Page 85 of The Truths We Burn

This is where the conversation ends. He climbs out of my car, shutting the door and walking across the parking lot to his tinted vehicle.

It isn’t until he pulls out of the parking lot that I release my breath. I press my hands into my scalp, digging my skull into the plush headrest, and I start to feel the icy tears stream down my face.

Every single time he leaves, I’m left shaking.

I’d never let him or anyone else see it, but he’s right. I could snip at people, I could threaten them, but on the inside, I’m too soft. It’s why I want to keep everyone as far away as possible—I know how easy it would be to hurt me.

Seeing him always takes me straight back to when I had nobody to help me. Back to lonely nights of staring at the door, hoping someone, anyone, would walk inside and stop him, only to be let down.

I’m left now trying desperately to pick up the tiny shards of myself, slicing my fingers wide open, getting the pieces stuck in my hands. There is no amount of glue or tape to put me back together anymore.

So I just gather it all in my hands and press the fragments into my chest. They might have been useless to anyone else, but I’m so desperate to cling to whatever is left of me, whatever remains of who I was, because without those broken splinters, I have nothing.

They say rock bottom is the best place to rebuild your foundation.Where do you rebuild when there is no rock bottom? When it’s just constant falling, deeper into the never-ending oblivion, sinking for eternity into the boundless water.

What do you do then?

Thud.Thud.

I shift my head to look out my driver’s-side window and see a fingerless gloved hand wave. I roll it down, letting a gust of frigid air steal my breath away.

“Happy Valentine’s Day. Was that your Valentine?” Briar greets me with a small grin, wiggling her eyebrows, welcoming and kind. “If that’s even a thing.”

“Do you know Valentine’s Day is actually a thing because of a Roman man named Valentine who thought it was unfair that the emperor banned marriage, so he started arranging marriages in secret, wedding lovers in the shadows until he was found out. So just before he was killed on, you guessed it, February fourteenth, he wrote one last letter to his lover and signed it ‘from your Valentine,’” Lyra informs us, snow stuck in her wild hair. “So we are basically all celebrating a man’s death. It’s like one big memorial. Kinda depressing when you think about it.”

She rocks back and forth as we stare at her openly, pursing her lips before addressing it. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

I snicker as Briar starts to laugh. “I’m not sure where you keep all this stored. You’re like an encyclopedia.”

Shrugging, she replies, “I like to think of it as a filing cabinet and my brain just sends workers around grabbing the information I need.”

“Of course you do,” I say, smiling, “And no, he was nobody,” I answer Briar’s earlier question.

“Well, let me buy you a burger or…” She looks me up and down in the car. “Are you a salad type of person?”

“Valentine’s Day for the girls!” Lyra throws her opinion in.

I fiddle with my fingers in my lap. Not because I want out of it, but because I actually want to say yes. I want to, and that makes me nervous.Wanting things. When you want things, you leave yourself vulnerable to being hurt when they are taken away.

Maybe it won’t hurt too bad when I leave. It’d be okay to at least enjoy friendship before this is all over, wouldn’t it?

“I eat burgers.” I roll my window up, pulling the keys from the ignition and opening the door. “You’re not spending this sappy day with Alistair? Which when I think about it, he doesn’t seem like the roses-and-chocolate kind of guy.”

Together we walk into Tilly’s. Just as I suspected, Christmas is still in full effect inside. The warmth smacks me in the face, and Lyra moans from the heat, rubbing her hands together and searching for a booth.

“Alistair isn’t big on holidays,” Briar says, smirking a bit. “We play games instead.”

I lift my eyebrows as we slide into our table. “Games?”

I love the way she doesn’t even blush. She owns their relationship in every aspect. There is nothing to be shy about; she’s proud of them. I want to ask if she knows just how dirty his hands are now. Does she know what he’s been up to? What they all have been up to?

“Yup. Hide-and-seek this time. And he let me be the seeker this go around.”

“How chivalrous of him.” Lyra rolls her eyes playfully, pushing Briar’s body with her elbow.

This fun movement draws my attention to Briar’s lower half, catching the dark ink marked on her middle finger. Alistair’s initials are carved boldly on her thin digit. The scar on my collarbone aches as I stare at it.

“So I’m assuming he’s already told you about the Gauntlet?” I ask, shrugging my jacket off my shoulders and laying it next to me. “You guys playing this year?”