Page 146 of The Truths We Burn

Repulsion hits me like a bus.

“You threatened to cut my hair with scissors if I didn’t,” I say as I turn around to look at Easton. He’s wearing a starched button-down and navy slacks, his blond hair combed back neatly, achieving an effortless kind of handsome, one that I would be able to acknowledge if I didn’t already know how awful of a human he was.

“We remember things differently, it seems,” he quips, shoving his hands deep into his pockets.

“We remember a lot of things differently.”

There’s so much history between the two of us, matched for a relationship before we even knew what that meant. When we were young, he was different. We got along as friends. He was funny and smart, always coming up with something to do. Climbing trees, riding bikes, getting ice cream.

We grew up together.

And I’m not sure when he changed, when he became what he is now.

We’d gone from friends since birth to standing here as enemies.

Maybe things would have gone differently had I been able to love him. Maybe I wouldn’t have fought this life as hard as I did. Maybe I would have given in and become what he needed, but even as a young teenager, I knew I didn’t want that for myself.

I take a sip of my bubbly drink. “What happened to your face?”

A gaudy bandage is attached to the left side of his face, protecting some type of wound from infection.

He grinds his teeth, reaching up to touch the gauze and sucking his teeth. “I thought you were done playing dumb, Sage?”

I furrow my eyebrows, not having a clue what he is talking about.

“You really don’t know?” he asks, scoffing a little. “Rook, your psychotic fuck buddy, burnt half my face off. It took two skin grafts to fix, and even still, I’ll be walking around like a freak.”

“Why do I get the feeling you did something to deserve it?”

I start to walk away when I feel Easton’s hand grab my forearm, hauling me in close into his space. My balance is thrown slightly, making me lean onto his chest.

There are flashes of our past relationship that hit me like whiplash, and on instinct, I want to break his fingers for touching me.

He has no right.

He never did, and I’m ashamed that at one point I thought he did.

His mouth dips close to my ear, making me sick to my stomach. “We used to be good together. We were happy. You can still have that, Sage. The lifestyle you’ve always wanted, the attention, the notoriety. You can still have all of that. All you have to do is come back to me.”

There’s nothing to come back to because there was never anything I’d left. Everything I was with Easton was a fake. A fraud. A person I had to be in order to get through the pressure of living in this town.

“Let go of me, Easton.” I grind out.

For a second, there is a brief moment where I see the boy I used to know. The one I used to be friends with. Before he woke up one day a different person, a man who thought I was property, one who only cared for how he was perceived.

“There was a time when you begged me to touch you, Sage Donahue. A time before Rook, before all of this. You know me, you grew up with me. I know that we could be happy, if you’d just let me in. Let me show you.”

Panic hits me as he moves closer, my arm trying to jerk away from his hold, but his grip only tightens.

“You better take your hands off her, Sinclair.” I know that voice. “Before you get the other side of your face melted off.”

Rook.

His presence is a dark cloud on this warm day, and I’m surprised how badly I missed the shade. The way he leans against the entryway, arms crossed, defying my expectations of just how far he is willing to go in order to cause chaos.

While Rook’s father is in attendance as he is for most of these gatherings, his son had never once shown his face amongst this kind of crowd. He doesn’t conform to this society they all live in. The one I had lived in.

I jerk my arm away from Easton, stepping away from him.