Page 93 of Priest and his Anarchist

Shadows dance over his face like a nightmarish tale, and he takes yet another step forward, in time for Bishop’s hand to stop him.

“Easy…”

Nate’s mouth slams closed, and his eyes drop down to me. His finger slips beneath my chin as he lifts my eyes up to him, inspecting me as if I were one of his projects.

In a way, I am. “You good?”

Tension in my muscles releases, turning my legs to jelly.

In a house, there was a door. On that door, there was a handle—no. No, no…that’s not it. In a house, there was a couch, and on that couch—Shit. The knots in my stomach tighten the more I stand here. The air turns thick, my palms slick with sweat.

Oh no…

A single finger hooks onto mine. My legs give out, but instead of hitting the floor, I’m pulled into something hard. Spiced honey, earth, and gasoline.

I bury myself deeper into the hoodie of who caught me. Arms as big as my body lock around me, holding me in place and turning the voices in the background to mumbles.

I don’t care anymore. About any of it. About trying to figure out why everyone in Midnight Mayhem seemed to hate me, or that no one helped me the way they wanted to help my mother. Whether I was crazy like her, unhinged like Father, or a joker like Dad.

I don’t care. I don’t want to exist anywhere outside of the people I’ve spent most of my time being with. Mom always said I didn’t have to have one without the other, but she was wrong. They’re two worlds charged by the same energy force, so one will always lack.

“Priest—” I hear someone say in the background, but arms swoop beneath my legs, and I’m being carried away. I don’t have time to turn around. I don’t have the fuel to see who is still there, fatigue refusing to let me go. How could I turn so weak the second I’m around Midnight Mayhem? As if what they thought of me truly became who I thought I was.

“Don’t take this shit to heart, Madness.” His lips brush against my head. “I hate to see you cry.”

He places me carefully into the back seat of a car, his familiar scent coating the leather. The back door closes, and my eyes fly to the rearview mirror.

Moose’s smile spreads warmth through my chest. “Getting in trouble, kiddo?”

I laugh, sniffing before the other car door opens and Priest slips in beside me. “Unfortunately, not the fun kind this time.”

With his hoodie hiding everything but the tip of his chin, the light of his phone does nothing to show his face. I want to ask him why he was here and why the Fathers brought him, but I know him well enough to know it’s wasted breath.

“Don’t,” he snaps without looking, typing out a text. “I won’t answer you anyway.”

“You knew and you kept it to yourself?” I’ve spent all my life balancing between my age and what I’ve been trained to do,but at this moment, that small girl who exists inside a carefully crafted weapon needs to be just that. A girl. But the waters I tread are a reminder I gave up that privilege a long time ago, some would even say the moment I was born.

His fingers stop moving.

If I was smart, I’d be afraid.

He turns his head slowly until the light from his phone switches off, and I’m left with nothing but the shading of his marbled jaw and polished skin as it reflects through the setting sun of tinted windows.

“You know more than most already.” His lips move around each word with precision. “Why would I show you my hand when I don’t know what’s in yours, Madness? Hmmm?” He shifts his body toward me, and now that I have his undivided attention, I’m not sure that I want it. I’ve seen what happens to girls who do.

I haven’t figured out why he hasn’t done the same to me yet. I used to think it was because he answered to a higher hand, his dad, but now that he is the higher hand, it’s only left me confused.

Right now, he’s implying that I’ve kept more from him than he has of me, and maybe it’s true, but unfortunately, those same hands that raised him did me. Maybe it’s the vulnerability of emotions that are still raw from the argument with my parents, or maybe it’s from ignoring everything that happened between us last night, or maybe it’s that small girl that he always manages to bring out every time we’re together.

“I wasn’t with Archer Thorn.” My mouth snaps shut. Shit.

“I know.” His tone is leveled and controlled. He’s staring between my mouth and my eyes, that same furrow buried between his brows. I’m so lost in my opiate state I miss his words.

“Wait, what?” The weight of where this conversation could go holds me in place, but the fragile pulse of my heart rate slows me.

As if questioning his own words, he watches me closely, and each second his eyes roam my face feels calculated. “I don’t know where you were. Wanna fill me in?”

I clear my throat, but it’s like swallowing razor blades. My hands land on my neck, the pendant burning my palm. This is the hopeless kind of sadness that poets write about.

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