Page 87 of Yours on the Canvas

“Sol… Sol, please—”

“Fucking perfect,” I snarl, my own control fraying to absolute ash as his heat milks me.

I hook an arm around his chest, hauling him up against my body as I slam into him over and over, driving us both toward the edge of a jagged cliff. I bite down hard into the smooth skin of his shoulder, tasting salt and sweat, right as my body fractures.

I come violently, my come hot and heavy inside him, my vision whiting out as I roar his name into the dark.

Jack shudders against me, his own body convulsing in a blinding, hands-free release that spills over his stomach and bedspread.

For a fraction of a second, the world is complete. He is beneath me, marked by my hands, branded by my teeth, entirely mine.

And then he whispers into the dark, his voice fading like smoke into the edges of my consciousness:

Sol, please find me, Sol.

My eyes snap open to the dark, suffocating ceiling of the Palmer bunk room.

My chest heaves, burning with phantom heat. My skin is drenched in a cold, heavy sweat, my body aching with a cruel, agonising emptiness.

I reach out blindly in the dark, my hand clawing frantically across the mattress beside me.

Empty sheets.

No warmth. No breath. No Jack.

The silence of the room drops over me like a slab of concrete, heavier and deadlier than any nightmare. The dream shatters, leaving behind the jagged, bleeding reality of my world.

He was never here.

I bury my face in my hands, my shoulders shaking as a ragged, choked sob violently tears its way out of my throat. The cold, calculated control I’ve forced myself to wear like armour finally snaps.

I curl inward on the narrow mattress, clutching the delicate gold ring on my pinkie finger so hard the metal bites deep into my flesh, drawing blood, as i cry helplessly in the dark for my boy.

23

Jack

The back of the old sedan stinks, but it’s the silence between my father and Uncle Ray that feels the heaviest. They have the child locks on so I don’t jump out.

Like I could anyway. My wrists are zip-tied behind my back, the plastic biting into my skin with every bump in the road. We have been driving for an hour, and I have no idea where we are as we weave through the damp streets of Seattle before dropping lower, beneath the overpasses and into the industrial district.

Ray turns around from the passenger seat, his smile thin in the dim amber glow of the dashboard lights.

“Look at you, shaking like a wet dog,” Ray murmurs, his voice sliding over me like grease.

“Three weeks down in that hole and you still think you have a choice. You think Silas is coming for you, dog? You think he knows where the dark corners are? He’s sitting behind some glowing screen upstate, typing codes into the void, completely blind to the fact that you belong to us.”

My throat tightens, but I force my jaw shut. I refuse to give them a sound.

“Don’t waste your breath on him, Ray,” my dad mutters from the driver’s seat, his eyes fixed on the road ahead. “He was always soft. Just like his mother. Thought she could run too. Look where it got her.”

A cold spike of pure terror hits my chest, sharp enough to stop my heart. My mother. They brought her up like a warning, a threat hanging heavy in the stagnant air of the car.

“Yeah, I remember. She tried to stop us, was going to take you away from us, Jack,” Ray says, leaning in closer, the sour stench of his breath washing over me. “And we fixed that mistake. You make one wrong move tonight, you try to throw the fight, or you look at the crowd like you’re looking for a savior… and we’ll fix you, too. You understand me?”

Ray’s hand drops to his jacket, and with a slow, deliberate click, he pulls a heavy black pistol into view. He rests it casually against his knee, the dark barrel pointing straight at my chest. The metal catches the dim dashboard light, a silent promise.

There is no doubt in my mind, that he will pull the trigger. If I step out of line, if I don’t give them what they want, my story ends tonight in a pool of blood behind some abandoned warehouse, and Silas will spend the rest of his life tearing apart empty servers looking for a ghost.