Ashes to Ashes by Stacey Willis

Author:Stacey Willis [Willis, Stacey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-12-12T16:00:00+00:00

the edge of everything

A L E X A N D E R

MY EYES BLINKED open to see the side of Shane Hyde’s jaw.

I frowned and forced my brain to cooperate. My head was on his shoulder. I stirred —before flinching sharply. I was about to ask for how long I had been asleep, when I caught sight of the view.

We were sitting on the end of the lowered back of a truck, overlooking the hub of the town below. Scattered houses and orchards broke apart the surrounding forestry. The river lay west.

A sharp dusting of stars competed with the moon.

From here, it was difficult to tell that something was wrong; that Pine Creek was infested with Daemons. Everything looked normal. Everything looked alive. Shane then turned to glance at me knowingly as he took out an earphone. “You sober now, Grahams?”

I wriggled my fingers. My body was solid again, and the fog that had been in my head had receded. “More so.”

Smoke lingered in my senses.

I tried to piece together what had happened between Lily-Mae telling me to take another hit before waking up next to Shane —far enough from the bonfire not to hear any drunken jostling. Jagged bits of memory cut in over each other. Tripping over a log; getting smacked in the face by twigs; declining a game of truth or dare but then participating anyway…

A cold wave of shame washed over my back.

It was only when I glanced aside that I realised Shane had been staring at me intensely throughout the flashback. I cringed and curled my fingers tighter over the edge of a stranger’s truck.

His brows then furrowed, even as he turned to frown at his sneakers.

“…Are you mad at me?” I asked.

He had glowered at me through the flames and embers. I had too, but I had been consumed with a righteous indignation.

Like we both owed the other something.

“No,” he sighed. “I’m mad at myself. I didn’t say what I wanted to, at the bonfire. At first I didn’t even know that you were going be there. I…I couldn’t say anything in the moment, or when I thought I was ready. Shit —I did want to talk to you, Grahams. I did. When we would find ourselves alone, of course. But why did you get so out of it?”

Because you looked at me like that.

Because I thought you didn’t care.

Because we…maybe we’d done something wrong.

“I…don’t know,” I murmured, rolling my head to look up at the sky. My entire body was wound tight. “I guess…I got carried away.”

Shane let out a sound between a growl and the sucking of his teeth. “I should have been looking out for you.”

My mouth twisted into a shape as I glanced down to stare back at him. “You don’t need to babysit me, Hyde.”

He met my gaze again. The blue of his irises had dulled to a teal once again. “You keep acting like I do.”

“What’s that supposed mean?”

“When I first met you, you looked like you’d never done anything bad in your life.

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