“Everyone… look at the white box,” I whisper, my voice dropping into a terrifying, wet hiss that carries for miles. “Inside is a man who thinks he’s going to heaven. But he doesn’t know… we’ve already brought hell to meet him halfway.”
The ambulance lurches to a halt in the middle of the bridge, its tires shrieking as Jex slams it into park. The silence that follows is deafening, broken only by the ticking of cooling metal and the ragged, wet heaving of my own chest.
I kick the kickstand down and slide off the Ducati,my legs nearly giving out. I’m not Hallow the socialite anymore. I’m not the girl in the funhouse. I’m a raw, exposed nerve, vibrating with a decade of suppressed screams.
“You want to hear more?” I shriek, the PA mic still gripped in my shaking hand, my voice echoing off the stagnant water below.
I pull the heavy glass-breaker from my belt and swing. CRACK. I shatter the side window of a stopped sedan, the driver staring at me with wide, tear-filled eyes. I don’t care. I don’t see them. I see the sterile white walls of the clinic. I see the way the dust motes danced in the light while the doctor’s hands went where they weren’t supposed to.
“He told me it was a game!” I wail into the mic, the sound distorting into a hellish, glitching sob. “He told me if I stayed quiet, he’d buy me the porcelain doll with the blue dress. I sat there, clutching that doll until my knuckles turned white, while he signed the checks in the next room! He sold the minutes of my life by the hour!”
I turn to the ambulance and scream, a sound so primal it feels like my vocal cords are tearing. I swing the breaker again and again, denting the reinforced white metal, chipping the paint, trying to get to the monster inside.
“I remember the smell of your cigars, Dad!” I choke out, the tears blurring the world into a smear of orange fire and black shadow. “I remember the way you’d tuck me in afterward and tell me I was a ‘good girl’ for helping the family. You didn’t just break my body—you poisoned my mind! You made me think the pain was myonly value!”
All around us, the bridge has turned into a graveyard of idling cars. People are stepping out, their faces illuminated by the pale moonlight and the flickering hazard lights. They aren’t filming. They aren’t shouting. They are standing in a heavy, horrified silence, some with their hands over their mouths, others openly weeping as my shattered history bleeds out over the speakers.
I collapse against the side of the ambulance, sliding down the cold metal until I’m on my knees in the glass shards. “I just wanted to be a little girl,” I whisper, the mic catching the wet, hollowing sound of my soul breaking. “I just wanted my dad to love me more than his poll numbers.”
The driver’s side door of the ambulance creaks open.
Jex steps out. He doesn’t look at the crowd. He doesn’t look at the city. He looks at me.
The air around him feels thick, charged with a dark, predatory electricity. He’s walking toward me, his boots crunching on the glass, his eyes fixed on my shaking form with a hunger that is almost holy. Seeing me like this—broken, screaming, insane with grief—it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.
He stops a foot away. He doesn’t reach down to comfort me. He doesn’t offer a hand. He juststands there, looming over me, his shadow swallowing my small, broken body.
“Look at them, Hallow,” he rasps, his voice a low, vibrating growl that cuts through my sobbing. “Look at the world you just destroyed. You didn’t just kill him. You killed the lie.”
He reaches out, his gloved fingers tangling in my wet, matted hair, forcing my head back so I have to look up into his dark, blown-out eyes. He’s hard, his pulse visible in the vein of his neck, his entire body thrumming with the high-voltage thrill of my collapse.
“You’re finally empty,” he whispers, leaning down until his lips are brushing against my forehead. “And now, I get to fill the space where he used to be.”
I’m on my knees, the broken glass of the bridge biting into my skin, but I can’t feel it. All I feel is the hollowed-out cavern where my heart used to be. The PA mic is still in my hand, heavy as a lead weight, broadcasting the wet, jagged hitch of my breath to the hundreds of strangers watching us from their cars.
I look up at Jex. He’s a dark monolith against the moon, his shadow stretching over me like a shroud.
“He told me…” I whisper, the words catching in a throat raw from screaming. A single, fat tear tracks through the soot and salt on my cheek, dripping onto the cold asphalt. “He told me that if I was a good girl and stayed quiet, he’d love me forever. I stayed quiet for ten years, Jex. I stayed so quiet I forgot what my own voice sounded like.”
I let out a broken, hollowing sob that vibrates through the speakers, making the people in the front row of cars flinch.
“And he still didn’t love me. He just liked the silence.”
The world stops. The wind dies down. Even the sirens in the distance seem to fade into a dull hum.
Jex doesn’t move. He just stares down at me, his eyes two dark voids reflecting the flickering hazard lights. For a second, I think he’s going to let me drown in it. I think he’s going to leave me here in the shards of my own history. His chest is heaving, his jaw set so tight I can hear the bone grind. He’s vibrating with a dark, kinetic energy, his entire body thrumming with the high-voltage thrill of my absolute, agonising collapse.
Then, he moves.
It’s not a comfort. It’s an acquisition.
He lunges forward, his gloved hand snapping out to catch me by the throat. He doesn’t squeeze to kill, but he grips me with a terrifying, possessive force that shocks the air right out of my lungs. He hauls me up off my knees until I’m flush against the cold metal of the ambulance, my toes barely touching the ground.
And then he destroys me with a kiss.
It’s the most violent, beautiful thing I’ve ever felt. It’s not soft; it’s a collision of salt, copper, and desperation. His mouth crashes into mine with a starving ferocity, his tongue forcing my lips open as if he’s trying to swallow the very scream I just let out.
It’s a kiss that tastes like the fire we jumped through and the black water that tried to take us. It’s a kiss that says I see the hole in you, and I’m the only thing big enough to fill it. His other hand tangles in my wet, matted hair, pulling my head back until my neck arches, exposing me completely to the horrified gaze of the city.
