Page 119 of Coveted

Élise wouldn’t keep grim secrets that eat her from the inside out. I want to get the demon off my back. Maybe it’ll stop dragging me down if I do.

After I say goodbye to Élise, I link arms with Lucan to continue walking.

“Thank you for bringing me here,” I say. “For doing all this.”

“You’re welcome.”

Wings flap softly overhead. An owl sails through the whispering, bending trees.

I take a deep breath. “Lucan, I want to tell you about Russell.”

CHAPTER 30

Sadie

Lucan walks beside me in the tangled depths of the cemetery. Talking about my past feels doable under the sparkling sky and black trees. Less scary, despite us being in a graveyard.

“My mom got sick in my sophomore year of high school,” I say. “Multiple sclerosis. At first it was something to manage. She cut back her hours working as a bartender, but she still brought in enough money to get by. I got a job at Ink & Ivy Books for after school and on weekends to help with bills. But then she got sicker and sicker. Her meds were expensive and we started to drown financially. I begged her to quit her job, but she wouldn’t.”

Lucan listens in silence. I wonder what he thinks, but don’t ask. I need to get the story out first.

“It was around this time she met Russell at work,” I say. “He was one of her regular customers at the bar. He seemed to give her a real boost in the beginning, mentally. I think she was surprised someone would be interested in her, given her illness. She talked about how funny and charming he was.”

I pause. “Maybe that’s why I like you, Lucan. You’re not funny and charming. You’re serious and intimidating.”

His brows lift. “You like me?”

My comments were meant as half joke, half insult, so I’m flustered that he’s taken them as neither.

I clear my throat. “I didn’t say that.”

“You literally did.”

“Oh.” I turn my face in embarrassment. “I guess I did. Anyway.”

“Anyway,” echoes Lucan. There’s a sound in his voice like he’s suppressing a smile. “Go on.”

“Soon Russell basically moved in, even though Mom and I had a tiny two-bedroom place. His charming mask slipped more often. His interests included drinking, and draining my mother’s energy dry. She would come home from a shift and he’d be drunk, ready to start a fight. He stressed her out so badly. Once or twice he dipped into her meds, for a kick. But he never hit her, so she thought the situation wasn’t that bad.”

Now that I’ve started talking, it’s like I can’t stop. After years of holding in the poison, it pours from me like I’m being purged.

“I begged her to kick him out. He had a payout from a former employer to keep him afloat. In my senior year of high school, she became too sick to work. He lent her money to survive and that was that—he was never going anywhere. I threw myself into school and work. I desperately wanted to make enough money to get rid of him, but minimum wage was never going to cut it. After high school, I started community college, but studying, working, and looking after my mom was too much, so I dropped out. I ended up⁠—”

“What?” asks Lucan.

I shake my head.

Something stops me from telling him that I co-signed credit cards and a loan for her, hoping she’d no longer feel she needed Russell. It didn’t work and Russell stuck around. The debt is mine to this day.

Maybe I fear Lucan will pity me. Or that he won’t understand, like when he was mystified about the Darkbloom archivist parking down near the forest to avoid paying the daily fee. Like my problems aren’t real problems because they’re microscopic to him.

Or maybe I’m being unfair. If I’m going to tell him everything, I should tell him everything.

“I took on some debt, but it’s fine now,” I say in an offhand manner. “Russell just got worse. It dawned on me that he didn’t want her in spite of her illness. He wanted her because of it. He saw someone he could latch onto and slowly grind into the ground. Someone who couldn’t leave him. The weaker she became, the nastier he got. He was a blood-sucker.”

Even I can hear the venom in my voice. Despite my guilt over what I eventually did to him, that rage still lives inside of me. Because of Russell, my mother died prematurely, broken and defeated.

After several long breaths, I inject calm into my voice. “Our neighbors would call the cops on us when Russell really acted up, smashing things and yelling. The cops never took him away though, because no one had a black eye or bloodied lip.”