Page 125 of The Truths We Burn

Now, I couldn’t give a fuck less. It wouldn’t change anything now. All that damage had been dealt.

Sage steps closer to me, “The engagement was for my father’s benefit. Stephen Sinclair was giving him money, and in order to continue getting it, Stephen wanted a marriage between me and Easton. I assume because he wanted to be in control of everything. When I started to fall for you, I swear on my sister that I was going to leave all of this shit behind after graduation and be with you.”

A thin stream of water lines the bottom of her eyes as she holds on to the last pieces of her pride.

“I wanted to be with you so bad, Rook.” The first few tears fall, her voice cracking. “But Easton found out about us. He found out and made it very clear that if I didn’t follow through with the marriage, they would force it on Rosie, and I couldn’t do that to her.”

She tries to wipe her cheeks, but they’re falling too fast, there really is no point.

“I had already been ruined. Cain had already broken me in. Made me accustomed to what happens in that kind of life. Rosemary wasn’t—she was free and happy. There was no reason for me to ruin that because I wanted to be selfish. I’d done that enough. I was just trying to protect her. Trying to protect you.”

I’m doubting everything. My gut, my heart, my brain.

The lines of honesty and deception are blurry, evil and righteousness muddled once again by the grime that leaks from the grounds of Ponderosa Springs.It makes me question if she’d ever really lied to me, if I spent a year of my life hating the only woman who’d sparked my interest and kept it.

I don’t care.

I don’t care.

I—

“Cain did what?” I snap, furrowing my eyebrows, stepping the rest of the way there.I let my anger take the forefront, shadowing the ache in my chest for now. Not wanting to face what could be the truth. Not right now.

It’s too much to take in at one time, and I’m not even sure I believe her. I never know what to believe from her.

“That’s what you—”

“Sage,” I grunt. “If you ever gave a shit about me, answer the fucking question. What did Cain do to you?”

There is a numbness that settles on her face. Like she is separating her emotions from her mind in order to say it.

“The man I told you about at the lake house, the one who touched me as a kid.” She nods her head. “It was Cain.”

I feel as if hot oil is being poured directly onto my skin, making it sizzle and hiss. My bloodstream runs so fast that I’m starting to get light-headed. The higher my anger climbs, the lower my pain gets, and I need it to go away.

Because this pain, the one I feel for her, I want it to go away.

I need it to stop.

This whole time, I was trying to cut her out of me when in reality, I was just trying to sever the connection I’d created with her. Every single time Thatcher dug that blade into my skin was just me trying not to feel the ache of her.

Her pain. Her sorrow. Her anger.

I felt all of it as if it were my own, and to some degree, it was.

And I hated her for ruining something that powerful. A bond that my heart desperately tried to argue could not be faked. That what we had was real

And although Sage stands impassive to her trauma, I’m not.

“Every night from the age of ten to thirteen, when he left for the academy.” She pauses. “But he isn’t what matters. I don’t care anymore.”

She’s become so jaded to her own trauma that she doesn’t care about what happens to the one who hurt her, only the man who took her sister. She’s succumbed to acceptance, forced to work with a man who took her innocence before she even knew what it was.

The man who stole her wings.

I’m unsure of almost everything now, except that I want to wear Cain’s bowels as a necklace.

“You’re coming with me.”