Page 24 of The Truths We Burn

“Nah.” It’s at that moment I comprehend the severity of this situation, of what is happening, that Rook’s hand hardens on my throat, fingers twining around me like vines around the base of a tree.

And it’s not a kinky hold where you press the sides of the neck to induce pleasure. No, it’s painful, tightening around my windpipe. His hand has a goal, and it’s not to get me hot—it’s to kill.

If any other man in the world was touching me like this, I’d already be ready to kill them. However, his hold feels different than anything I’ve experienced before. Something about this feeling, like he’s melting away any trace of anyone before him,

creates an entirely new feeling inside of me as he holds me here.

He leans the match towards my face, hellfire eyes glowing with hostility. “But if you keep mouthing about things you don’t know jack shit about, I will be.”

My mouth goes dry as I try to jerk my face away from his grip only for him to squeeze tighter. My air supply grows thinner and thinner as the seconds tick by.

He isn’t going to actually burn me, is he?

“And I can promise you, princess, there is no handling me without getting burned.”

A grin spreads on his face as he releases me, stepping back. With no fear, he sticks his tongue out, pressing the still-burning stick into it. The sizzling sound cuts through my haze.

I’m traumatized and amazed at how he doesn’t even flinch. Like it’s an everyday occasion for him to put out a match with his mouth.

It’s then I notice the car headed towards us, the one he must have heard that prevented him from continuing what had previously been assault on its way to homicide.

“You know where to find me when you realize just how bored you are in your glass house, Sage,” he says with a laugh in his tone, mounting his bike once again.

“Fuck you, prick,” I manage to croak out over the roar of his bike starting up.

There isn’t another word muttered after, only his back to me as he pulls back onto the road, darting off into the dark, and I have to ask myself if I’d hallucinated what just happened.

Raising my own fingers to my throat, I press into the places he’d just touched, still feeling his presence on my skin.

Had I been scared? Maybe.

But it was more than fear.

It felt like freedom.

The space between who I am expected to be and who I want to be, and he had shoved me into that place. Somewhere I didn’t know what would come next, something I couldn’t control, somewhere I could be liberated from carrying the weight of what people thought of me.

An escape of the mind.

My body tingles from the tip of my head to the soles of my feet.

I feel him everywhere.

And just like fire, he lingers far after he is out of sight.

Rook

It’s an entire month before my path crosses with Sage Donahue again.

The seed of curiosity had been planted in her brain, and I knew when the right time came, she was going to crack and come running to find the excitement her life lacked.

Underneath that exterior, I know there’s a girl dying to escape. I could see it in the way she treated Rose, in the way she turned green with envy. She wants the freedom her sister has but for some reason is too afraid to chase after it.

I’m walking to class, my lip throbbing from the new cut it had received before I even touched my oatmeal, when I hear a voice bounce off the lockers.

The halls are empty, students already at their desks for class, leaving me alone with the voice.

Normally, I would continue walking, go to class, and get the staring over with. Continue my day as if it had never happened.