Chapter 19: Wrath of an Exile: Chapter 18

September 14

I have a graveyard inside me, a place where secrets go to die. Tonight, I buried a few more.

Each lie I fed Nora, Atlas, and Reign left a new tombstone in its wake.

I couldn’t tell them the truth of what happened tonight.

Just past my wrought-iron balcony, the remnants of night cling stubbornly to the horizon. The backyard unfurls toward the Pacific, the sky shifting from deep indigo to a muted blue, shimmering under the first traces of dawn.

I keep telling myself lying was for the best.

They didn’t need to be involved in this mess, but really, I wouldn’t even fucking know how to explain the mess. Where would I start? The murder? The sex? The fear on my father’s face when he saw me?

Another grave in my cemetery of secrets is better than any of those truths.

Daybreak is coming, slowly peeling away the night, but the stars refuse to surrender. They linger, like ghosts, refusing to fade. They’re holding their breath, waiting to greet the sun.

This is the world offering me a clean slate.

But like the stars, I’m not ready to let go. Not yet.

Not before I dislodge this question from my brain.

Why would Jude Sinclair kill someone for me?

It’s all I thought about when Dad was checking me, scolding me for my recklessness, more worried about my safety than the fact I’d called him to get rid of a corpse. I’ve never been a stranger to my father and uncles’ reputation. I know that wasn’t the first dead body they’ve gotten rid of.

The curiosity about his motivation plagued my mind with such ferocity I couldn’t even be shocked by how calm Mom was. The tranquil demeanor she carried when she came into the bathroom an hour ago, the lack of questions or accusations, should’ve worried me.

But it hadn’t.

We sat in silence as she kneeled on the floor next to the tub, my thoughts consumed with Jude as her hands carefully washed my hair like all the times she’d done when I was little.

I’d hoped it would’ve been enough to put me to sleep, but I’m still wide-awake, eyes burning as the sea breeze cools my skin.

I lean back into the cushions on the L-shaped couch, pulling the knit blanket tighter around my legs. Above me, string lights and glow-in-the-dark planets dangle from the ceiling, casting soft, faint light.

The blunt between my fingers burns steady as I discard my lighter into a hollowed-out book on the square table—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s work now reduced to my stash box.

“That’s stupid.”

My body jerks upright as I whip my head around and stare at the wooden partition decorated with dark green ivy and tiny yellow lights. I flick my gaze down at the weed in my hand, wondering if this shit is laced because I think the plants just insulted me.

Then I remember.

Conjoined balconies.

A frustrated sigh that borders on a whine brushes my lips. I’m trying so hard to be pissed, but this new weed makes it physically impossible to be anything other than high.

So my brain and I come together for a little meeting, then settle for mildly annoyed.

I open my mouth, but Jude’s words are the first to break the silence.

“Vengeance lost…”

It’s a barely audible mumble, but I’m able to make it out.

I quickly realize that he’s not talking to me. He’s talking to himself.

My earlier curiosity battles through the weed-induced haze in my mind, drawing me to the edge of the couch. I crawl closer to the wall that separates us, peeking through the small crack beneath the ivy.

Jude’s lost in his own world, headphones on, completely unaware of me. His sweatpants rest low on his hips, revealing the sharp lines of his abdomen, the faint sheen of a recent shower still clinging to him. Damp strands of hair curl at the nape of his neck, the blood from earlier washed clean from his skin.

“Fate’s cruel hand…no…fucking dumb,” he mutters, raking his long fingers through his hair in frustration.

All the rage from earlier is gone, as if it never existed in the first place.

He looks relaxed. Threadbare. Jaded. Held together by ink and tension, like every piece of him is barely stitched in place.

The cigarette between his lips looks almost edible, framed by the curve of his mouth as smoke dances around him. My eyes trace the tattoos inked across his skin—a coiled snake on his bicep, a dagger carved into his chest, a cherub perched on his shoulder. So many pieces, scattered across him, each one just as random as the other.

A current of electricity courses through my veins as my eyes land on the crescent-shaped imprints on his shoulders. Marks left by my nails when I’d clung to him, lost in the waves of pleasure that had torn through me.

Fucking him branded me a traitor, I know that, but in that moment? It didn’t feel like betrayal.

It was like grabbing life with my bare hands.

Jude went from the harbinger of death to a live wire in seconds.

The moment he touched me, there was a crackling, volatile heat that coursed through the air between us. A pulse that was both terrifying and intoxicating, like we’d cheated the universe, and it was telling us it knew.

In those woods, it wasn’t betrayal—it was instinct.

It was the feeling of being alive, of skin on skin with all the fragility and violence that life carries. We touched something sacred, something we shouldn’t have.

I could chalk it all up to spiked adrenaline, trauma shock even, but it would just be another lie.

I’d wanted him.

And God, did I hate myself for it. For all of it.

“Heat…no, not right…warmth? Maybe.” His voice pulls me from my thoughts, and I bite down on my lip to keep from laughing.

What the fuck is he doing?

The sound of glass shattering on the ground makes me flinch.

“Damn it, Galileo,” I hiss under my breath, pushing up from the couch to inspect the damage. A cup lies in shards on the balcony floor, and of course, the culprit is nowhere in sight.

I kneel, peering under the couch where my blind tuxedo cat hides. Clicking my tongue softly, I reach out, my fingers brushing her fur. She nudges into my hand, purring quietly before I scoop her into my arms, checking her paws for any cuts.

Thankfully, there will be no emergency vet visit today.

“All good over there, Geeks?” Jude’s smug remark slips through the wall, and I can practically hear the smirk stretching across his face.

Fucking fantastic. I’m busted.

“You see what you’ve done to me?” I whisper into Galileo’s fur, shaking my head as I carry her to my room. I wince at my own words. “Well, not see, but you know what I mean.”

I tell myself I should just stay in my room, crawl into bed, and let the covers swallow me whole. It’s what any sane person would do after a night like this. But instead, I find myself quietly shutting the balcony doors, sinking back onto the couch, making sure I’m facing the partition.

I swallow thickly as silence falls, picking up the burning blunt from the table just to have something to do with my hands. It’s dense, settling like the haze of smoke lingering in the air. The only sound is the waves kissing the nearby cliffside as the reality of what happened hangs between us.

I watched Jude end a man’s life for stepping too close to me.

The guy hadn’t even touched me. Just one step and a threat. That’s all it took. Jude’s fury was instant, lethal. No hesitation. No second thoughts. He acted like it was instinct, like destruction was something woven into the marrow of him.

The crack of bone, the wet thud of a body hitting the ground. A violent symphony that still plays in my ears, and Jude was the conductor.

He didn’t even blink. Not once. Just pure, cold, calculated annihilation.

“You’re gonna suffocate yourself with all those thoughts over there.”

“I’m sure you’d love that,” I say through a cloud of smoke.

“Maybe.”

I give a pointed look to the partition coated in ivy, flipping him the bird, not caring if he can’t see it. It’s the thought that counts.

“What were you muttering about over there?” I ask, shifting so I can rest my back against the armrest. “Makes you a bit of an overachiever, doing homework after cleaning up a crime scene.”

Jude lets out a throaty laugh, a scoff more than anything. “You’re high.”

“No shit, Sherlock. Doesn’t mean I didn’t hear you. I’m stoned, not deaf.” I let the blunt dangle between my fingers, the smoke curling lazily into the air. “What was it?”

“Nothing that would interest a science geek with a LEGO obsession.” His tone is casual, but there’s a shift in the air, the sound of him moving around, restless. “Trust me.”

“Try me.”

The words slip out before I can stop them. Maybe it’s the weed dulling my guard, or maybe it’s just the need for answers. Curiosity burns in my chest, an itch I can’t scratch, and I know I can’t let this go.

I hate being left in the dark. It drives me fucking crazy. And this? This feels like one of those times when the lack of answers is going to eat at me until I lose it.

The one thing I’ve learned since living with the guy on the other side of this wall? His picture is right next to the word loner in the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

Jude practically breathes isolation. He clings to the night, to the quiet, like they’re the only things keeping him tethered to the ground. No need for words to tell people to stay away—his whole presence does the job for him.

The guy moves through the world with this impenetrable indifference, like nothing and no one could ever touch him. I always catch him in the shadows, tucked away in corners where the light barely reaches, as if the sound of someone’s breath might send him over the edge.

If you removed our last names and gave us a clean slate, we’d still be standing on opposite ends of the personality spectrum.

I thrive under the lights, where the energy of people feeds me, where the buzz of everyday life feels like oxygen. I need the attention, the noise, the chaos.

He lives in the silence, in the spaces where the air feels heavy, like it could choke the life out of anything that gets too close.

The sound of paper crackling pulls me from my thoughts. I hear it before I see the edge of the note, slipping through the ivy-covered wall.

I stare at it for a moment, not sure whether to be intrigued or annoyed.

“What is this, high school?” I mutter, but I’m already reaching for it. My fingers brush against the torn edge as I pull the paper through.

It’s crumpled, the paper worn at the edges, like it’s been folded and unfolded too many times. The handwriting is messy, scrawled in hurried, uneven strokes, like his thoughts were racing ahead of his hand.

I was the thief in the shadows,

Reaching for a light I never owned,

A fire meant to warm the world⁠—

But in my hands, it seared through bone.

Prometheus knew the weight of chains,

But mine were forged by blood and name,

Bound not to rocks but to a place

Where love was given in the shape of pain.

I was given this marble heart.

Heavy, cold, unbreakable.

At least that’s what they told me,

Like it was something to be proud of. Like it was a weapon.

Not a weight I’d have to carry.

The echo of a sinner crossed.

A spitting image of vengeance lost.

Fate’s cruel hand carved me in stone.

Cursed to sit on a rotten throne.

But it was only warmth I sought⁠—

A spark of kindness, never taught.

Marble and blood, I choke with spite.

I’m a tragedy the gods forgot to write.

I read the words once, twice, my breath catching in my throat.

Jude Sinclair is a fucking poet.

Poetry is chaos. It’s the universe before the Big Bang, a mess of atoms colliding in ways that can’t be predicted.

Physics? Physics makes sense. You can see the forces at play, understand them, work through the problems like puzzles waiting to be solved. But poetry? It’s emotion. It’s abstract. It’s a game played in the dark.

And yet…

“This is…good,” I admit, hating how foreign the words feel leaving my lips. “Like, really good.”

I don’t know what it is—the rawness of it, the way his words claw their way into my chest and settle like a weight I didn’t ask for.

My mind spirals with the revelation, the haze of the weed twisting reality, blurring the lines between the person I know and the one who wrote these words.

The Jude I’m familiar with is rage personified—jagged edges, a coward who kept his friend’s secret at the cost of my suffering. The same man I watched take a life with his bare hands, cold and unflinching.

But this? This person on the page, I don’t recognize.

This one is shattered, raw, stripped down to the bone. Chain-smoking like he’s trying to fill all the empty spaces inside him while inking his pain into broken lines of poetry.

Jude’s a walking contradiction. He’s bleeding ink from the same hands that spilt it.

“You don’t think it’s weird that your hands are capable of killing and writing poetry?” I ask, furrowing my brows. “These things aren’t exactly synonymous. Poets are melancholic, not homicidal.”

The flick of his lighter echoes across the space, a pause as he inhales.

“To destroy is to make room for creation,” Jude murmurs, a subtle edge in the words. “Destruction strips everything to the bone. That’s where art comes from.”

Note to self: When Jude gets writer’s block, people die.

“So you’re saying you went American Psycho on someone for some artistic inspiration?”

“Yeah,” Jude snorts. “Something like that, Geeks.”

I should leave it alone. I should let the joke die here.

But curiosity is a dangerous thing, and I have a crippling case of it.

I have questions. So many questions.

What happened to you? Why poetry? Why did you kill someone for me? Who the fuck are you?

They burn under my skin, clawing at my mind until the words bubble up in my throat. I blame the deadly combination of trauma, exhaustion, and pot for why I can’t hold them back any longer.

“Did you do it for me?”

I bite down on the inside of my cheek. The sharp taste of iron floods my mouth as I tug at the sensitive skin, not sure I even want the answer anymore.

I stare at the wooden partition separating us, no longer close enough to see him through the crack. But I hear it—his head thumping softly against the wall.

“Didn’t do it for fun,” Jude exhales, his voice rough, gravel being dragged across my skin.

His answer hangs there, suspended in the thick air, as if they’re waiting for me to react. My heart thuds in my chest, a slow, heavy rhythm that feels too loud, too present.

Well, I’ve already opened Pandora’s box. The damage is done, the lid’s off, and there’s no going back. So I push, unable to stop myself.

“Why?”

“You deserved to be protected.”

Jude’s response is sharp, cold. Final, as if that one sentence could undo everything.

As if it could erase the blood, the mess, the years of pain that have hollowed me out, carved me into someone I barely recognize anymore.

My heart slams against my chest, cracking my rib cage open, like the bones can no longer contain the agony coursing through me. I can feel the scars I’ve spent years stitching together splitting wide, jagged edges tearing through fragile skin, bleeding out all the rage I’ve buried deep.

Anger, slow and scorching, creeps up my spine like a match struck too close to the wick.

Jude’s four years too late for this bullshit.

“I deserved to be protected?” My fists clench, throat raw from disbelief, fury curling around my words. “Are you fucking serious?”

Memories flood me, dragging me under the surface where everything I fear lives. Was tonight his penance? Some fucked-up way of paying for the silence that protected Oakley? For standing by while I fell apart under the weight of being violated, while I crumbled, piece by piece?

My jaw locks, and I grind my teeth until the tension shoots sharp pain through my skull.

One good deed doesn’t erase the nightmares that haunt me. It doesn’t remove the invisible hands from my skin that don’t belong to me.

Jude Sinclair could’ve killed a thousand men in my name tonight. It still wouldn’t warrant my forgiveness.

“Just because you don’t want to hear it doesn’t make it any less true.” Jude’s voice grates against my skin, the edge biting.

“I never asked for your protection,” I spit back, my voice trembling under the weight of all I’ve held inside.

I can feel fire burning in my chest now, hot and all-consuming, and I can’t stop it.

This.

This is why no one gets in. This is why I keep the walls locked tight, why I shut out anyone who gets too close.

I become this savage thing.

A creature driven by vengeance, a person who would set fire to holy ground with the full intention of watching someone die in the flames.

When it gets too much, when the anger takes over, my DNA is rewritten, twisted, coated with venom that corrodes every molecule.

The rage isn’t separate from me—it is me.

And it is the only thing that’s ever protected me.

“No, but you needed it.” His tone shifts, an edge creeping in. “You needed it tonight, and you needed it four years ago. I’m so⁠—”

“You don’t get to be sorry!” I scream, the words breaking as they escape, my palms crashing into the partition between us, shoving hard. “You don’t get to fix me.”

Desperation claws at me, begging to break something—anything to release this chaos tearing me apart.

He doesn’t get to be the hero.

I slam my hands against the wall again, harder. The force reverberates through my bones, a dull ache feeding the fire already raging inside me. Yet it doesn’t budge, the bolts beneath securing it to the balcony floor.

Still, I don’t stop. I can’t.

My fists hit the partition over and over, body shaking with every strike, palms going numb, arms trembling from the effort.

I barely register Jude’s insistent voice.

“Stop, Phi! Stop! Goddamn it…”

I want him to feel this. To understand the depth of the cracks in my soul.

Let him see the consequences of his silence.

Let him see what it’s really like being Ponderosa Springs’s Queen of Disaster.

Tears burn behind my eyes as the partition rattles under my blows, but it won’t give—just like my pain.

I just want it to break. The wall. The pain inside me.

God, I need it to shatter.

To crumble. For once, just give.

The roar in my ears drowns out everything—the pounding of my heart, the blaze running through my veins. The edges of reality blur, fraying at the seams.

All that remains is the need to destroy.

To make everything around me reflect the ruin I feel inside.

I don’t hear Jude move.

I don’t hear the scrape of his shoes against the balcony railing as he climbs over.

I don’t even hear when his feet hit the ground beside me.

Not until his hands seize my wrists, jerking my body, forcing me to meet his storm cloud eyes, do I realize that he is here.

Jude’s chest heaves, his entire body wound tight, muscles coiled in his arms. Of course he’d have the audacity to look concerned, as if he has any right to care now.

“Seraphina,” Jude breathes, the softest my name has ever sounded, as his eyebrows furrow.

It’s so fragile, so tender, it makes me sick.

It’s too late for him to try to be the person I needed years ago.

“Don’t touch me.” The words slice through the air, dripping with venom as I wrench my hands from his grip.

“Look at you,” he urges, his voice tight, eyes flicking down before locking back onto mine. “You’re fucking bleeding.”

Confusion flashes through me for a split second before I look down. That’s when I see it—the jagged glass, the blood pooling around my foot, warm and sticky, spilling from the wound.

For a moment, the world grinds to a halt.

The fire that had been burning so fiercely inside me dies, snuffed out by the sting radiating from my foot. An ache creeps through me, slow at first, then sharper, a reminder that I can’t outrun the pain.

It follows me, clings to me like a shadow.

I stare at the blood for a beat too long, almost detached from the mess. It should make me feel something—fear, maybe, or even panic—but all I feel is numbness creeping in.

The fire that had raged inside me is gone, replaced by that familiar hollowness. A weight of exhaustion wraps around my chest like a vise, crushing me, stealing the air from my lungs.

I just want it to stop—the pain, the anger, the endless cycle of tearing myself apart and putting the pieces back together.

I’m tired. So tired of fighting. Tired of bleeding, inside and out.

“I’m waving my white flag, Jude.” My voice is steady, though it feels like I’m crumbling beneath the weight of the words. “Go do what you do best—leave me the fuck alone.”