. It is fake. Full of spite and anger and pain.
“I’m thinking about what it will be like to get out of here and never come back.”
Lucifer’s eyes snap up to mine. “Out of where?” he asks, frowning.
I look back out the window, at the sliver of light I can see. I draw my knees to my chest, blankets still pulled up over me. “Out of this city.”
I could have sworn I hear him exhale. I turn back to look at him, tilting my head in a silent question.
“I thought you meant…” he runs a hand over his black curls. “I thought you meant you might…like you did when we first met…that you would leavehere.”
Suicide.
He doesn’t want to say it.
“How did you know?” I ask him. My voice sounds detached. I try to keep it that way. I clear my throat. “How did you know when you met me?”
He smiles a little, dimple flashing, but the spark doesn’t meet his eyes. “I saw the gun,” he says, as he had the night before. “I know what a real gun looks like. And you had that air about you…”
“Depressed?” I ask, arching a brow.
