Page 44 of The Truths We Burn

My mind is my worst enemy as it plays highlight reels of what I’ve had to endure these past two months. Watching them together in the halls, seeing him lay hands on her and knowing I can’t rip them off.

“The guys don’t care that you’re the mayor’s kid. Telling them isn’t about that. It isn’t about me. It’s about protecting you,” I emphasize, poking my finger into her chest, “from what they will do. They care about me.Even if I said it didn’t bother me, even if I lied through my fucking teeth and told them seeing him with you doesn’t make me”—even saying the words makes the taste of blood bubble in my throat—“want to burn the entire damn school down after I’d ripped his hands off his body, they would still know, and the end result would not be good for you.”

Through the darkest of shit, we’d seen each other through it. Saw each other battle things no person should ever have to see. Bore witness to what Hell on Earth really looks like.

We protect each other at all costs.

Nothing we wouldn’t do for each other.

No length too far.

Including, but not limited to, skinning her preppy-ass boyfriend alive.

“So this is what it takes to get you to open up to me? Talking about how Easton makes you jealous? You do realize this is the first time you’ve even spoken to me about your friends.”

I don’t need this shit.To be poked and prodded by her so that she could try and understand me. I don’t need to be understood. I don’t need to be saved or fixed.

For the last time, I turn, wanting to leave. I’m done with this conversation, but she just won’t give it up. She won’t quit.

“I’ve told you everything! You know me, Rook, and I trusted you. You won’t even tell me where you go when we aren’t together! Why won’t you do the same for me?”

“You should have thought of that when you started confessing sins to someone like me. I don’t play fair, Sage. I told you that.”

“No, you’re not leaving,” She steps in front of me, blocking the door with her body, one I would have no problem throwing out of my fucking way, but she knows that. “Not until you give me something. Why do you always show up with bruises? Why is your lip split?” She continues to push me.

My flesh and bone burn, this overwhelming fire building inside my chest, growing higher and higher the more she pushes.

“Move, Sage,” I grit out through my locked jaw.

“No!”

I raise my palm, slamming it forward into the door behind her head so hard it shakes one of the picture frames loose, knocking it onto the floor.

“Stop trying to get inside me! You don’t belong there!” I yell, my chest stinging with the force.

Sage barely flinches, like she knows I won’t hurt her. Not physically anyway.

She trusts me. She isn’t afraid.

I think I’ve always known that she wasn’t afraid of me, and that was possibly what I found most interesting about her in the first place.

“You can trust me,” she says back to me with just as much passion, placing her hands on the sides of my face and forcing me to look into her eyes. How are they this pretty? They are begging me to give her something, anything. “You can trust me, Rook.” It’s gentler the second time, a girl trying to coax a wild animal from the corner without getting bitten.

No one, not a single soul, has done this to me before.

Forced me to open up.

The guys don’t need to ask, ’cause they understand it.

No one had done it before, because they didn’t care.

I’m sick thinking about my father, why I am the way I am.

“You’ve heard the rumors.” I bring my hands up, curling them around her wrists, pulling them away from my face. “You know why I’m bruised. You know why I’m bloody.”

Sadness builds in her eyes, tears lying on the surface of her irises. I can’t even bear to look at her when I’m talking.

“So your dad does hit you?”