Page 28 of Pray for Scars
He winks at me.
There’s blood on his hands.
* * *
I lick my dry lips,pick my head up from Lucifer’s shoulder. I can’t see him in the dark, but I don’t need to see him to know who he is. I scrub the back of my neck, painfully aware that I need to pee. My legs have gone numb, and for a moment, I’m scared they’re gone.
I can’t feel them.
But a quick feel of my bare thighs with my hands and I breathe a sigh of relief.
Lucifer still has his arms around me, but I realize we’re no longer sitting together. My head is on his chest.
I hear his soft breathing, and I wonder if he’s asleep. If he actually fell asleep on a concrete floor.
I wonder if I can get away before he wakes up, even though his arms are locked around me.
There’s nothing to see in here. Nothing to hear save for Lucifer’s breathing and my own rapid pulse in my ears.
I try to sit up, but his hands are clasped together around me and I’m worried if I move too fast, I’ll wake him.
I hold my breath, thinking through my next move, trying to forget about what happened in here. What happened in my head. What happened with the Unsaints.
With this dangerous boy holding onto me for dear life.
What did he give me? Acid? Why? What does he really want to know?
Questions for a time when I can think.
I exhale, softly, and put my hands on the cold, cement floor, trying to wiggle out from underneath him.
I manage to get some space between us, but his arms are still heavy on my back. And just when my muscles tense, coiled, ready to burst from his arms and make a run for it, he says, “Tell me,” his voice deeper than usual, because maybe he’s been awake this whole time, but he was definitely asleep at some point. “Tell me what you saw in that pretty little head of yours.”
I pull away from him. There’s no point in being subtle about it this time.
Reluctantly, resistant at first, he finally lets me go.
I swallow, flex my jaw, circle my ankles, stretching my legs in front of me, hairs on my arms on end from the coldness of this room.
“I need to pee,” I finally say. I canfeelhis impatience in the darkness between us.
“Get up.” I hear him stand to his own feet, and I see his hand in front of my face.
I don’t take it as I stand to my own feet.
He grabs my wrist, yanks me close to his warm body. “No games, Lilith, okay?”
I nod in the darkness. I don’t know if he saw me, but he pulls me behind him as I step lightly on the cement floor, following him.
I hear a door creak, and I blink, seeing a little bit of light somewhere down the hallway outside of this room.
He glances back at me and I can see those piercing blue eyes. “And don’t let go of me, okay?”
I nod again.
I lie again.
And when he pulls me into a hallway with red carpet and dark walls, when I pad after him into a church sanctuary with vaulted ceilings and wooden pews, and when I see the double doors at the back, see a chalice that looks like it’s made of solid gold on a table by the double doors, my hands tremble and I have to clench one into a fist, and grip his own hand tighter to stop him from noticing.
