Page 4 of Desecrated Saints
“Please… I can’t be touched right now.”
Nodding, he silently helps me fill the hole in. By the time we’re done, my journal has vanished from sight and Logan disappears too. He’s just another ghost now, one of many that haunt my life. I find my feet and turn to face the guys, scrubbing away my tears.
“He died protecting me,” I admit roughly. “When our mum’s delusions and paranoia got worse, she would beat on me and smash shit. Logan always stood between us, until he didn’t.”
“What happened?” Kade asks carefully.
There’s no point in sugarcoating it.
I have far worse to tell them.
“She murdered him when I was ten years old. My father helped to cover it up. Even then, he was afraid of losing her. They were both victims of her sickness, one way or another.”
No one knows quite what to say to that. I tried to explain my hallucination to Hudson, the phantom that kept me company for many lonely months. A person I’d erased from my memory until Augustus pulled him from the depths of my traumatised brain.
“What was he like? Your brother?” Phoenix asks.
“He was alive.”
There’s nothing else to say. I can’t delve into the toxic waste of the past yet. It’s too painful, the knowledge of all I’ve lost along the way. It feels like Logan has died all over again, leaving me alone in the world.
“Come inside,” Hudson orders, his hand outstretched. “We all have questions. I’m sure you do as well. No sense avoiding them any longer.”
“I can’t. I need… space.”
His arm drapes around my shoulders. I can’t help but fall into his warm embrace. Hudson winces as he jolts his injured shoulder in the process, another reminder that the last few days really happened.
“You’ve had enough space. We need you now.”
“No. You don’t.”
He stares deep into my eyes. “I fucking need you, alright? Stop arguing. I’ll throw you over my damn shoulder if I have to, fuck the gunshot wound.”
Studying the other three, they all seem equally desperate for something from me. I’ll tear strips off myself without blinking an eye if they need something to hold on to, even if the girl they’re in love with is long dead. Yet somehow, I’m still here.
The breath I’ve been holding since leaving Blackwood whooshes out of me. It isn’t a trick, we actually escaped. Left our lives and convictions behind to begin again. But it isn’t that easy—our demons have followed us. The unresolved suffering of many months apart won’t be ignored.
“That won’t be necessary,” I concede.
Phoenix visibly deflates, leaning on Eli by his side. My curly-haired twin flame stares at me with such intensity, I feel like my skin will peel back from my bones and reveal my darkest secrets. He’s barely left me alone since our reunion, trapped in his own terrified bubble. We’ve returned to a world he hasn’t seen for a decade.
When I woke up here, he was there.
Watching. Studying. Waiting.
I’ve seen the deep, vicious slashes across his arms. Much like Kade’s weight loss, Phoenix’s brown hair, and Hudson’s newly scarred knuckles, it’s undeniable proof that time has passed while I dwelled in Augustus’s mental prison. Their lives continued in my absence, however painfully.
“Hudson?”
“Yeah, blackbird?”
Cupping his unshaven jaw, I force myself to smile.
“Thank you for saving my life.”
My monstrous sinner sacrificed everything to save me from the darkness, to atone for all his inhuman deeds in the past. Despite everything, I owe him my life. What remains of it, at least.
“You’re the one who saved us, baby.”
