Page 121 of The Truths We Burn

“I told you, Sage, I would be watching you, didn’t I? And it’s a good thing I did,” I laugh cruelly, “or I would have missed you meeting withDetectiveMcKay. Since when did your daddy start making friends with the FBI?”

Panic washes over her. The web that she had spun is crumbling down around her, and she’s grasping for something to say, a lie to conjure up.

“Rook, let me explain. I’m not—”

“You’re not what?” I spit out, my upper lip curling, filled to the brim with anger that she would have the fucking guts to lie straight to my face after I’d caught her red-handed.

“You’re not snitching to the feds about our plans?” My footsteps are heavy thuds. Each weighted movement forward just builds my fury.

“No, that’s not what is happening. I know that’s how it looks, but it’s not. My father came to the facility with Cain—Detective McKay—and they tried to give me a deal.”

“That’s how you got out, isn’t it? You cut a fucking deal? To do what? Snoop around, get close to us, just so you could stab us in the back? Have us all sent to prison before we got to put your father’s head on a stake?”

I’m closing in on her while she shakes her head back and forth quickly, stepping away from me with every single step in her direction. Fear bubbles up in her eyes, making my mouth water.

It doesn’t matter. She can back away as much as she’d like. She can run if she wants. It won’t fucking matter, because she’s in my clutches now.

And there is no way in hell I’m letting her get away.

“No!” she shouts. “I mean yes, but I wasn’t going to do it. I just needed them to let me out so that I could help you guys get to my father. I was going to double-cross them, not you. I just needed them to believe me enough to let me out. That’s it.”

I bite my bottom lip, smirking. “And you’re good at that, aren’t you? Getting people to believe you.”

Her back hits the front of the confessional. The sturdy wood that it’s composed of had fought against the heat of the fire, leaving most of it intact. I can practically feel her heartbeat running rapid in her chest.

“I’m not lying, not to you. I swear that’s the truth. Cain is working with this group called the Halo. All of them are—they’re the people my father owed money to. They’re taking girls around Ponderosa Springs and selling them.” She reaches her hands forward, palms out as if that will stop me, prevent me from doing what I want to do.

“I only want to stop my father, and then I’m gone. I swear to you. Just like that first night at the lake house, I’m telling the truth. You have always had all of my truths, all of them.”

So many questions run through my brain, overwhelmed with the information she just spewed. What the fuck is the Halo? Are both of the feds dirty? Is she even telling me the truth?

I try to take in the information. I try to process, to take what she says and hear her words, but I physically can’t.

My body temperature is so hot it’s about to melt my clothes. It’s boiling my brain, and the color crimson starts to leak into the corners of my vision.I’ve waited a year to make her feel this pain that she’d left me with.This betrayal. I want to hurt her. To make her pay.

But flashes of the girl on that dock, broken and ripped apart by her past, hit me. They swipe across my memory at high speed, the organ inside my chest tried tethering to it.I’m right back there, being the fool all over again.

But I refuse to do that.

I close in on her, slamming my palm so hard into the front of the confessional that it stings my hand.

“All. You. Fucking. Do. Is. Lie,” I grind out, my teeth bared like a rabid wolf starved for food.

Her hands press into my chest while she shakes her head aggressively. “This is why I didn’t tell you to begin with, you fucking prick! No matter what I say, you won’t believe me! There is nothing I can say to make you trust me!”

I’m at my end. I’m starting to malfunction.

Because of her eyes.

They are fucking glowing. Bright blue like scalding flames, shining the way they did when we were together. When I thought she was something more. When the words that came from her mouth were ones coated in holy water.

They are so goddamn beautiful, and it hurts.

It hurts more than Thatcher’s cuts, more than Alistair’s hits, my father’s words. I hurt so fucking much that it prevents me from breathing. Every single inhale feels like needles in my throat.

And for the first time in my life, I want the pain to stop. I need it to fucking stop.

No, no, no,I repeat to myself.