Page 43 of The Truths We Burn

“You going?”

I turn my gaze back to her, and the refrigerator light illuminates the guilt on her face. She doesn’t need to say anything to give me my answer. My gut twists and turns with rage.

“Of course you’re going.”

I lift myself from the ground, grabbing my hoodie and the beanie lying on the couch before throwing them on my body, then walk to the door to shove my feet inside my shoes.

Sage and I had these moments when everything seemed to halt in the outside world. We would leave Ponderosa Springs, come here, and lock ourselves within the walls of this house. Moments when she was who she wanted to be and where I was a person who had hope.

But there’s always something that pulls us right back into the toxic sludge, reminding us of the truth, of our fate.

“That’s not fair,” she mutters, shutting the fridge. I hear her bare feet pad through the kitchen towards my back.

“What isn’t?” I snap, turning to face her as she approaches, her body jumping from my sudden movement. “Is it the fact I’m sitting here with you reading scripts, watching movies every other day, and making your cunt squirt on my cock, all the while he gets to parade you around school like you’re some piece of glorified meat?”

My voice is red-hot, a searing slap to her delicate skin. When we’re good, we’re good. We’re electric. An addictive, warm fire during the holidays that you could cuddle around for heat.

But when we’re bad, when we argue, almost always having to do with Easton, it’s bad. A storm of smoke and flames. An unmanageable wildfire that consumes everything in its path. She never backs down from my anger, and I don’t coddle her.

“You know I can’t break up with him! Not yet, I told you! I have to wait till graduation, Rook. You have no idea what my parents will do if I don’t wait. We have to wait.”

“Whatever. I’m out of here.” I reach for the door while she grabs at me, trying to prevent me from being responsible and stopping this fight while we are ahead.

“You do this every time. You don’t get to just walk out of this!” She raises her voice. “It’s the same thing—you get upset, and instead of talking to me about your feelings, you shut me out, you leave! You did the same thing last week with the college applications! How am I supposed to understand why you’re upset if you never talk to me about it.”

My body becomes rigid, my relaxed nature fading, turning into stone.

“I never asked you to do that. I never asked you to do anything for me, Sage. You’re the one who came looking for me.” I pull the doorknob, only for her to shove her hands into the door, the slam echoing in the empty house.

My heartbeat thunders in my ears, and my skin crawls.I never asked her to send out fucking college applications. I never asked her to do anything, not to care about me or my goddamn future. I never asked for any of that.

She had no right to give me hope, to believe in a person who didn’t want it.

I always knew I was leaving Ponderosa Springs when I graduated—that wasn’t a question. I’d just never thought about what it was I would do outside of that.

But then she comes along, with plans, talking about opportunities in chemistry departments, ideas, poking around shit she has no goddamn business being a part of.

She comes along trying to give me hope for a future that I know good and damn well will never happen for me.

This is why I avoided relationships at all costs. This is why I trusted the boys and only the boys. Because they understand how paralyzing false hope can be. They understand that good things aren’t meant to happen to people like us.

“So I’m the bad guy? I’m the one in the wrong again? If I’m so fucking terrible, Rook, for not leaving Easton yet, then what about you? Have you even mentioned to yourbestfriends that you’re messing around with the mayor’s daughter? Or are you still lying to them?”

Now I know she’s upset, so she’s hitting where it hurts. She’s digging for something to make me react, and she knows exactly where to find it.

I shift, spinning so that we are facing each other, and step closer.

“I haven’t told them because you’re still fucking the enemy, Sage, and if they find out about us, if they find out that you still dating him pisses me off, they will kill him.” My tone is bone-chilling, riddled with nothing but honesty. “Don’t ever question my loyalty to my friends.” I pause, grinding my teeth, my nostrils flaring with wrathful breaths.

If she thinks what her parents will do is awful, she has no idea what she’s in for if the boys know.

They don’t care about us fucking or whatever it is we are doing. They wouldn’t care about who she is—unlike most people here.

“I haven’t had sex with him since before Halloween, I told you that!”

“Yeah.” I lick my bottom lip. “He still kiss your mouth?” I taunt, stepping closer while she steps back, a dance of sorts. “Touch your skin? Hold your goddamn hand like he owns you?”

Her ass hits the back of the couch, trapping her in front of me, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

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