Page 102 of The Lies We Steal

“You owe me for stealing my first tattoo experience from me. So really this isn’t even about your birthday, it’s about you making it up to me.”

A laugh that felt like thunder escaped from his mouth. My breath hitched at the abrupt sound and my stomach fluttered because of how much I liked it.

And it was a sound that I wanted more of.

Alistair

I’dnever brought anyone to this house before, besides the guys and even then they didn’t stay for long. I wasn’t sure why I’d brought her here in the first place, there was no reason to come here. No reason to show her the house because it’s not like it was home in the first place.

Maybe some part of me wanted to show her what all the wealth had bought me.

A gigantic house with no one inside. With no love and no warmth in sight.

It was just expensive furniture and overprized light fixtures.

“This could house the entire town I grew up in.” She says looking into the kitchen while I run warm water over my bloody knuckles.

Her eyes fan across it, walking around, running her fingers across the everything on the counter while I lean against the frame wondering what she’s thinking.

“It’s nice, but…”

“Not what you expected?”

She nods, “Your home is supposed to be where you can be self-expressive. No photos of your family, nothing comforting, this,” Spinning, her arms extended, “looks like a house for showings. It doesn’t feel like anyone lives inside here.”

I could laugh at how ironic that is.

“It’s a house. Not a home.” I say honestly.

“Is that why you hate them? That’s why you hate your family?” She doesn’t look at me when she asks, probably shocking herself with the boldness to ask me a question like that.

“I don’t hate them for treating me like an outsider. I loathe them for having me to begin with, for having a son they knew they would detest the rest of his life.” I could feel her, slowly trying to unwind the snakes that coiled around my body. Timidly trying to figure out ways to get inside of my head, beneath my skin even more than she already had.

“You can’t say that. There had to be something good before, parents don’t just despise their children from birth, Alistair. There has to be a reason.”

My fists begin to ache for violence. I look down at the dried blood, running down the drain into the sink.

Naive.

That’s what she is.

Even her, a girl who grew up with nothing thinking she’d possibly seen every bad thing the world could offer, was still naive to the cruelty of human beings.

That’s what I want to tell her. Not everyone has a reason for doing shitty things. They are just fucked up people in the world because they can be.

“We aren’t talking about this.” I end the conversation. Not needing her to poke around anymore than she already has.

“Alright then,” She mutters quietly, “Where’s the bathroom?”

After pointing her in the correct direction, I picked up my phone to check the messages from the guys.

Silas had sent a photo of us when we were kids, maybe eight or nine years old, that his dad had taken after we’d spent the day shooting each other with nerf guns. Rook’s hair is still long, our faces have aged but it’s still us. There wasn’t a happy memory in my brain that they weren’t a part of. There was no good without them, even through all the bad.

He’d added a quick, “HB.”

Thatcher made a comment about how I still dress like an eight-year-old, to that I replied with a middle finger emoji.

The sound of the shower running, before a loud crash echoes down the hall and immediately I’m on high alert. Dorian and my parents were in Seattle for the weekend for some conference, had they not been, Briar wouldn’t have stepped foot on the property, even if I wanted to show her the reality of growing up here.