Page 10 of The Blood we Crave

I wouldn’t regard myself and Silas Hawthorne as close, not before everything that happened. He hadn’t known I existed until last year, while I’d known just about everything there was to publicly know about him. But last year, we’d become acquaintances. The people we cherished in our lives were connected, so we were around each other by default.

But we’re also two people intertwined through deadly secrets. Ones I know I’ll have to carry with me far beyond the grave. He and his friends had briefly tormented me. I’d heard about all the things they’d done in the name of vengeance. I’d witnessed him kill someone.

He’d seenmekill someone.

Yet, it wasn’t until they admitted him to the psychiatric ward that I would have called us friends.

“Is this the rosy maple you were talking about the other day?” Conner walks closer, and I can smell his teakwood cologne.

Something inside of my stomach warms when I realize he remembered our conversation. I admire the way his arms flex as he leans onto the counter, looking closer at the different bugs but not touching them. He knows the rules—no touching.

I wonder why someone like him is still single. He’s appealing, commercially successful, and kind. It always throws me for a loop when I look at his hand, seeing it void of a gold band.

“Yeah. Can you believe they are naturally this color? You’d think being bright yellow and pink would make them a target, but no! It’s a form of camouflage. And they don’t even have a mouth! They only eat as larvae, and when they get to this phase, their only focus is breeding. Isn’t that insane?” Excitement pools in my stomach as I speak, looking over at him just in time to catch him staring at me, a smile on his lips.

A blush coats my cheeks, and I look away quickly.

“Sorry, that was a lot of unnecessary information.” I choke out a nervous laugh.

“Don’t do that,” Conner says. “Don’t apologize for being passionate about something.”

My eyebrows furrow together as I risk a glance back, his chocolate-brown eyes drilling into mine. It almost makes me squirm in my seat, but I refrain, knowing that any form of eye contact makes me uneasy.

I don’t like Professor Godfrey like that. There is only one person I want in a way that consumes my entire being. No one could ever take that spot. But it is nice knowing that someone like him enjoys listening to me rant and rave about bugs.

It’s nice having a friend.

And that’s what he has been to me this summer. Considering I’m the only one from the Loner Society that stayed in Ponderosa Springs, continued coming to Hollow Heights even though school was out.

But I understood that my friends needed out, even if it was for a few months. All of them were ready to leave this place and all its vicious memories, but they couldn’t.

Not yet. Not when one of them is still here and unable to leave.

“The world is going to try and do that, Lyra. Make you feel bad for being emotional about the things you love, try and ridicule you over it, but don’t let them. Don’t let them ruin what you love,” Conner continues, giving me a reassuring smile.

“That sounds like something my mother would’ve told me,” I say without really thinking.

“She sounds like a smart woman. Now I know where you got it from.”

“She was,” I mutter, reveling in the pain that spreads across my chest when I allow myself to think of her.

Sensing the topic is a sore one for me, he quickly recovers, straightening his spine and rubbing his hands together.

“Well? Are you going to add the final piece? Or do I need to look away while you finish your work of genius?”

Grateful for the shift, I focus my attention on the brightly colored moth on the table. It’s not that I don’t enjoy talking about my mom. It’s just hard to remember her without thinking about that night. Without thinking about what came alive inside of me. What I became.

I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder pretty soon after her death, so it explained the constant nightmares, the flashbacks, and fear of the dark. I’d been through a traumatic event. It was normal for me to experience those things, to develop that mental struggle.

But there was one thing no one explained to me. One thing that no one knew, and if they did, they wouldn’t understand.

No one could tell me why death lingered inside of me.

Slithering and flowing within the crevices of my skeleton, existing in my gut like an organ. A black liquid that had been injected deep into my veins refused to be flushed out. Everything I was before, every dream, it’s a remote memory.

Now, I can’t think of her, of that night, without being reminded of the morbid impulse it gave birth to. A compulsion that stings my tongue when it rises from my gut. It makes my mouth water, and my eyes burn.

I was able to swallow that urge for a long time. Tuck it away in my closet and hide it away. But that was until a few months ago, when I’d taken a blade across someone’s throat and felt blood on my hands for the first time since my mother’s death.

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