Page 33 of Creeping Lily

LILY

T he cold air slaps me as I step out of the pizzeria, but it’s not enough to cool the heat still thrumming under my skin. My hands are shaking—whether from fury or adrenaline, I can’t tell—and all I want is distance.

“Lily, wait!”

His voice cuts through the noise of traffic like a whip crack.

I keep walking.

“Don’t turn your back on me!”

I stop dead, my spine locking. Slowly, I pivot, my eyes locking on him as he pushes through the door and stalks toward me. The suit, the smug set of his jaw—it all makes me want to put my fist through his face.

“You had your say,” I bite out. “Now leave, Bentley. Go back to your life, and let me lead mine in peace.

He doesn’t move. Instead, he closes the distance between us in a slow, deliberate step, like a predator advancing.

He’s too close. Claustrophobically close.

Close enough that his cologne—sharp, expensive, suffocating—mixes with the faint bitterness of coffee on his breath. My stomach lurches at the familiarity .

“You don’t get to walk away like this,” he says softly, but his voice is poison, slick and dangerous. “We’re not done.”

My laugh is sharp, humorless, choked in anger. “We were done years ago.”

His face tightens, but he presses forward anyway. “You think you can just—” His hand shoots out, fingers clamping down on my arm like a vice.

Big mistake.

I rip free with a violent twist, my heart hammering, fury spilling from every pore. My voice cracks the air, jagged and loud. “Don’t you dare touch me.”

Two students walking past hesitate, their eyes darting between us, curiosity sharpening into unease. I see them pause, hover, unsure. And Bentley—oh, Bentley notices.

Like a man slipping into his favorite suit, he pulls his mask back on. He straightens, rolls his shoulders back, rearranges his face into something calmer. Smoother. Safe. His hand falls casually to his side as though he hadn’t just tried to get his claws into me.

“You’re making a scene,” he murmurs, his voice lower now, meant only for me.

I step forward, cutting through the distance, my voice sharpened to ice. “You think I care?” The venom burns as I spit it out. “You followed me. You grabbed me. And now you dare tell me I’m the one making a scene?”

His jaw clenches, a vein twitching beneath the surface.

For a split second, the cracks appear—the mask slips.

And there it is. That flash of temper I know too well.

The darkness that lived just under his skin, the rage he never could quite leash.

The same rage that left me bruised in places no one else could see.

And in that flicker, that heartbeat of truth, I remember exactly who Bentley Walker is. And why I’ll never trust him again .

“Leave me alone, Bentley.” My words scrape raw, but I refuse to give him the satisfaction of my fear.

“Lily—” Bentley’s voice cuts through the air, low and heavy, chasing after me before I can take more than a step away from him. “You never asked me about Lincoln.”

The name detonates between us.

I freeze. It’s like the ground pitches beneath me, reality buckling. And Bentley smiles—not wide, not obvious. Just that quiet, poisonous curve of his lips. The kind of smile that says he’s already won.

His eyes glint, a predator’s patience masking itself as charm. He leans in just enough that his breath grazes my cheek, soft enough that anyone passing would think this was an intimate exchange instead of a battlefield.

The sentence hangs between us like smoke, choking the air. My body locks, hand curling into a fist so tight my nails bite my palm. He’s right—I never asked. I never dared. I built walls around Lincoln, high and silent, and I let them stand because some truths felt too jagged to touch.

But now? Now the cracks split wide, and curiosity crawls in like a parasite. I can’t stop it. Lincoln leaving me had been the deepest cut of all—the wound that festered, never scarred over. I told myself I was stronger for ignoring it. But Bentley’s voice rips that lie away.

I turn, slow as a noose tightening. My eyes lock on his. He wants me to hear this. Wants me to bleed for it.

“What about Lincoln?” My voice doesn’t shake, but my insides do. I’m bracing for a truth I can’t survive.

Bentley doesn’t blink. “He died in a house fire. A year after he left.”

The words slam into me. Too heavy. Too final. My mind scrambles, claws for purchase, but there’s nothing to hold onto. Just ash. Just silence .

Dead.

Lincoln.

Burned alive.

The thought coils in my chest, jagged and wrong.

It can’t be real. I would’ve felt it—should’ve felt it—the instant his heart stopped.

Some part of me should’ve shattered. Instead, there’s only this cavernous hollow where he should be.

My grief doesn’t even know where to land, doesn’t know if it’s mourning him or the years I wasted hating him.

My throat constricts until every breath is a knife. “You should’ve told me.” The words scrape out of me, broken, raw.

Bentley’s face is stone. “Would it have changed anything?”

The truth cuts clean through me. No. It wouldn’t have. But at least I could’ve mourned. I could’ve laid down the anger I carried like a corpse strapped to my back. I could’ve let him rest instead of letting his absence gnaw at me every single day.

My head shakes, barely more than a twitch. “I hated him for leaving. I thought… I thought I’d get to tell him that. Or maybe…” My chest heaves. “Maybe I’d get the chance to forgive him.”

But there’s no chance. The fire devoured it. Devoured him.

A sob tears loose, ripped raw from my ribs before I can swallow it down.

My arms wrap around myself, too tight, like if I squeeze hard enough maybe the pieces of me won’t fall apart in the dirt.

I see him—Lincoln—like I last remember: hollow-eyed, that half-smile carved in pain.

The boy who once swore forever, and maybe already knew he was lying.

And now I’ll never know why he left.

Grief shreds through me, sharp as glass, tangled with rage and regret that burns down my throat. I press my hand against my mouth, but the noise still claws its way out, fractured and ugly.

I spin away from Bentley before he can drink it in, before he can savor the wreckage he’s made of me. My feet stumble forward, carrying me blind into the dark, away from his shadow.

But his words won’t leave me. They sink their hooks in and drag, stitched into my skin like barbed wire, snagging every time I breathe. Each syllable is a thorn tearing deeper.

Lincoln. Dead.

The sound of it rattles in my skull, over and over, until it doesn’t feel like words anymore—it feels like a curse. A sentence. A death knell that never stops ringing.

I can’t tell if I’m running from the truth or if it’s running with me, gnawing at my heels. Every step forward feels heavier, like I’m carrying his body on my back, like the smoke from that fire is still curling into my lungs, black and choking.

The fire took him. Burned him down to ash and bone and silence.

And it’s too late now. Too late for apologies. Too late for forgiveness. Too late for anything except this gaping hole inside me where his name used to live.

There’s no coming back from that. No resurrection. Just ruin.