Page 80 of These Monstrous Ties
He laughs, a sweet raspy sound that makes my chest tighten. “No, no. You weren’t depressed. Not then. You were…excited. I knew that was a sign. It always is, at the end.”
I frown. “How did you know that?” Ihadbeen excited. Knowing my next adventure was coming. That this life would be done. That I could start new somewhere else. Or in darkness.
He shrugs. “My stepmom barely tolerated me most of the time, when I lived with her. I got my money and got away from my family when I graduated university a few months ago.” He blows out a breath, looking around this room. He forces a laugh. “I swear to God my house is better than this shit.”
I frown. “Your stepmom?” I ask him.
He nods. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me. The Unsaints. Society of 6. But what happened to you, Sid…” He clears his throat, reaches inside his pocket and draws out both a cigarette and a lighter. But he just holds them in his hand, clenching them in his fist. “I can’t imagine,” he finally says. “But my stepmom…when she wasn’t screaming at me…she was…fondof me.”
The air in my lungs goes out.
I don’t want to hear this. I close my eyes, lean my head back against the headboard. I can’t hear this. Can’t think of the pain Lucifer had been through before he met me.
“Anyway,” he continues, rushing on, “I knew that excitement because I’d felt it before myself. I knew because I’d thought of it before.”
I crack open my eyes at that. “What stopped you?”
He holds the cigarette to his lips, lights it and takes a long inhale. He slips the black lighter back in his pocket, exhales a cloud of smoke. When it clears, he finally answers me.
“The gun wasn’t loaded.” He laughs, shaking his head. Like this is all a joke. It kind of is, our lives. One horrible, awful punchline after another. “I pulled the trigger, not knowing much about guns then, when I was just a kid. It clicked, and I flinched.” He takes another drag, blows it out. Taps the ashes right onto the floor. He glances out the window. “When I flinched, I knew. I wasn’t really ready to go yet.”
I sigh. “You know, Lucifer,” I say, drawing out his name. He stares at me, almost as if he’s waiting for something. Desperately hoping that whatever I’m going to say next is going to fix this. Fix us. “You were my flinch,” I tell him, and I mean it. “When you slipped your hand in mine…” I smile, raking a hand through my short hair. “You were my flinch.”
* * *
Jeremiah doesn’t come.He doesn’t come that day, or the next. Or the week after. I jog every day in Raven Park, buy some clothes, but otherwise, I don’t leave. I don’t need to. I know all of my brother’s hiding spots, or rather, I know enough of them to hit him where it hurts. I know Brooklin. I know her schedule. I know, too, that if I came back to the Rain mansion, they’d let me in.
It’s what I’m counting on.
My plan is easy. Deceptively simple.
But it will have to wait.
The Unsaints bring food to the house we’re staying in. They even cook. Other people I don’t know come too. Men with guns. Men who I know are guards. But they never stay the night. Lucifer dismisses them at sundown every single day.
He told me he owns this house. Not the park, because the city wouldn’t sell it to him, but the house. The one he’d taken me to, too. Where I’d learned the truth about Jeremiah. And the one Julie and the kid stay in.
We sit on the back porch of the old home, on the steps, looking out at Raven River a few feet from us. The soft sound of the gurgling stream in the darkness is soothing in its own way. Lucifer is smoking, and I relish in the scent of it. It feels…comfortable somehow.
We haven’t touched one another since we’ve come here. Ezra has been giving me a cold shoulder which is odd, considering he was the first to attack my brother. Atlas has clapped me on the back a few times, and Mayhem is always staring at me. Cain is quiet and stays in his room most days. I wonder what they’re missing out on. They don’t bring girls here. I wonder if they still keep in touch with Ria, or any of the girls from Unsaints’ Night. I wonder what happened to all of the ones that were poisoned.
Lucifer knows what I plan to do. Or rather, he knows I plan to do something. He hasn’t pressed me on what, exactly. He hasn’t mentioned Jeremiah again at all to me, although I heard him speaking with his guards about him in hushed tones when he thought I couldn’t hear.
I’ve heard Atlas curse my brother even more than I have in my own mind. I can’t blame them. They knew him for years. He betrayed them, and me.
But I haven’t spoken to Lucifer about it. I haven’t wanted to.
“Tell me about Julie,” I say, staring out into the night. I’m not sure what I want to hear. I know she’s still alive, that my brother hasn’t finished that job yet. I hope he isn’t so fucked in the head since our last meeting that he screws up so badly someone else kills him before I can get to him.
Lucifer is quiet, blowing out a ring of smoke. I start to think he might just ignore me. I start to think that might be for the best.
“Julie is…she was something like a friend. When I was in high school.”
I swallow. Even though Lucifer and I haven’t touched one another, I want to. But every night, he had bid me goodnight after silent, moody dinners with the Unsaints. He had more or less tucked me in to bed, without literally doing so. He had a gun on his hip most days, and his room was right beside mine. During the night, I heard him tossing and turning just like I was. I knew he was taking care of me. And giving me space.
I wonder if he thinks I’m tainted now.
I don’t want to ask him.
