Chapter 31: Wrath of an Exile: Chapter 30

December 6

I’d known Ezra was a musician, but I was picturing a wannabe emo kid with daddy’s money searching for depth by playing “Wonderwall” at house parties.

I was pleasantly surprised to find he’s actually good.

Really fucking good.

Orpheus in Ashes’ heavy drums and Ez’s throaty voice vibrate my eardrums, thrumming through the oil-soaked air. It’s Sunday, which means Inferno Garage is closed to patrons, and Ezra’s band is using it as a rehearsal space, providing me ample background music as I work on my car.

For the first time in what feels like forever, there’s a weightlessness in the air, like the dark cloud that’s clung to me all my life has taken a day off. It’s not that the darkness is gone; it’s just quieter, no longer raging against my ribs or clawing at my skin.

I don’t feel like I have to constantly brace for impact, waiting for the world to punch back the moment I let my guard down.

Phi feels like the first breath of air after years of drowning.

I’m pretty sure the gods created her with me in mind. Not as my match but as my opposite.

They thought, Hey, let’s see what happens if we give this idiot the human equivalent of a middle finger wrapped in vanilla-flavored lip gloss.

Maybe they figured I’d need something to keep me on my toes. Or maybe they were just bored, wondering what it would look like to pit fire against ice and see who’d burn out first.

Where I’m all sharp edges and rough hands, she’s sugar-laced sarcasm with a mouth that’s as lethal as it is irresistible.

She talks, and I listen. It’s as simple—and complicated—as that.

Every word that slips from her mouth pulls me closer, even when she’s just ranting about the absurdity of government conspiracies or arguing that tomatoes are fruits and should never belong in a salad. I don’t care what she’s saying; I just care that she’s saying it.

Yesterday, I had to wake her up early so she could sneak back into her room, and you’d have thought I was trying to start World War III. She threw a pillow at me, grumbled something about “cruel and unusual punishment,” and pulled the covers back over her head.

It was stupid, mundane, but I haven’t stopped thinking about the way her hair was a tangled mess across her face or how she looked at me like I was the villain in her morning nightmare.

The girl truly despises waking up early, but I like being the one she complains to. Like I could spend the rest of my life being the one who fights for her and also icing her knuckles when she throws punches at men twice her size.

She’s warm, and I’m ice-cold.

She hates pickles, so I eat them for her.

She’s day, and I’m night. Sun, moon.

Phi is everything I’m not, but in all the ways that count, she feels familiar, like I’ve known her all my life. A constant beat in a song that never changes, even when the rest of the world goes off-key. There’s a rhythm to our chaos, a twisted comfort in knowing that, beneath the pain, we understand each other in ways no one else could.

I hate that I can’t have her in public, not the way I want to. I hate that we have to pretend, have to hide what’s real. But it’s only for a few more months. And the thing about having someone like Seraphina Van Doren is that you take what you can get, even if it’s just these stolen moments in the dark.

Because when it comes to Phi, even the smallest bit feels like more than I deserve.

It’s a sick joke, a cruel twist of fate, honestly.

I was born a romantic in a house that never knew love.

The walls around me were always rigid, always too controlled. There was no space for tenderness, no room for vulnerability. My heart was crafted by hopeless fingers, like the universe dipped my very thread in ambrosia before cruelly weaving me together.

I’m a hopeless romantic.

Of course, my fate was for me to want the one person I could never have.

“Jude!” Alistair Caldwell’s voice cuts through the rumble of music and the hum of machinery, commanding attention the way only a Caldwell can.

I don’t rush to respond. Instead, I finish tightening the last bolt on the engine, my hands moving with the kind of practiced precision that’s become second nature.

I glance over my shoulder, seeing him standing in the doorway, shifting through papers like he’s more annoyed than urgent. I wipe my hands on a rag, then push off the workbench and head toward the back office.

I lean against the doorframe, arching a brow at him. “Thought you owned a tattoo shop? You work here too?”

Alistair looks up, his dark hair slicked back and his beard framing his jawline, the sharp lines of his face softened only by the hint of humor in his eyes. “I own twenty-five tattoo shops on the West Coast. Rook and I both own Inferno Garage.”

“What do you need?” I ask, tone flat.

“Got an extra smoke?”

I furrow my brow, digging into my back pocket, and toss the pack his way, the movement feeling almost automatic. It lands with a thud on the desk, his tattooed fingers plucking one out and lighting it with practiced ease.

“You know they sell them by the pack, right?”

He chuckles, putting the filter into his mouth, “My wife wants me to stop. Stealing a few from you keeps me honest.”

This is how it goes whenever he shows up. We don’t talk much—mostly, we just share smokes and silence. It’s not awkward; it’s just…there, like a worn-out routine neither of us bothers to break.

Ah. So that’s why there was an opening here.

The hardest pill to swallow since being thrust into the world of the Hollow Boys isn’t their wealth or power.

It’s the fact that they’re good fathers.

I spent years believing that these men were the root of everything wrong in Ponderosa Springs—the source of my father’s misery and, by extension, mine. I imagined them as careless tyrants, ruling their empires with iron fists and blind eyes.

I figured Alistair Caldwell was no different, a man who allowed Ezra to dance dangerously close to the edge, thinking money could shield his son from the worst of the world. I was sure it was the kind of false security rich men built for their children: a buffer of cash and influence, as if that could really protect them from something like addiction.

But I was wrong.

I’ve watched Alistair and Ezra enough times to know their dynamic isn’t simple.

Alistair isn’t blind to what his kid is doing; he knows exactly when his son is pushing limits that could break him. Alistair doesn’t sugarcoat it. He’s hard on Ezra, relentless in his anger, but there’s something else there—something I’d never seen in my father’s eyes. It’s fear, pure and raw. Fear that Ezra will make mistakes that will cost him his life if he’s not careful.

Every time they finish one of those arguments, I try to ask what it’s about. Ezra always slams the door on the conversation, retreating behind a wall of frustration, but even in that, there’s a sense of safety. It’s the kind of anger that stems from being cared about, from knowing someone’s willing to go to war just to keep you alive.

I know what it’s like to look into a father’s eyes and see nothing but indifference. Easton was always there but never present. His gaze was empty, hollowed out by addiction and regrets he couldn’t outrun.

He didn’t care if I got hurt, if I fell, if I stumbled into the same darkness that swallowed him whole. There were no late-night lectures, no hands to guide me, no steady presence to remind me that I wasn’t completely alone.

But these men? Alistair, Rook, Silas? Even fucking Thatcher Pierson, who looks about as alive as a corpse, is a great uncle. I watched him build a dollhouse—a fucking dollhouse—with Silas at Thanksgiving for Stella.

They’d set the whole world on fire if it meant keeping their kids safe. And for all the things I’ve hated about the Hollow Boys, I can’t hate them for that.

“That all?” I ask, jerking my thumb back toward the car. The unspoken question hangs between us—can I leave now?

Alistair exhales a stream of smoke, his gaze distant before locking back onto me.

“I was known for fighting when I was your age. I fought people. My family. Ponderosa Springs. I fought for a long fucking time.” His voice sounds like gravel as he pins me with his dark eyes. “I should’ve fought harder for you, Jude.”

The words are unexpected, a punch I didn’t see coming, and they knock the goddamn wind out of me. I feel the familiar burn of bitterness at the back of my throat, but it’s not the kind that wants to lash out—it’s the kind that twists, slow and aching.

“I tried to convince your dad to let me have you. I tried until you were seven. Every time, he’d say the same thing: you were the only thing he had left.” Alistair clears his throat, like the weight of the memory is too much. “I didn’t want to take him from you, but I didn’t want you to suffer either. I never wanted you to suffer, Jude.”

The irony isn’t lost on me. The Hollow Boys were the cause of my downfall, the ghosts that haunted my father’s addiction, the ones who left me to rot in a home that was anything but safe.

But they’re also the first to offer me a semblance of shelter. Maybe that’s why I was so angry all these years—not because they took something from me but because they had something I never did.

And standing here now, listening to Alistair’s words, I realize that the jealousy hasn’t entirely faded. It’s just changed. It’s less about hating their legacy and more about wanting a place to belong—somewhere that’s mine, somewhere that feels less empty.

I bite the inside of my cheek, the coppery taste of blood grounding me. “You’re where the money came from, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Dad didn’t work, didn’t do much of anything besides drugs. I shouldn’t be surprised, and yet, I am.

“I, of all people, know throwing money at shit doesn’t fix anything, but I just want you to know that if you ever need anything, Jude, anything at all, I’m here. This family has your back, for as long as you need it.”

The word family stings. It’s a word that’s always been more myth than reality to me. But for the first time, it doesn’t feel like an empty promise.

It’s a strange feeling, like being offered a hand you’re not sure you can trust but want desperately to grab onto. For the first time, I see the Hollow Boys not as just the men who broke my father but as men who tried, in their own fucked-up way, to keep me from breaking too.

“Thank you, Alistair,” I mutter, feeling the words stick in my throat.

He gives me a nod, shoving my pack of cigarettes towards me. When I walk to grab them, he speaks again.

“Word of advice?” He lifts the dart he’s been holding, revealing the writing along the white paper: SRV HEARTS EJS in neat, looping script.

My stomach drops.

“I—”

“Tell Rook before he finds out,” Alistair interrupts, voice low but firm. “There’s nothing the Judge hates more than being left in the dark. Especially when it comes to his family.”