Page 26 of The Truths We Burn

“What are you doing here, Rook?” she says, folding the pages of the book in her hand until they are closed, waving it around to sweep the smoke away from her. “You can’t smoke in here! It’s a freaking fire hazard.”

“Let’s be honest, Sage. I’m a fire hazard,” I joke, but it doesn’t land the way I want.

Tough crowd.

“Let’s pretend you didn’t see me here,” she mutters, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear and moving to leave.

“Ah, ah, ah,” I start. “Not so fast. What were you doing?” My body blocks hers from the steps, keeping her from leaving.

“Performing open-heart surgery,” she deadpans. “What does it look like, idiot.”

I click my tongue, taking in another deep inhale of the weed before putting the cherry out on my jeans. “I wouldn’t have taken you for a theatre geek.”

“Do not call me that,” she hisses, pointing her dark red nails at me. “If you tell anyone what you saw, you will regret it, pyro.”

Testosterone fills me up. The challenge she is presenting is almost too much to handle. Is she threatening me? Thinking she can do to me what she does to everyone else? Cut me down with menacing words?

Apparently, she has not learned who she’s working with here.

“Yeah? What are you gonna do about it, TG?”

TG. I like it. Theatre Geek. It feels like a little secret on top of a secret that I could dangle above her head.

She pauses, trying to think of what she could possibly say that would scare someone like me into silence. I enjoy watching her scramble for something, anything to use against me in this situation.

“That’s the problem. You have nothing on me. You have no rumors, no secrets, nothing to spill about me. And that’s your only power in this place. Without that, you have absolutely nothing.”

All of which is true.

How do you scare the guy with no fear?

I’ve taken away her only bargaining chip. This is how she keeps people at arm’s length, because she has the power over them. No one knows anything about Sage except what she wants you to.

Now, she’s caught in my web.

“Rook, listen—”

“Oh, it’s Rook now? What happened to pyro?”

Frustration rattles her, but beneath that is fear.

Her anxiety-riddled, flushed skin makes her cinnamon-colored freckles even darker.I had held a hot match to her neck last month. With her fragile neck in my grip, I could’ve killed her, but she didn’t so much as blink. It wasn’t fear that day, it was excitement.

They are two different emotions, and you can feel the difference.It’s in the way her heart fluttered against my palm and her eyes stayed wide.

I know fear, and I know exhalation.

But right now, she’s afraid, scared I’ll tell people about her in the theatre. Something that up till now I wasn’t aware was private.

“Stop being a jackass. You think I like asking you favors?” she snaps, pressing her fingers into her eyes before sighing. “Just,” she breathes, “just please don’t tell anyone, okay? It’s not something that everyone knows.”

I pause, tilting my head, waiting to see if I should push her any further or let her have this one.

Her eyes do that thing they did on stage earlier, where they soften and the blue color isn’t so harsh, but they still burn bright like gas flames. The trick is figuring out if this is all a show or if she’s being honest.

Either way, I’m not leaving until I get some form of leverage over her.

“I’ll keep my mouth closed, under one condition.” I offer, stepping closer to her. The smell of her perfume mixing with my marijuana creates this sort of fever dream aroma that makes my high feel more intense.