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These violent delights have violent ends.

“It’s not a very hopeful quote,” I tease.

More like something I’d get tattooed after a breakup.

But he jerks his chin, gesturing behind me. “Vivamus, moriendum est,” he recites the words on the wall back there. “I think the two quotes mean the same thing in a way. One warns that passion that burns too hot can be destructive. The other reminds us that no matter what we do…” He levels his eyes on me. “Everything is eventually destroyed anyway.”

So, fuck it. We’re only here once, and it goes so fast. Love as much as possible.

He finishes the last nail. “My father feared how much he loved my mother, but he couldn’t not have her.”

“Why did he fear his love for her?”

“Because we can lose ourselves in other people.”

He twists the cap back on the nail polish, and I gaze down at him, remembering last night. How lost he seemed. How he didn’t even seem in his mind. He was out of control.

“And then…” He rises, relaxed with a playful look on his face. “The next thing you know, you’re having duels where you kill her cousin and four other people die, and all because you had a wild time at a party one night and fell in love with a pretty face after only ten minutes of knowing her.” He plants his hands at my side, getting in my face. “Now you’re dead.”

I smile, connecting the Romeo and Juliet reference to the quote on his skin.

“Dylan has a race tonight.” He slaps both sides of my ass. “Want to ride with her?”

I widen my eyes. Really?

He watches them leave, standing below as they climb the spiral staircase, and the boy lifts the door for her.

His heart pounds a little harder, and he closes his eyes, enjoying it.

He likes them. How the boy watches her when she’s not looking. How she breathes, because she knows when he’s looking.

He misses that feeling. It’s consuming, the want. Sometimes he thinks it’s better than the having, because when it’s just a fantasy, you’re in complete control. You get to wonder what it will be like to have her, and it’s fun, because when you no longer have to wonder, the dream is gone.

The boy places his hand over the small of her back, not touching as he guides her up to the roof ahead of him. He quickly follows, the door slams shut, and the chamber echoes like empty things do. Like they cease to exist when we’re not there.

But the tower is never empty.

The boy and girl leave behind ghosts whenever they go.

He walks to the boy’s surveillance room and scans the cameras, seeing them scale down the fire escape and run to the right, back to the alley where his car sits.

Gazing around at the rest of the images on the screen, he verifies that none of them are recording the inside of the hideout.

Good.

The boy is smart. He’d almost caught him a few times.

Leaving the room, he passes hers, but he doesn’t go in. Her scent hits him from here. But it’s not the Rebel’s. It’s not like summer. This is an older scent. Her scent. A wispy spice. He draws it in. It’s still there.

Unzipping his leather jacket, he lets the air cool his neck as he drifts into the other room.

Coming to the foot of the boy’s bed, he drops his gaze, jealousy knotting inside of him. The mussed sheets and the smell of summer in here too.

God, he misses being young.

A figure stops at his side, and he watches a hand reach down to the sheets and loop a pair of blue silk panties with his fingers.

“Don’t touch them,” he tells Deacon. “The boy loves her.”

Deacon drops it and doesn’t argue. That’s what’s great about him. He doesn’t understand, and he doesn’t care to. He just does what he’s told.

Deacon walks around him, the bourbon on his breath wafting through the air. “I don’t know why we’re skulking about,” he grits out. “I don’t care if they’re here. We should’ve just come in and torn the place apart.”

“Keeping the phones was your idea.”

But Deacon raises his voice. “I had no idea anyone would find the place.”

“Shut up,” the man bites out, spinning around and leaving the room.

The two could come back anytime. He and Deacon have been sneaking in and out, looking for the phones, but while Deacon wanted to run out the trespassers, the man couldn’t let them go. Watching, listening…he almost couldn’t breathe.

Weston. The Falls.

Déjà vu.

They’re meant to be here.

He and Deacon meander into the great room, the letters still on the wall and looming over all, and even though they’d been here a handful of times over the years, they look around as if everything is new.

“It’s amazing how much he’s pieced together,” Deacon says.