Page 100 of The Truths We Burn

All I know is that Sage is in the mood to hurt someone. When she’s in distress, she takes it out on those around her. She never wants to hurt alone.

So if she wants to hurt someone, she can do that to me, not Silas.

Never Silas.

“Screw you,” she spits, looking up at me. “Screw all of you. Acting like you deserve payback more than me. As if she meant nothing to me. Like she wasn’t my goddamn twin!”

“It has nothing to do with that. We know we don’t deserve it, but we also know we don’t fucking trust you,” I argue, not backing down from her outrage.

If she wants to be nasty, then fine, we can get nasty.

“No, you”—she pokes my chest with her pointer finger—“don’t trust me, Rook. Which is rich coming from someone who lies to his friends.” She looks me dead in the eyes, warning me. Cautioning me that if I’m not careful, she could do some heavy damage.

She could out us right here, right now. I wouldn’t put it past her either—she doesn’t care how deep she has to dig to ruin someone.

She’s playing with fire coming back here and trying to fuck my life up all over again.

But I’m not letting that happen again.

This time, it won’t be a lake house I burn. It’ll be her pasty skin left in a pile of ashes.

I breathe through my nose, my jaw tightening. “I knew saving you was a waste of fucking time. I should have just let you drown.”

“If you knew that, then why did you? Huh?” She turns her nose up at me, hands balled up in tight fists by her sides. “For a guy who acts like the villain, you sure do love playing the hero, don’t you? That’s what you like, right, Rook? Saving the broken ones? You wanna be the hero?”

“Do I look like a goddamn hero?” I grab her waist with both of my hands, pressing her flesh tightly as I haul her up the length of my body, then sling her damp frame across my shoulder so she is dangling down my back.

“This is over,” I tell her while she fights me the entire way like I knew she would.

She needs to shut her pink mouth, to learn that her comments have consequences.

I let her beat into my back, pushing to get away from my hold, making the raw marks beneath my shirt sore.

With one arm hooked around her, I use the other to grab the handle of her car door, jerking it open and tossing her roughly into the back seat. Her body sprawls out across the plush material, her chest rising and falling with unbridled emotion that I’m ready to absorb.

I’ll take her anger, her irrational feelings—I would take them all.

I place both of my hands on the doorframe, bracing myself, trying desperately to ignore the memory of the last time I saw her like this. Laid out in her back seat, naked. Smoking my blunt, staring up at me with those fuck-me eyes.

Now they’re just fuck-you eyes.

It’s hard to tell which one I like more.

Like a feral cat, she moves quickly, sitting up on her knees and using her palms to shove into my chest, using mild-level strength to try and move me.

“Let me the hell out,” she shouts, only becoming more and more agitated with my unmoving frame.

Yeah, that’s it. Let it out, Sage.

Make it hurt.

“No,” I rasp, only making things worse.I look down at her wet hair as it sways back and forth with her movements.

Her pressing turns into beating, her tiny fists doing nothing to me as she thumps on my chest, willing me to move. She only succeeds in tiring herself out and making me crave more. This is a breeze compared to what I need. A preview of what it takes to mend my hunger.

“Is that the best you got? You really are all bark and no fucking bite, aren’t you?” I edge her on. “Come on, hit me.”

I say exactly what I would if I were Alistair, pushing her further into her own rage, drawing out more violent punches. They start to generate more force, and she drops lower, hitting me in the soft flesh of my gut a few times, seizing the wind from my lungs. It’s nothing I can’t handle. It’s not enough to make me move.