The Lies We Steal by Monty Jay

 

Briar

Good and Evil.

An early concept that many try to say have a certain likeness.

They like to tell you that good encompasses all the light. It’s the halo of life that does no wrong. It’s the sound of newborn babies crying, soft strands of woven gold hair, and church pews on Sunday.

While evil is the root of sin. It’s the creatures that lurk in the night, screams from the misty woods, and crows squawking over fresh meat. Evil has an image. It is the shade, black, oblivion.

Your whole life they depict these for you, so that when you develop a mind of your own you will be able to see the difference. You will see someone and know whether their intentions are sinister or pure.

They are fucking wrong.

Evil has no fixed image and neither does good.

If that were the case, Alistair wouldn’t be breaking through the door of his family home ready to tear through hell. Dorian wouldn’t have me tethered to a chair with a gag in my mouth, looming over with wicked intent.

By the world’s standard, the man almost holding a PhD, the homecoming king, light brown eyes, million-dollar smile, and well-dressed stature should be my knight in shining armor.

And the morally gray brother, the one with cold eyes, a damning reputation who believes killing people will avenge his friend’s girl is the crooked villain ready to rob me of my innocence.

The moment I’d stepped foot into Hollow Heights. The second I heard about Alistair, he had been painted as the evil one. I was guilty of it myself as he stood beside Easton in that classroom.

I took what they said about him and made assumptions. Granted, anyone in their right mind would think of him as the bad guy after watching him participate in a murder. And maybe that did make him evil. The ability to wipe someone off the face of the earth. At the same time, had someone killed my mom, like Lyra’s, I wasn’t so sure I wouldn’t do the exact same thing.

This entire town had made him into something he wasn’t. They started a war within his soul and expected him to find peace. Shocked when he chose violence over harmony.

Raised by a family that he had no chance of surviving unless he became cruel.

My eyes said words my mouth couldn’t as Alistair came into view, stalking into the living room with animosity in his harsh glare.

I thought his white t-shirt would melt off his body, the way it spread across his defined shoulders, and tapped into his lean waist. His hair wasn’t pushed out of his face, instead single pieces crossed his forehead as if he’d been running his fingers through it.

His boots thudded across the floor.

Dorian barely moved from his seat, swirling the melting ice in the whiskey tumbler, looking up at his younger brother with contempt. The barrel of the gun, resting against the leather chair.

“I was starting to think you wouldn’t show up.” Dorian speaks first, watching the way Alistair abruptly stops as he sees the gun in his hand. He stood in front of us, his eyes flicking to me and back to his brother.

I know the swelling on my eye has started to show, the blood had stopped running down my face an hour ago and I could feel how stiff my eyebrow was from the caked blood that sat there.

Refusing to let him touch me warranted a pistol whip to the face that left me unconscious for what felt like days but had really only been a few hours. When I woke up I was tied to this chair, listening to Dorian rant on and on about how mistaken I was.

How stupid I was for choosing Alistair over him, for denying him when he was better in every way. How appalled he was by my inability to see that for myself. He paced back and forth in front of me, until he’d finally decided to sit down, leading me to believe he’d had some sort of psychotic break.

He had to have.

“What are you doing?” Alistair questions, fists balled by his side as he keeps his cool, knowing he’s at a disadvantage because of the explosive weapon.

“Doing what I do best, little brother.” I don’t have to look over to see the grin on his face, “Taking what’s yours. Taking what has always been mine.”

My mouth ached from straining around this cloth wrapped around my head, preventing me from speaking anything other than disgruntled mumbles. Tears stung my eyes and even though I had tried to remain as calm as possible, I felt their hot slickness run down my cheeks.

“You’re fucking delusion, Dorian. We aren’t kids anymore and this isn’t a game. Let her go.” Alistair argues.

I feel Dorian’s eyes on me, “She’s pretty, isn’t she?” He murmurs and I want to vomit at the thoughts he’s having about me in his head. “It was one of the first things I noticed about her. How her cupids bow is perfectly symmetrical and her eyes, they shine like jewels. Then she had to go and ruin it.”

The creak of leather bowing beneath his weight echoes in the room as he stands up, leaving the whiskey on the side table and keeping the gun in his dominant hand. My heart beats in tune with his steps as he waltzes behind my chair.

I can feel the cold metal of the gun pressed into my hair, the way he draws patterns in my scalp with the barrel, making me wince with fear. I tried to suck in the tears, to silence the cries but I could only handle so much.

I couldn’t believe that this was where I might die. Pinned between a man I care about and the man who hates him.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I saw you two in the conservatory the other night. When you thought no one was watching.” Delusional rage spews from his mouth, I can feel the gun shaking in my hair from the force of his voice, “When she let you touch her! Let you defile her. How her body molded against yours and I couldn’t believe she’d do something like that. I couldn’t believe she’d choose you. I mean,” He scoffs, “If she looks that good with the copy imagine how stunning she’d look beside the original.”

He had taken a night that I wanted to be special and turned it into something sinister. I’d never be able to think of Alistair’s birthday without thinking about where Dorian had stood when he watched us. How long he’d stayed there.

“She’s not mine.” Alistair says, refusing to make eye contact with me, “She’s just a girl. You’d be ruining your life, your legacy, for a girl that means nothing to me.”

I grimace from his words, pulling my eyes from him to look at the ground. My chest aching so fiercely because I might die meaning nothing to someone who means more to me then he was supposed to.

“She was mine first!” Dorian bellows, my spine shaking from fear. “I saw her first! She was supposed to be mine and you took her from me!”

I wasn’t sure if the confusion was coming from the concussion I was sure I had or the words coming from his mouth.

I could feel his hand press into the side of my head, crying out slightly as he dropped his head to my hair and inhaled deeply, “I saw her on her very first day in Hollow Heights,” He mutters, like he’s talking to me, “I knew at that moment, I had to have her. I had to have you, Briar.”

All I heard was him raising the gun, the sound of it smacking against something solid over and over again as he continued, “But you chose him! You opened up your legs for my extra! He is nothing compared to me!”

This fantasy he had built in his head of us had quickly come falling down without my realization. Only having talked to him twice, I never knew he was watching me. Fueling hallucinations I wanted no part of.

My first day when I felt someone staring, it had been him. Pins and needles poked my skin thinking about all the times I felt someone looking at me and how I had assumed it was Alistair.

The gun is returned to the side of my head, the force of the barrel digging into my skin and I can feel my body trembling. My heart thumping. Sweat trickling my forehead.

“Dorian—” Alistair starts.

“I see the way you look at her! Like she belongs to you! The tattoo on her finger! You marked her!” He practically screams, “You don’t deserve her, you deserve nothing. You’re just a gutter rat, the backup in case I failed. You don’t get to have anything!”

The temperature raises as his movements become more frantic. The countdown on the bomb that is Dorian Caldwell ticking down closer to a massive explosion.

“Dorian! Listen to me,” He steps forward, hand out in a truce, “We can get you help. You don’t need to do this.”

“I don’t need fucking help! I want her!” I flinch, “And if I can’t have her, neither can you.”

It had all been moving so fast, heated words, rushed movements. Everything was spinning on fast forward and it was then that it all decided to slowed down. It felt like I’d dropped beneath the surface of the pool, falling to the bottom and just sitting in the depths. Everything in the water was slower.

I watched Alistair charge forward, the word “No” screaming from his lips.

A gust of breath escaped my mouth in slow motion, shutting my eyes before the end came tumbling towards me.

I thought I would have flashes of my future, of my past, all the things I’d never experience, but instead I just saw him. I saw him and conceived a world where I could love him without repercussions.

The way he lunged for me, how fear and pain blossomed across his face like a freshly grown rose. A rose bloomed just before the cold winter, where it would soon die. I wondered if after my death he’d become like Silas or if I really was just nothing to him.

I saw how he’d been a boy before he was lesson, before he’d been painted as the face of evil. I saw what they all had forgotten, that he was loyal, made of flesh and blood, of crooked grins and onyx eyes.

Beneath it all, a boy with dreams, with friends, who laughed.

A boy who had once loved his brother.

And I thought how lucky I was in that moment, to see him as nothing but a boy.

The gun’s blast pierced my ears, bursting the drum inside. Warm, wet splatters of liquid coated the side of my face, and I expected there to be more pain.

My eyes opened, still able to see.

I must be a ghost, right? I didn’t expect it to happen that quickly, I thought there would be a light, a gate I needed to walk through.

Instead there was Alistair falling to his knees in front of the chair, hands inching towards my face.

“Briar, Briar, Briar.”

Briar

Briar

Briar

It felt so real, my name on his lips, echoing in my head as the gag on my mouth was pulled away and the ties wrapping me to the chair fell off. I felt his hands, hotter than coals, press into my cheeks directing my attention towards his gaze.

The world started moving normally once again. I had breached the surface, just in time to hear guttural groans of pain and the shuffling of feet.

“You’re okay,” He whispered, “You’re gonna be okay, Little Thief.”

As if I was a feather, he scooped me up into his arms, cradling me to his chest. My nose seeking out the comforting smell of his cologne and burying my head into his neck as he carried me. Chasing that scent.

My vision was spotty, but I could see on the ground behind the chair I’d just been sitting in, laid Dorian. On his side, eyes wide open, clutching his shoulder where blood was staining his white button down. So much blood it didn’t look real. Seeping between his fingers as he rocked on the floor in pain.

Just before my eyes closed, I saw them.

Three shadows moved across the living room, dressed in black and as always, the children of the dark came to protect their own.

Alistair

The shower had shut off twenty minutes ago.

I wanted to give her time. Allow her to absorb everything, let the dust settle, and I knew once she came out, the adrenaline would have wiped her to the point of exhaustion.

Staying in the guest house at Thatcher’s meant she would have a bedroom to herself without any of the awkward, where am I sleeping conversations occurring. Even though I knew she needed space, I refused to let her sleep at the dorms tonight.

Just for tonight I wanted her under the same roof as me. I needed to make sure for tonight at least, she was safe.

Creaking of the bathroom door made my knee quit bouncing, long enough to follow the trail of her long legs, steam poured out from behind her. The shirt and boxers I’d given her to wear were a few sizes too big and they swallowed her body.

A goddess. An angel. All the good left in a wicked world.

Gently grabbing her wet hair and pulling it to the side, giving me a clearer view of the bruise on her eye.

I hated myself more then.

That I had been the reason a girl who represented all the things I’d ever wanted was hurting. A girl who had everything I needed and I was too afraid to accept. Because just as Dorian said, I didn’t deserve anything.

That’s all I’ve been taught. So how would I have believed for even a second that Briar and I could have been something?

Looking at the bright purple wound and scratch on her face threw me below rock bottom. I didn’t question that I’d been more worried about that bruise, than about my brother bleeding on the floor.

Even though there had been a solitary moment tonight when I was looking at Dorian that I saw myself. A son who’d been raised to be something he never wanted to be.

He was the other extreme.

Raised with the pressure of being the successor, having to be perfect, never allowed to fail because if he did they would replace him. I knew what pressure like that felt like for a young kid and it had done just as much damage to him, that it had done to me.

And for that moment, I hated him a little less because for the very first time, I related to him.

My head aches with repercussions I knew I’d be dealing with come tomorrow. Answering questions from our parents, listening to what story they would spin to cover all this up.

But for right now, I would let the guys handle Dorian’s hospital journey, and I would deal with everything else in the morning. Right now, I wanted to make sure she was okay. 

That she would make it out of this with some sort of normalcy.

“The bed is clean and the door locks.” I stood from the chair, not being able to look at her for longer than a few moments. “I’ll be right down the hall if you need anything throughout the night.”

“Alistair?” She whispers, halting my stroll to the door with just the sound of her voice.

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry.”

I’m sorry.

As if this had been her fault. As if she could have possibly done anything to stop my brother. Even if she hadn’t fallen in my path, he still would have done this. Maybe even succeeded in his goal of making her his.

I shake my head, “Stop, this isn’t your fault. Don’t do that.” I let out a breath, “Dorian needs help. He’s fucked in the head. Don’t be sorry, you did nothing wrong.”

Tears stream down her freshly cleaned face, “I’m not sorry about him. I’m sorry about whatever it was that happened to you as children that made you two this way. That made you have to shoot your brother for me.”

I wanted to leave.

I should have left.

But I physically couldn’t stop myself from moving towards her. It was like gravity pulled me in her direction, refusing to let go until my hand cupped the side of her face, rubbing the tears away from her face.

“Technically, I didn’t shoot him,” I smile gently, “Silas did.”

A laugh that she probably didn’t expect escapes her throat, “You know what I meant.”

We stood there while I held her face, staring at one another and I thought about everything I’d done to her up to that point. How beneath it all, I was just attempting to destroy her because she represented what I could never have.

And similar to Dorian, if I couldn’t have her, no one could.

How right now, all I wanted was to really have her. Not just to toy with, more than a game. But I wanted to have her laughs.

I wanted to swallow them whole and see if they would heal all the rage in my soul. I wanted to bathe in the peace that came with being next to her after sex, when we’d draw lazy circles on each other’s bodies and nothing else mattered except the steady sound of her breath on my skin.

I knew her fear, but I wanted to know what drove her.

What made her smile, why she always wore the same pair of shoes, and what she wanted to be when she grew up. I wanted to be more than the man who scared her.

I wanted to be a man she could love even if I had no idea what that meant for me.

“Will you stay with me tonight? I…I just, I don’t—”

“Yes.” I don’t let her finish, she doesn’t need to.

She gets in the bed first, moving smoothly and quietly. Her long limbs trailing random patterns in the cotton waves, navigating the sea of navy-blue fabric with grace that reminded me a bit of a shark gliding effortlessly through the deep blue ocean.

I kicked my shoes off, reaching behind my head and removing my shirt, tossing it onto the floor and making my way onto my side of the bed. I shove the pillow under my head, laying on my side so we are staring at each other.

“I always wanted siblings.” She says, “Being an only child is lonely and I think that’s why it was so hard for me to make friends. I’ve always just felt alone and as weird as this sounds, I didn’t feel that way here. Even when you and your friends were being raging assholes.”

I chuckle, my chest vibrating with warmth.

“Siblings are overrated.” I joke. “I never really had a sibling either, not in the way most people do. I had a blood bound older brother, but that didn’t make us siblings.”

“But you have Rook, you have Thatcher, Silas.” She points out.

“Yeah. I do have them.”

Those were my brothers. Family that was chosen. Who woke up and chose to be a part of my life every day.

“Is Dorian,” She stumbles, “Is he going to be alright?”

I sigh, “Yeah, Silas just hit some muscle in his shoulder. He’ll need a blood transfusion and some fluids but he’ll be alright.”

She nods, accepting my answer and I see that the relief of him being alive makes her feel relief. Even though he almost killed her, she still didn’t want anyone dying because of her.

If I wanted her. If I really wanted her, I’d have to make sure she knew me. More than just what I wanted the world to see.

“He’s got hemophilia.”

“What?”

“Dorian. He was born with a rare condition called hemophilia, it’s just where his blood doesn’t clot as fast as regular people’s does. When he was seven, he was at a lacrosse practice and took a hit to the ribs, no big deal for most kids, but he ended up in the hospital with severe internal bleeding.”

I remember hearing my parents talk about it. I remember hearing it for the first time and thinking, I hate that my brother is sick. That I wish I could fix him.

“That’s when they found out and my grandfather, Alaric, refused to allow the Caldwell name to rest on the shoulders of a sick boy. What if he died? What if he couldn’t handle all the assets he was set to inherit? At the very least, he told my parents they needed to have a backup in case something happened.”

I fucking hated talking about this. I hated thinking about how devastated I had been as a kid when I found out why I was born. I hated how no one cared after I was told. How it was just something I was supposed to live with.

“Alistair—” She mutters, sadness in her voice.

“So my parents basically made me in a petri dish. Genetically modifying my genes so that I was the exact blood type, so that I was initially a replica of my older brother. So that if something did happen, I could give him blood, donate an organ. I was only born to be spare parts. The heir and the spare, that’s what my grandfather called us.” My voice felt like it gave out towards the end, like all the gas in my tank was finally gone. I was now running on empty.

I make myself look at her, look her in the eyes, “I’ve been wanting to kill myself since I found out. I didn’t want to live a life where I was only meant to be a backup. Extra. Only important if an organ was needed. No one deserves to live like that. And then I met the guys and—”

“They gave you a reason to live.” She finishes, taking the words I didn’t want to say out of my mouth. Knowing that me admitting out loud that I need someone isn’t easy.

“Yeah. They did.”

Her hand reaches forward, pushing my hair out of my face, running her fingers through my dark locks.

“I’m glad you met them. I’m glad you’re alive, Alistair.”

Something happened inside of me in that moment.

All these dark clouds herded over me and it began to pour rain. Rain that fell hard and fast over the inside of my chest, wetting an organ that I thought had shriveled up and died.

My heart was a desert. Deserted, dry, without nurture or care. Nothing but sand and blistering heat. And it had just started raining for the first time in my life. The beating no longer felt painful, but smooth, the way it was always meant to beat.

“When I first saw you at that party,” I pause, not sure how to explain what I’m feeling, “You made me feel alive. You excited me. You electrified me in a way no one had before.”

The way she stood in the middle of that dance floor, surrounded by people, smoke falling in front of her face and the flashing lights only giving me pieces of her face. Even through all that, I could still see her clearly.

Her hands rub circles into my chest coaxing the words from my throat, “And tonight, when I saw you in that chair all I could think about was the last things I’d said to you. How I let my past dictate how I felt about you. I’ve never been so fucking—” I tightened my hold, “scared and I hated it. I don’t ever want to feel like that again. I refuse to feel that way again.”

And I meant that. I was never going to feel that again. I wouldn’t let her be put in that position.

“We can’t predict the future, Alistair. And it’s okay to be afraid of that. Being scared doesn’t make you weak, letting it stop you does.”

I thought about that.

How she was the definition of that statement. Even though I’d put her through hell mentally. I’d scared her, she never stopped fighting me. Never let it stop her from moving forward.

“I will tear through the sky, rip heavens gates apart if that’s what it takes to prevent you from being at risk again. They will have to raise hell to stop me from protecting you. You understand?”

She nods, looking up at me, eyes coated with exhaustion. I pull her closer to my body, curling my arms around her so that her head is resting on my chest.

“Get some sleep, Little Thief.”

“What does this mean, you know, for us? I don’t want to be that girl who wants the label, but I just need to know what I mean to you.” Her lips move across my bare skin as she talks, distracting me for a moment.

I won’t lie to her and I hope at the end of this, she’ll be able to accept that.

“I don’t know what any of this means if I’m being honest, Briar. I’m not sure how to describe how when I’m around you my heart feels like it’s beating for the first time or you make me feel alive.” My eyebrows furrow as I continue, “I’m not sure how to take any of that, what that means for you, for me, for us.”

And that was the hardest part.

How was I supposed to know what love felt like when I’d never been shown it? When I’d never been taught how to receive or give it? My version of caring for others was beating up Rook when he needed to hurt, helping Thatcher skin a deer, and letting Silas shoot pop cans out of my hands.

That wasn’t enough for Briar, she deserved more.

“But I do know, I’m obsessed with the way you feel pressed against me. The way your lip curls when you’re angry makes me want to piss you off just so I can see it. I’m constantly angry when I hear other people make you laugh, it makes me want to hurt them, because for a moment they were making you happy and I want that job.”

She smiles against my skin as I continue.

“And right now, I could stay here for a lifetime just feeling your heartbeat rise. I’m not sure what I can give you, but whatever is left of me, whatever I have, it’s yours, for as long as you want it.”

And I meant it. Every word. Even though I wasn’t sure if I’d just made a huge mistake by laying out my cards so openly.

There is a beat of silence before I feel her lips against my skin in a gentle kiss,

“And if I want it forever?”

“Then it’s forever, Little Thief.”

“That sounds an awful lot like love, Alistair Caldwell.”

Pins poke my skin, like a full body numbness that overcomes me. The waves of peace settle into my shoulders and the euphoria that comes with being next to her sucks me in.

No killing. No history. No psycho brothers. Just me, a guy who would do anything to keep this girl next to him.

“It’s something.” I mumble, pressing my lips into the top of her head and inhaling deeply, filling my lungs with her scent.

“Then that’s all that matters. That’s all I need.” She whispers, “the rest is just fluff anyway,” I glance down at my initials adorning her finger, pissed I put it on the middle one and not the one directly to the left.

“Whatever you have to give, I want all of it. All the dark, all the scary. I want it. Forever.”

Just like that, the shadow child learned that you don’t have to step into the light to find happiness. You just need to find the person willing to step into the gray area.

“It’s yours. Every warped part of me. It’s yours, Little Thief. I hope you like playing in the shadows, we will be staying here for a while.”