Page 146 of Creeping Lily

I should feel free. I should feel victorious. Instead, I feel empty. Like I carved out pieces of myself with every slash of the blade.

But she’s safe. That’s the only thing that matters.

I’ll burn in hell for this. I’ll carry their ghosts, their screams, their blood.

As long as Lily never has to.

Driving feels like a fever dream.Headlights slice the dark; the road smears into one long vein I can’t stop following. Every mile between me and Lily feels endless. My hands keep slipping on the wheel—tacky with dried blood—so I wipe them on my shirt and only make the smear worse. My pulse hammers in my ears with the memory of their screams. The car smells like iron and rage.

Tom. Bentley.

The words won’t sit right in my mouth anymore. Father.Brother. They don’t fit what’s left of them. The only thing that fits is the quiet in that house and the red I tracked across the floorboards when I walked out.

I picture her waiting—pale face lit by a phone screen, eyes searching the dark, lips whispering my name even when I’m not there. Lincoln. Titan. Both of them mine and neither of them enough. My rage spikes again, sharp and blinding. They wanted to steal that from me. They wanted to stealher.

I grip the wheel tighter. Lean into the speed. I should be empty after the kill. I’m not. I’m wired, skin too tight, heart dragging in broken beats. Alive in a way that terrifies me, because nothing quiets this fire but her. The only thing that drowns the blood still burning on my skin… isher.

Lily.

I need her like oxygen.

I cut down a side street and kill the lights a block early. Habit. Paranoia. Survival. The car coasts, tires hissing over the road. I park where shadows swallow the curb and step out into night air that tries to bite clean through me. It doesn’t. The stench of copper clings.

I promised myself I’d never let my shadow touch her again.

Then she walked straight into it.

A streetlight burns a cone of dull yellow over an empty lot. I see her before she sees me—standing out of Justin’s car, phone clutched in small hands, worry carving lines into her face. She looks up, as if pulled by a string in my chest, and finds me in the dark.

Everything inside me fractures open.

Justin steps forward first, arm going out like he thinks he should intercept me. He takes in the red on my shirt, the stains at my cuffs, the mud and blood laced on my boots, and stops. The muscles in his jaw jump. He’s not stupid. He knows what I’ve done.

“Thank you for watching over her,” I say. My voice comes out low. “You can go.”

He looks from me to Lily. Something like grief passes over his face. Not for me. For the thing he’s finally admitting he can’t touch. His hand tightens once on her shoulder. “Be safe,” he tells her, and then he peels himself away and gets into the car. The engine turns. Tail lights flare. He’s gone.

We stand under the light, two people with a graveyard between them.

Her eyes sweep me—neck, chest, hands—like she’s counting cuts. Her throat works. “Are you?—”

“No.” I close the last step and take her wrist, not hard, but firm enough that the world narrows to the thud of her pulse against my fingers. “But I’m here.”

She lets me pull her to me, no hesitation. Maybe she knows this is the only thing keeping me human right now. Maybe she hears the unspoken:If you leave me in this dark, I won’t find my way back.

The safehouse is three blocks away, up a stairwell that smells like dust and old heat. I keep her close, my thumb tracing the tendons on the inside of her wrist like a man reading braille—proof of life, proof of hers. The door opens on a small room—bare floorboards, a mattress, a table with a gun I forgot to hide. I flip the bathroom light and the tile throws back a harsh, honest truth: blood on my face, flecks in my hair, a smear across my mouth I didn’t feel.

Lily’s breath catches. Not fear. Not exactly. It’s something softer and sharper at once—hurt that I needed to do this for her, fury that I ever had to.

“Did they?—”

“They won’t touch you again,” I say, and it’s a vow that tastes like an ending.

Her eyes shine. She steps into me, my brave little bird. “Then come back to me.”

The words split me. There’s no gentleness left to give. There’s only this savage need that feels like drowning and being dragged to shore at the same time.

I don’t give her time to think, to question, to breathe. My palm slams the shower knob, and water explodes cold before scalding hot, pouring down over us in a hissing torrent.