Page 144 of Boy of Ruin
Then the 6…
“You know they took us.” I whisper the words in the dark, arms folded over my chest as I stare at the woods.
He’s silent behind me, but I know he’s waiting. I know I didn’t get to tell him this story. Didn’t get to tell him that yeah, Maverick and Jeremiah may have exchanged letters because Mav knew my husband was having some kind of psychotic break, but I didn’t make up my mind to run until that day.
Noctem.
“They took me and Ella. They had on…masks.”
Lucifer steps closer, one hand coming to my neck, brushing my hair aside with his fingers, then holding me, kneading my muscles, urging me in his own way to continue.
“They had us bound. Gagged. Said we were to teach you all a lesson.” I close my eyes, thinking of that night.
Of the last time I saw my husband before I left.
Ella is laughing at something in the living room, a stupid fucking romcom playing loudly through the mounted speakers.
I wrap my arms around myself as Maverick walks outside, having kissed his girl goodbye. I don’t know what’s going on with them—him and Ella—but I like her. I think she’s too good for even him. Not really him…but…this life.
It’s…draining. Constricting.
Terrifying.
My husband walks in at night covered in blood more times than I’d like to count. Sometimes I hear him whispering words in Latin from his office. Words that I don’t know the meaning of but send chills down my spine all the same.
I use that office. It’s got two desks, big bay windows. Books on the dead, Satanism… Magic.
It’s intriguing, but some of those books are covered in blood, too. I’ve seen it as I turn through the pages. I’ve never asked. I’m too caught up in the secret workings of the 6 that I don’t think I want to know more. If I did, it might break me.
What they do, what they’ve done…
I think of Reverend Wilson and my body goes cold.
Lucifer’s hands come to my face. “You look so nervous, baby girl,” he says softly, and I can see it, in his eyes. He’s sober today.
He’s sober for the first time in a long, long time. He still has nightmares. Just last night, he held a knife to my head.
He thought I was his father.
Even being sober, the hallucinations haven’t left. The night terrors.
He needs help. I don’t know what to do.
“I’ll be okay, I promise. It’s three days. No one will hurt you. The guards are right outside the door. You know I’d never leave you unprotected, right, Lilith?”
I offer him a weak smile. I do know. I know he loves me, and I know he would never want anyone else to hurt me. Even if he has. Even if our fights have gotten…worse.
He’s trying.
I know he’s trying.
But he thinks I don’t want him. That I don’t want this life. And there are some parts of it I hate. The control he wields over me because he’s paranoid that someone will get to me again. The fact that I don’t do anything without him; that I can’t, because he won’t allow it. I know it’s wrong, and toxic, and it’s driving me up the fucking wall, but I love him.
I fucking love him.
He just can’t see it. And his love? It’s suffocating, stealing my breath, my choices, trying to stifle my pain. It only lets me discuss what he wants to hear.
Jeremiah? Those wounds? He doesn’t want to hear it, even though it’s ripping me apart. How do I explain that I need to know that my brother is okay, because he was always the one making sure I was okay? That he was the only one I ever had to love me, before Lucifer. And just because I chose him, just because I never want to leave my husband, that doesn’t mean I don’t still love the boy I always believed to be my brother.
