Page 35 of Crown of Thorns (The Initiation #3)

NOAH

I t’s been a week since Louis gave me the key to the shed. I haven’t been back. Partly because I didn’t want to face what might be waiting inside. Partly because I wasn’t ready. But it’s haunted me every day since.

Something's out there. Waiting for me.

Tonight, Louis made us a quiche with mushrooms and leeks.

I read to him from my astrophysics book while we ate in bed, his head on my chest, eyes closed like he was dreaming in real-time.

He listens to me talk about stars as if it means something to him.

Maybe it does. Maybe it’s the only way I know how to be close to someone. Through things that are far away.

We fell asleep curled together. His body was hot and lazy against mine.

Now, just past dawn, the dorm is steeped in that liminal silence between night and day. The candle’s burned to the glass. The window is open a crack. Forest sounds bleed in. Owls hooting, wings beating against the frame, branches creaking like old bones.

Louis is draped over me like a second skin. One leg slung across my hips. His arm around my chest, fingers laced with mine. His cheek was warm in the crook of my neck.

He’s chaos wrapped in silk. Sweat, heat, limbs tangled like vines, pressing against me like a secret I never asked to keep.

It should feel like being held. It feels like being claimed.

I stare up at the ceiling. His breath warms my throat.

He’s messing with my head.

Making me want things I’ve no right to want.

There’s a pouch in my drawer with a gift I bought weeks ago.

Silver bracelets. It sits there like a loaded gun.

I haven’t given it to him. I can’t. Because giving it would mean crossing a line.

Admitting that something in me, the part I swore I buried, wants to give him beautiful things. Wants to keep him.

And I can’t risk that.

Can’t risk loving him.

Louis mutters when I try to shift. His arm flops to the mattress, but his thigh locks tighter around mine.

“Trying to get away already?”

His hand lingers briefly on my arm, then pulls back just a little, voice low and careful. “If you want me here… just say the word. No pressure.”

I sigh, kiss the top of his head, and breathe him in. Vanilla and citrus. Warm skin and stubbornness.

He lets me go when I wiggle free and tuck the blankets back around him. I pull on a hoodie, sweatpants, and boots. Dig through his jeans until I find the copper key. It’s heavy in my palm. Old. Slightly bent. It might as well be a relic.

Outside, fog clings low, coiling like cold breath. Dew glistens on the leaves like shattered glass. My boots crunch on wet gravel as I cross the grounds.

“This place gets heavier every time,” I mutter.

The vines are gone. Every last thorn stripped away.

The shack looks like a child’s drawing of a house. Crooked wood. Rusted tin. It should be harmless. But my chest tightens as I approach.

The key screeches in the lock. The door creaks open.

Smell hits first. Mold. Wet earth. Rot.

I step inside.

The air is thick. The windows are dust-frosted. In one corner, the ceiling leaks, leaving dark streaks on the planks.

A table sits beneath the window. Covered in stacks of paper. And photos.

My stomach drops.

One picture rests on top: my parents on their wedding day. Young. Radiant.

I shuffle forward. The walls are littered with more photos. My father holding a baby. Me, three months old, curled in his arms. My mother, pregnant again. Me again, this time about five years old, grinning at the camera in a red t-shirt with paint-streaked cheeks.

I remember that day. I remember her laugh. I remember how I used to want to be like him. My father. A soldier. Brave. Unshakable. I wore his medals like toys and dreamed of marching beside him. Now I can’t even look at his picture without flinching.

A wave rises in me. Hot. Choking.

They were happy.

With me.

“You ruined it,” I whisper. Not sure who I’m talking to.

I yank the photo from the wall. My knife slides from its sheath.

The knife hit the wood again and again, like punching through the quiet scream inside me.

I stab the wood. Once. Twice. Again. Words failed me years ago. This is what’s left. Blade to wood. Blood to truth. I don’t stop. I can’t. Not until I’ve carved the grief out of me with splinters and noise.

Somewhere along the way, I cut my hand.

Blood drips down my wrist.

I stumble back from the wall, vision blurring. I grip my glasses. I am still here.

My phone buzzes.

Love of your life: Are you already at the shed? I’ll make us coffee. On my way.

Goddamn him. He changed his name in my phone again.

I laugh.

The laugh dissolves into something like a sob.

I look around, and the weight of it hits me.

Photos everywhere. Childhood on display. A shrine to a boy I barely remember, to moments frozen in time while everything else collapsed.

“No one needed to see this,” I mutter, voice rough. “Least of all me.”

I grab a stack. Birthday parties. Field trips. Grainy Polaroids. One of me and my granddad walking in the woods. His hand on my shoulder, mine clutching a stick like a sword. I was smiling.

He used to take me out here.

It was his refuge.

Now it’s my reckoning.

Why did he keep these?

Was he trying to remember me? Or remind me of who I used to be?

I want to scream. I want it to stop hurting. I want to burn the whole fucking place down just to feel in control of what I’ve already lost.

I swipe my arm across the table, sending the photos crashing to the floor. Glass shatters. Memories scatter.

Then I kneel.

Start picking them up. Slowly. Carefully.

He can’t see this. Louis. He’ll ask questions.

And I don’t have the answers. Not yet.

A crunch behind me.

“Noah?”

Louis steps into the doorway, two steaming coffees in hand. He walks in like he owns the air I breathe. Kisses me on the mouth like we’re already in love. Like this is normal.

He walks into the shed and lets out a low whistle.

“Holy shit. Is that your family? ‘Noah, eight years.’ ‘Noah, eleven.’ Damn…”

He trails off when he sees the knife. The blood.

“Jesus, baby, what the hell? You bleeding on my floor now?”

I clench my jaw. “Nothing.”

“Yes, you have.” He sets the coffees down, takes my hand. “You’re hurt.”

“Just a scratch.”

“Let me take care of you.”

“Louis—”

“Hush, big guy.”

He produces an emergency kit from his bag.

“You came here with that?”

He shrugs. “I keep it in my football bag.”

Cool fingers clean the cut. The disinfectant stings. He clicks his tongue but doesn’t comment.

“So this place was your granddad’s?”

I nod. “Looks like it.”

“You’ve never been here before?”

“Not that I remember.”

“Why keep all these photos here?”

“I don’t know.”

I stare at a photo from my thirteenth birthday. My dad had come back from overseas. We threw a party, and he refused to show up for it.

“Are you proud to be a Deveraux?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Sure. Good name. Power. Money. Family is tight. We all live next to each other down by the coast. Three beach mansions. Big pool. Tennis court. I’ll take you sometime.” He grins. “If you want me to.”

I don’t answer. Because if I say yes, I’ll believe I belong somewhere again. And if I say no, I’ll lose this.

He peels another photo off the wall. “Look at your chubby cheeks.”

“I did not have chubby cheeks.”

“Oh, you did. You were adorable.”

I groan. He wiggles his eyebrows. I chuckle despite myself.

He makes things lighter. He always does.

“Seriously, this place is weirdly amazing,” he says. “Like a temple of memories protected by thorns.”

I think of his words.

Maybe I’ve spent too long hiding behind a mask. Playing the perfect professor. The youngest in the country. Smiling on cue. But here, surrounded by dust and ghosts, I see the truth. I’ve been waiting for someone to pull me out of the wreckage. And he did.

Even pain is proof I was once part of something real.

We sit for a while, silent, shoulder to shoulder on the edge of memory. The air is thicker now, sun climbing, heat pressing through the gaps in the wall. My shirt sticks to my back. Dust floats in slow spirals. Neither of us speaks.

Finally, Louis shifts.

“We should go. Before this place swallows us whole.”

He kisses my cheek. “Thank you. For sharing this with me, baby.”

By the time we step out, the fog has lifted. The castle rises through morning gold. Birds flit through the trees. Something eases in my chest.

Back at the castle, birdsong fills the air. Louis doesn’t say much. Just takes my hand.

He stops by the trees, turns to me. Noses brushing. He doesn’t just invade my nights anymore. He’s inside my routines, my cravings, my breath. And I’m letting him.

His lips press to my forehead. My nose. My mouth. My throat.

He inhales deeply, as if memorizing me.

“I ordered your croissant and flat white. They’ll be in your office in ten minutes.”

“Thank you, little devil.”

He winks. Flashes that grin.

And walks away.