Page 58 of Creeping Lily

LILY

T he air in the cabin changes—tightens—like a storm cloud rolling in without warning. The silence between us hums, thick and watchful, as our eyes stray back to the ledger lying on the side table. It’s not just a book. It feels alive, like it’s listening.

Titan’s gaze lingers on it for a beat too long before he straightens, deciding—without a word—that it’s time to take a walk.

I watch him as he pulls out his phone, tilting it one way, then another, moving toward the window and back again like he’s fighting with the air itself.

Every few steps, he lifts the device higher, chasing a signal that refuses to be caught.

His expression is unreadable, but the tension in his shoulders tells me the fight isn’t really about the phone.

When he finally steps outside, I drift toward the armchair.

My eyes keep darting to the ledger until my hands—both cautious and curious—wrap around it.

The leather is cool, the spine stiff in my grip, like it’s resisting me.

I sit, holding it in my lap for a moment before opening it, as though I’m about to slip into someone else’s nightmares.

This is what drives him. These pages are his fuel, the reason his hands are stained. Titan may be a killer, but he isn’t aimless. Every strike he makes has a target. Every name has a reason. That doesn’t make him less lethal—it just makes his violence organized.

I begin to read. Skimming first. Names blur into dates, dates into locations. I don’t know what I’m looking for, only that I need to see for myself. Maybe he doesn’t want me to go further because it’s ugly. Maybe he wants to protect me. Or maybe there’s something in here he doesn’t want me to know.

Page after page, I flip through the years.

The 1980s bleed into the ’90s. The names start to feel closer somehow—more familiar.

These are people from my time, my generation.

Some of them I recognize instantly: the missing kids whose faces once stared out from milk cartons, the women whose cases still pop up in true-crime documentaries, the tragedies the internet refuses to let fade.

One entry from 1998 makes me stop. The ink is different—darker, fresher—standing out against Larry Shine’s usual tidy handwriting.

A note beside a name. A child he had sold.

Later went missing. He underlined his innocence in the second disappearance, as if scribbling the words could wash his hands clean.

But the original entry still damns him: destination unknown .

I keep going. The entries are mercifully short—facts without flourish, a bullet to the point. I fall into the rhythm of them, each page a little cut that draws me deeper in. The hours slip away. Afternoon light filters through the windows, bending across the floor in gold and dust.

Every so often, I pause and listen for Titan. The cabin remains quiet. I frown, realizing how long it’s been since he left. Still, there’s no panic. He’s out there somewhere—watching, waiting, moving in his own deliberate way.

And I know with a certainty I can’t explain: he’ll come back.

“Twelfth April 1999

Heddy Fielder, 61 Bilbao Street, Tūrongo

15 years. Blonde, green eyes.

Taken from Studio City Cinemas.

Sold to: Lambert Corp (Re: Oscar Ellison)”

“Third August 1999

Malisan Hernandez, 13 Forecall Road, Cathine

12 years, dark brown hair, brown eyes.

Taken from Vili Road on way home from school, red bicycle

Sold to: Markham Estate (Re: Peter Markham)”

“Eighth November 1999

Baby Owen

Newborn, swapped out with deceased newborn at Mercy Xavier General Hospital

Sold to: Senator Tom Walker”

I read the passage again, slower this time, letting each word burn itself into my brain. My eyes flick back to the date, tracing the faded ink like maybe I’ve read it wrong. I go over every line, every jagged curve of handwriting, dissecting it as if peeling apart the truth will make it less real.

It can’t be.

The odds are impossible… aren’t they?

But the timeline fits. Too well. My chest tightens. My thoughts spiral— no, no, no . How could it be?

The air leaves my lungs in one sharp, hollow rush, like I’ve been sucker-punched.

My fingers go numb. I snap the ledger shut, the sound cracking through the quiet room.

My hands won’t stop shaking as I lower it toward the side table.

I almost miss, the book tilting, threatening to slide to the floor.

At the last second I steady it, pushing it back into place like that will somehow push the truth away too.

Then I sink into the chair, staring at nothing, my pulse thudding in my ears. My mind is a storm—snatches of memory, pieces of conversation, old wounds tearing open. And underneath it all, a whisper I can’t silence:

If it’s true…

By the time Titan returns, I’ve gone cover to cover.

Every last page. Every last name. I didn’t just skim—I devoured the ledger like it might vanish if I stopped.

Some of the names were whispers I’d heard in passing, others were impossible to ignore—untouchable figures, celebrated faces, people who lived in headlines and history books.

But here, in these cramped pages, they were stripped down to the truth: high-profile predators swimming in the same gutters as the dregs of humanity.

Deals in backrooms. Innocence traded like currency. Souls sold for a taste of power.

The world, I realize, isn’t just cruel—it’s rotting from the inside out.

He doesn’t say a word at first. Just stands in the doorway, one hand braced against the frame, his eyes fixed on the ledger sitting beside me.

If he truly hadn’t wanted me to read it, he wouldn’t have left it behind.

And if he didn’t know I’d give in to my curiosity, he wouldn’t have vanished for hours, leaving me alone with it.

No—this was intentional. He wanted me to see. Maybe even needed me to.

“You must be hungry,” he says at last, stepping inside and closing the door with a quiet click.

He moves toward the kitchen, and I shake my head, though his back is turned. Hunger feels foreign right now. If I wanted food, I could’ve found it myself. He knows that.

“You okay with four bean salad?” he asks over his shoulder.

“I’m not hungry.”

I push myself up from the chair and cross to stand beside him. For the first time since meeting him, something inside me shifts—not fear, not wariness, but a raw thread of sympathy winding through my ribs. The horrors this man has seen…

Hearing about them was one thing. Reading them—living inside their details—plants them deeper, into the marrow where they ache like old wounds.

The Walkers. Their name bleeds across the page in my mind.

Knowing they were part of this sickness is one thing; knowing the truth about their child is another.

That he wasn’t theirs at all. That he was stolen—ripped from his mother’s arms while she bled and broke in the aftermath of birth. That she was told her baby had died.

The agony of that lie steals my breath. I feel only a fraction of her grief, but it’s enough to splinter me.

My own pain coils tight—not for myself, but for a friend now gone.

For a boy who spent his life believing he was one piece of a complete family, when in truth he’d always been adrift—someone else’s lost child. My heart caves under the weight of it.

And what now? What good is knowing? Linc is gone. The fire took him before he could ever hear the truth. Before he could find the mother who never stopped waiting.

A sob catches in my throat, sharp and sudden. My hand flies to my mouth, but another forces its way up, breaking loose. Then another. I try to hold it together, but the cracks are already spreading, and soon I’m shaking—tears spilling faster than I can swallow them back.

Titan’s there in an instant. His arms steady me, strong and unyielding, holding me upright as my knees threaten to give. I cling to him, not because I want to, but because I can’t stand without something solid to anchor me.

I’m sprawled across the bed, face turned into the pillow, my tears soaking through the fabric until it’s damp and cool against my skin.

They slip silently down my temples, pooling at my jaw, and I let them.

It feels like drowning—like the grief is a river pulling me under, and I’m too tired to fight it.

It shouldn’t cut this deep, but it does.

Linc is gone. No second chances. No miraculous return.

The knowledge gnaws at me—the truth that he was a stolen child, that he died without ever meeting his real mother, without even knowing she existed.

I tell myself thinking about it will only tear me apart more, but the pain presses in anyway, full and crushing, until it’s the only thing I can feel.

Time loses shape. I don’t know if it’s minutes or hours before I sense Titan. His presence is heavy in the air, a shadow that makes the room feel smaller. I turn slowly, shifting onto my back until he’s above me, his hair falling into his face as he looks down.

“You want to tell me what’s got you so upset?”

A broken sound escapes me—a whimper I didn’t mean to let out. I shake my head. No. I can’t unwrap the wound again, not when it’s still bleeding.

He doesn’t push. Instead, he circles the bed, the mattress dipping as he lies down beside me. We face each other, our bodies only inches apart, separated by nothing but air and the fragile, wordless understanding we’ve been building since the day we met.

His beauty hides behind the mask, but it’s his eyes that stop me.

They’re dark, fathomless, the kind of eyes that have seen too much and survived it anyway.

There’s a crack in them—just enough to glimpse the wreckage inside.

Rage and hurt, sorrow and steel, all twisted together.

He is a contradiction—both storm and shelter.

I can’t look away.

Titan reaches out, fingers brushing my hair back from my damp face.

His palm slides along my cheek, catching stray tears.

Without thinking, my own hand rises to hold his in place, pressing it to my lips.

I breathe him in—smoke, rain, and something I can’t name but know I’d recognize anywhere.

My eyelids grow heavy under the weight of his nearness, my head tipping slightly toward his touch.

My fingertips graze the planes of his face—slow, searching. The hard line of his jaw, the faint tremor beneath his skin, the ridges that hint at old battles. Each one a story I’ll never fully know. He’s not just a man; he’s a scarred monument to survival, shaped by violence yet still standing.

We don’t speak. The silence between us hums, thick and alive, carrying more than words could hold. It’s an unspoken pact, a shared truth neither of us dares to break. And somehow, in that silence, I find comfort.

“I feel like I knew you in another life,” I whisper. My voice is so quiet I’m not sure I meant to say it aloud. Why am I not afraid of you?

He doesn’t answer right away. The pause stretches until I can feel his breath against my lips. Then, his voice comes—low and certain:

“Maybe you did. Maybe we’re twin flames, destined for one another.”

“Or maybe we were never meant to meet, but chance?—”

He cuts me off with a scoff, his gaze sharp. “No. One way or another, we were bound to find our way to each other.”

The air between us feels different now—thicker, heavier. His words hang there like a vow, like a line neither of us can step back from. I’m aware of every beat of my heart, of the space between our mouths, of the way his gaze has shifted from my eyes to my lips and back again.

I don’t know who moves first. Maybe it’s both of us. One second we’re just breathing the same air, the next he’s closer, his hand at the curve of my jaw, his thumb brushing over my skin like he’s memorizing it. My pulse spikes.

Titan doesn’t kiss me right away. He studies me, as though looking for permission in places I didn’t know I kept it. And then—slowly, deliberately—he closes the gap. His mouth finds mine, and it’s nothing like I expected. It’s deeper, hungrier, as if he’s been holding himself back for far too long.

By the time he pulls away, I’m breathless, my body trembling with the knowledge that whatever happens next, I’m not stopping it. I don’t want to.

He rises from where he’s been half-hovering over me and stands. His gaze rakes down my body, slow and unhurried, before returning to my face. There’s no question in his eyes anymore—just intent.

When he offers me his hand, I take it.