Page 72 of The Truths We Burn

Standing up to my full height, I dig into my back pocket for my cash and toss a fifty on the table for her tip.

This is only a brutal reminder of how fucking empty and bored this last year has left me.

I can’t keep anything. I can never keep or hold on to the people I care about, it seems. Every single time I let women inside, they either die or fuck me over. I’m neverdoing it ever again.

Rose being killed. The disaster with Sage. Killing those guys.

I don’t know if it’s only me, but the more blood we spill, the more hollow I feel. Not because I care, but because it still hasn’t taken the sting of losing Rose away.

Every time I look at Silas, it’s another swift punch to the gut.

She’s dead, and she isn’t coming back, no matter how many throats we slash or bodies we cut up.

And I hate admitting how much that shit hurts.

She was too good for this world, too pure, and life swallowed her up with its nasty, rotting teeth.

I need stronger weed.

I need something else to get me out of my head.

To forget.

I move through the other tables and past the smoke, pushing out the front door only to be met with cold rain pelting down in heavy drops.

“Fucking fantastic,” I curse, knowing that the rain will feel like bullets on my body when I’m on the way home, even through my clothes.

Tossing my hood up onto my head, I start to jog across the street to where I parked. I step onto the sidewalk and look to my left for just a moment before I begin walking in the opposite direction.

My body collides with another, my attention pulled to the person I ran into because I wasn’t paying attention.

“Shit,” I grunt, looking down to see some of her things have fallen from her purse.

The weed makes me laugh a bit as I bend down to help her. I’m nice enough to be polite but still able to murder people.

How ironic.

My fingers reach to pick up a few random items—Chapstick, Advil, and a red-colored rock.

But she stops me, her wet brown boots clicking together as she raises her hand up to me, silently asking me to halt my actions.

“Just how far are you willing to travel into the dark before you see nothing good remains there?”

I recoil, eyebrows furrowed. “Huh?”

“The devil,” she says a little louder, scooping up three cards that had dropped from her belongings onto the wet concrete. “You’ve allowed the world to sit wickedness on your shoulders, honey, turning yourself into this image because it’s what they wanted, but is that whatyoureally want? Is that who you are?”

She holds out a card decorated in gold and black, the center image depicting a man with horns atop a crumbling throne.

Confusion racks my stoned mind until my eyes spot the storefront she’d been walking out of. The neon sign readsTrinity Spiritually. Palm readings, tarot, spiritual needs.

I return my gaze back to her blonde, massively curled hair spilling from her beanie and her witty eyes that seem to know exactly how I’m going to react to what she has told me.

“I’m not paying for a psychic reading,” I mutter, scooping up the rest of her belongings before stepping back, ready to leave her crazy ass alone.

“I can’t help who the cards speak to or about. They aren’t asking—they are warning you.”

Do I have a sign on my forehead that says force your religion and spirituality?