Page 77 of Creeping Lily

LILY

L incoln wrote me a letter.

That he never sent.

Even thinking the words feels wrong, like I’m holding something that was never meant for living hands.

The paper is soft with age, fragile around the edges, almost translucent where it’s been folded and unfolded so many times.

I can picture him hunched over it in some nameless room, rereading his own words in the dark, fingers smoothing the creases as though they could anchor him to me.

Words meant for me, but hidden, hoarded—like a secret he couldn’t risk releasing into the world.

But it isn’t the paper that undoes me. It’s the seal.

Not a lipstick kiss, not the soft whimsy of a fool in love.

No—Titan sealed this letter with his fingerprint pressed in blood.

His blood. A covenant instead of a promise.

A vow scrawled in red that says more than ink ever could.

My stomach twists as I touch it. It feels like a trespass, like prying open a tomb.

If I break this seal, I can never go back.

When he gave it to me, his voice had been steady. But his eyes—God, his eyes. They betrayed him. They carried the weight of every word inside these pages.

“ Read it before you decide,” he told me. “ Decide if I’m worth your life, your future, your peace. Whether you stay or go, Lily, I’ll be there. Even if you never want me, I’ll haunt the edges of your life. You’ll never be alone again.”

And then he placed the blood-sealed confession in my hand, like he was giving me not a letter, but his soul.

I unfold it now, and my chest locks tight. His handwriting—messy, tilted, angry with itself—slashes across the page. These aren’t lines of ink. They’re scars.

“Lily,” it begins. “ By the time you read this, I’ll probably be gone. Maybe I’ll be dead. Maybe I’ll be someone else. But I need you to know why. I need you to know none of this was your fault.”

My throat sears as though I’ve swallowed fire.

The discomfort coils through me, too heavy to stand against. My knees buckle, surrendering me to the floor, where I fold into myself—legs tucked beneath me, body bowed—as the words pull me deeper.

It isn’t just reading. It’s trespassing into the innermost corridors of his mind, a cruel bird’s-eye view into the genius I once admired from a distance. Now I see everything: his brilliance and his ruin, the way his thoughts bleed, the shadows of his heartbreak pressed into every line.

Each sentence cracks against me like glass shattering under skin. Every revelation digs deeper, splintering my chest until my heart feels like nothing more than a vessel stabbed open, hollowed out by daggers disguised as words .

The room tilts. The walls lean in. The silence thickens until I swear I can hear the throb of his pain echoing inside my skull. My mouth tastes of iron, though I haven’t bitten my tongue. It’s just the sensation of being cut open, gutted by truths too brutal to carry.

I try to look away, to fold the pages and set them aside, but my fingers won’t obey. They clutch tighter, as if the pages have grown hooks that sink into my skin, binding me to his torment.

And in that moment, I understand: this isn’t reading.

It’s drowning.

Every line drags me deeper under, and the deeper I sink, the more I realize—I was never meant to surface.

He writes of exile, of the Walker house that was never his home.

He confesses to nights in a bedsit, ceiling cracked like a spiderweb, staring upward as if the plaster could whisper who he really was.

He describes the fire—not accident, but execution.

Smoke choking him, flames clawing at the walls, the panic when he realized someone deliberately lit the fire.

And then the moment he ran back inside for the landlady’s cat, because everyone was watching, because he needed them to believe he perished.

And they did.

Blood, bone, enough DNA to bury him. Lincoln Walker died in the blaze that consumed the house. But Titan Ward—burned, scarred, reborn in vengeance—walked out of those ashes and he never looked back.

He tells me about Goliath. He doesn’t write it like salvation. It reads like recognition. They didn’t rescue him. They weaponized him.

“ They wanted a soldier. I wanted a war. We understood each other better than we understood anything else.”

I have to set the letter down, but my hands won’t be still. They shake, reaching back for it like it’s oxygen. Three pages. Three blood-stained pages that carry his ruin.

By the time I reach the end, my vision is swimming.

“I’ve never been good at words, Lily. Never been good at people.

But you… you undo me. You’ve always been my undoing.

You’re not a chapter of my life. You’re the whole damn book.

And if I burn again, if I fall again, if I vanish for good—you should know this much: I have loved you.

I will love you forever and beyond all reality.

Because you are it for me. You always were. You always will be.”

The words disintegrate beneath my tears. I can’t see them anymore, only feel the weight of them pressed into my bones. I clutch the letter to my chest, desperate, like if I press hard enough I can conjure his heartbeat back into the ink.

This isn’t just his story.

It isn’t just his confession.

This was his goodbye to me.

A sound tears out of me, raw and feral, something I don’t recognize as human. I claw at the floor, nails splintering, fists pounding wood until my skin splits. None of it touches the real pain—that he lived through fire, through exile, through becoming someone else—and all of it without love.

“How?” The word cracks out of me, half scream, half sob. “How could they not love him?”

My voice ricochets off the walls, wild and broken. I rock forward, snatching the letter back, pressing it so hard to my chest it might fuse to my skin. My heart is a drumbeat of fury and despair, thudding loud enough to bruise my ribs.

Lincoln Walker. My Lincoln.

A boy with a heart so rare, so unguarded, so precious—and they tried to erase him. His family. His own blood. They saw something precious and they destroyed it .

The thought shatters me. I choke on it, sobbing until I gag, bile rising sharp in my throat.

I stagger onto my knees and double over, retching, body convulsing with grief.

When it’s over, I curl into myself on the floor, cheek pressed to the letter, whispering against his bloodied seal like a prayer.

“They should’ve worshipped you,” I cry, voice shredded. “They should’ve kept you safe. They should’ve seen you.”

My body shakes so violently I can’t stop. I’m a ruin, wrecked by the knowledge that he carried this weight alone, unloved, unwanted, destroyed by the very people who should have protected him.

He thinks this letter is a goodbye.

But to me—it’s a scream.

It’s proof that the most beautiful heart I’ve ever known was treated like nothing.

And I can’t fathom it. I can’t bear it.

I collapse completely, limp against the floorboards, the taste of salt and blood in my mouth.

My sobs taper into whimpers, a pitiful, broken thing.

And in the hollow ache of my chest, one truth lodges deep: if the world could not love Lincoln Walker…

then I will love Titan Ward enough for both of us.

I’m still trembling on the floor when the door creaks open. I don’t hear his footsteps at first—Titan moves like a shadow, a ghost echoing in the silence. But then he’s there.

“Lily.”

My name leaves his mouth like a soft prayer, jagged and low. I flinch, curling tighter around the letter, because I don’t want him to see me like this—hysterical, shattered. But it’s too late.

He sees everything. He feels everything.

His boots stop just shy of my body. I can feel the heat of him above me, the weight of his stare like a brand. My sobs hitch into silence, broken only by ragged breathing.

Then he lowers himself—slow, hesitant, like he’s approaching a wounded animal. His knee hits the floor with a dull thud, and his hand hovers before it dares touch me.

“Are you hurt?” His question is heavy enough to crush me.

I lift my face, salt-streaked and blotched red, hair sticking to wet skin.

“How could they?” The words spill out, torn and frantic.

“How could anyone not love you? You—you’re…

” My voice breaks on the word. I slam the heel of my palm against my chest as if I can pound my heart free. “You’re everything, and they hurt you.”

Titan’s throat works, but he doesn’t answer. His jaw ticks, his scars pull tight, his eyes flicker with something close to panic. I realize he doesn’t know how to handle this—being mourned by someone who cares, who loves so deeply.

“They should’ve worshipped you,” I cry, gripping the letter so hard the edges of my nails bite into my palms. “They should’ve cherished every piece of you.

And instead, they tried to burn you out of existence.

How could they not see you? How could they not—” My breath saws out, wild and desperate. “How could they not love you?”

Something cracks in him then. I see it. The hard edges, the armor, the unyielding steel he’s wrapped himself in—it fractures. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t know how. Instead, he gathers me up, arms locking around me with a force that feels more like a chokehold than an embrace.

I fight him at first, fists beating against his chest, not because I want to hurt him but because the grief is too big for my body. He takes it—every strike, every sob—as if he deserves the punishment.

And when I finally collapse against him, trembling and gasping, he buries his face in my hair. His chest is a wall, shaking against me, though he’ll never admit he’s crying. His breath is hot, uneven, a storm breaking loose.

“I just wanted you to know how I feel,” he mutters, voice shredded, almost angry. “I didn’t want you to carry my scars.”

“Too late,” I breathe against his throat, clutching him like letting go would tear me in half. “If you burn, I’ll burn beside you.”

His arms crush me closer, tight enough to hurt, tight enough to sear his strength into my bones. It’s brutal, suffocating, and still—I cling. Because in that silence, in that violent embrace, I feel the truth settle over us like smoke. He believes me.

And it terrifies him.

Because for the first time in his life, Lincoln Walker—Titan Ward—doesn’t exist as a shadow on the edge of the world, a phantom meant to be feared but never held.

He isn’t a ghost drifting through the wreckage of his own violence, convincing himself no one could ever love a man carved from scars and silence.

For the first time… he’s tethered. Wanted. Claimed.

He’s mine. And no darkness, no blood, can take him from me.