The Truths we Burn (The Hollow Boys Book 2)

Sage

I look down at the hole dug into the wet ground, filled with a chestnut-brown coffin and covered in a thin layer of flowers.

I thought it was a waste of money to bury a person who had already been cremated for free, but it was written inside of his will that he was to be buried in the plot he’d already purchased years ago.

Funerals are a place where you’re supposed to feel emotion. I’d felt broken and empty at Rosemary’s, so much sadness inside of me that I could barely breathe.

But today, I feel nothing.

It’s another Friday in Ponderosa Springs.

Maybe because my father had been dead to me far before he’d stopped breathing. I’d killed everything attached to him a long time ago, probably before I found out the deal he’d made.

Today, people cried for a man they thought was a hero. One who had died after falling asleep while cooking.

Today, the bad guy lost. Two of them.

But to the town, it was a tragic accident, one that Detective Finn Breck had bravely tried to prevent but had become trapped within the flames while trying to save my dad. Or at least, that’s what I told police when they showed up.

I said exactly what Rook told me, that my father had invited Finn over along with Cain who wasn’t able to make it, and I’d received an alert on my phone from the home security system that there was a fire detected.

We drove as fast as we could, but by the time we arrived, the house was engorged in flames. There was nothing we could do.

I was worried about what an autopsy might show, but apparently Doctor Howard Discil, our town’s mortician owed a favor to the boys. No record of blunt force trauma or stab wounds were ever reported.

I made my eyes water with crocodile tears and sobbed like I was going for an Academy Award for best picture.

I didn’t act today, I kept a passive look on my face the entire service as Rook stood beside me, holding my hand. To others, he was a supportive boyfriend, standing strong next to a girl in shock. I mean, I’d lost everything in their eyes.

My mother, my father, my sister.

They were all gone; they could understand my numbness. I was the girl who had nothing left.

But they were wrong.

Rook did not hold my hand for support.

I held his.

Because it felt good to stand in front of all the people who’d damned him and claim him as my own. Every broken, twisted piece. It was mine.

And yes, I had lost everything. But I had gained so much more.

“You okay?”

I look over at Briar and Lyra, seeing a friendship that I had desperately needed for so long. Two people who’d stood by me, who supported me. One of whom had stabbed a man in the neck. If that wasn’t proof of loyalty, I wasn’t sure what was.

I nod. “Are you alright?”

Lyra hadn’t signed up for any of this, and yet now she had blood on her hands, forever living with the fact that she had taken a life in order to protect the people she cared about.

“I barely blinked,” she mutters, biting the inside of her cheek. “I didn’t even think about it before I did it. I just—”

“You did what you had to do,” I reassure her, furrowing my eyebrows. “You don’t need to make any apologies for doing what you need to in order to survive, Lyra.”

“I’m not. It’s not something I’m sorry for. I was just surprised…” She takes a breath. “How easy it was.”

Lyra had always depicted herself as the shy bug nerd who enjoyed her life of invisibility. She was a ghost, and to everyone else, that was it. Floating around, hovering, blending in.

But I was starting to gather that was only what she wanted people to think.

“I can’t believe Pierson hasn’t even thanked you for it,” Briar huffs, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “I get it, he’s a little fucked in the head, but it’s not hard to say, ‘Hey, thanks for saving my life.’”

“It’s Thatcher. He has no emotion. It would have been weird if he did say thank you,” I say with a laugh, having this weird moment of happiness even though I’m standing above my father’s grave.

“He does,” Lyra says, rocking on her heels a bit. “Death has a heart when it takes those who are suffering or the ones who are bad. If death has emotions, then so does he.”

There is a silence that falls for a moment.

“Well, he’s still an asshole,” Briar mumbles below her breath, and all of us do something that feels so foreign but so good.

We laugh.

It’s odd that one of my only real laughs happens while I’m standing above my father’s grave. But that’s what our friendship is.

Happiness even in moments of darkness.

I twirl the flower in my fingers, the one I’m supposed to drop inside of his grave, but instead, I walk a few steps to the right, standing in front of Rose’s grave, looking at her tombstone. I drag my fingers across the top and sigh.

Through everything, the only thing that had stayed constant was my desire for Rosie to be here. There was so much I wanted to tell her, so many things I never got to say. Lyra was right—death can be merciful, but it’s also cold.

It takes the ones we aren’t ready to lose with no compassion.

Gently, I lay the white rose on top of her tombstone because the other grave doesn’t deserve it.

Fingers lace with my own, and I don’t bother pulling away because I know that touch. Our skin melts together like clay, molding into one cohesive piece of art.

“Rose knew you liked me,” I say, turning to look at Rook’s handsome face.

“You told her about us?” His eyebrows furrow, and pain strikes my gut.

“No, I never…” I bite my bottom lip. “I never got the chance to tell her. I thought I would have more time.”

I hate that I thought I had more time. That she never knew how I felt about him. The man who’d brought the old Sage back to life and gave purpose to a new one.

“But she knew you liked me. After that day at Tilly’s, she said you don’t show interest in things that don’t excite you. I think she knew before we did.” I look at her tombstone. “She was good at knowing what people needed before they realized it themselves.”

“Yeah, she was,” he breathes, giving my hand a tight squeeze.

We stand there and I can feel him remembering her, just like I am. We bask in her memory, letting her light cover us in a second of happiness. I know she wouldn’t be angry at me for what happened to Silas, but I do know she would want me to be there for him.

Which I plan to do, come hell or high water.

Silas Hawthorne will not die a sad man.

She would not have wanted him to be alone for the rest of his life, and as perfect as they were together, I knew there was someone out there that could love him, just as Rosie had. I would make sure, no matter what, her request was met.

That no matter what, even if it’s without her, he will be happy.

“What about all those missing girls, Rook? We can’t just sit here with all we know, and not do something. They are just going to keep taking them. Girls just like Rose, stolen from their lives.” I breathe, imagining just how many families would never be able to find peace until their daughters were found.

“We are going to do something. We just need to figure out who we can trust, TG. When we do that, we will come clean about all we know.”

“But what about—”

“Even if it means we are caught for what we did. We won’t let them get away with it. I promise you.” He tells me, and his eyes burn with the only truth I’ll ever need.

I trusted him. No matter what, I trusted him.

“When we die, can we be buried together?” I ask.

A look of shock washes over his features. “You plan on dying sometime soon?”

I laugh. “No, but when we do eventually die, can we be buried together with our hands like this?” I raise our conjoined palms up in the air.

“As much as I’d love to cop a feel in a coffin, I’m being cremated, Theatre Geek.”

Of course he wants to go out in a blaze of fire.

I wouldn’t have him any other way though.

“Well, I want us to be mixed together, then. How I’m taken care of after I die doesn’t matter, I just, I don’t want to be alone.” I look at him, catching the embers in his eyes with my heart. “My biggest regret is knowing Rosie died alone. We came into the world together and left it separately. I don’t want to be alone.”

He brings our hands to his mouth, pressing a searing kiss to the top of my fingers.

“You will never be alone again. Never. Our ashes will be combined,” He pulls me close with the leverage of his grip, and I can smell his smokey scent on my tongue. “So that no matter where we rise from them, we will do it together. Fate might not have chosen me to bear your soul mark, but I will make sure it knows that in this life and all the ones after, I will always be yours. I always have been.”

Somewhere, I can hear Shakespeare crying that we’d defied his odds. We are the star-crossed lovers who were doomed from the start, and here we stand.

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All the dead poets who wrote of sweet, gentle love cry out in disgust at our sick, twisted version of the emotion.

But it’s us.

And we are the eternal flame.

Forever.