The Truths We Make (House of Poe #1)

3. Lovelorn Sea

Lovelorn Sea

Wednesday, Present

“ E ve,” Oliver sighs, eyes closing like he’s finally found salvation. “You look different.” He pauses, slivers of green flashing open. “But not.”

He’s drunk. I can smell the spicy florals of it from here. I shouldn’t be surprised, but the sting of it still makes my skin itch to pull his face into my hands as he breathes whisky onto my cheeks and ask him what’s wrong, even if I already know. I let the anger I’ve been cramming under my broken heart seep out enough to stop me from doing something we both regret.

“You know what I mean,” he offers like a truce, hand hanging out between us, his shoulder kissing his tilted chin in a shrug.

He isn’t used to this long silence from me. I can see it in the shift of his feet and prodding his words. Of course, I know what he means. I see it in him too—his cells have aged, but every single one of them is still wholly Oliver, even if they have shifted. I would recognize them anywhere, even when they’re different. I’ve spoken Poe since I was seven years old; even if I hadn't, every part of me has always understood. I was hoping time away from here could heal that, but apparently, you cannot cure your nature. You cannot outrun your truths .

Small trails of rain slick down my skin and I focus on not wiping them away instead of on the curve of Oliver’s mouth. I’ve made a mistake . I shouldn’t be here. I am not ready to be here. But death doesn’t bend to our plans. It doesn’t make space for words like ready and healed . It doesn’t care that I’m here. The rituals of death are for the living, making me unsure what I’m even doing when these people might as well be dead to me, too.

“You look like you’re about to run, Eve.” He sings my name like a sad song I can’t help but want to hear on repeat. “If you do, can I come with you?”

Eight simple words and yet they sound like a sonnet from his lips. Eight words and I desperately want to say yes. I want to pool into a puddle at his feet and let him drag me into whatever adventure he’s seeking next. I want to hear every bit of poetry I know he is dying to spill. Eight simple words and I can almost forget myself. Almost.

But eight words don’t erase eight years.

They don’t erase the leaving. Or the distance. They don’t erase mistakes and stolen kisses and broken promises. All they do is dig the grave deeper, and for once, loving a Poe to death doesn’t hold any appeal.

I realize that somehow, I’ve moved closer to him. Right now, I can see the missed button of his Konkikyou blue dress shirt and the dirt marring the top of his boot. Instead of slowing down or changing direction, I push forward, determined to pass him, and make my way to the Nest. Oliver changes tactics, snaking his pointer and thumb around my wrist in a hold that is both easily broken and impossible to escape. My whole-body freezes in time.

After what feels like an eternity, my eyes dart to his. He’s already staring. Waiting. Patient as a poet and just as beautiful as I remember. I can’t break my silence, for the words that’ll spill out once the dam is broken will be vengeful and wild. Desperate and tattered. Love and war. So, to keep things locked safely away, I quirk my brow, leveling him with my gaze as I do.

He reads my moods like a favorite novel he’s picked up once again. I watch the creases in his face dip and shift, fluttering from excitement to worry. The small callous on his middle finger from too many sleepless nights holding a pen drifts across my wrist, causing an involuntary shiver. His eyebrows shift in acknowledgment as he does it one more time, for good measure, before releasing me.

“You can’t stay silent all week, Darkness. Eventually, you’ll need to speak to me with more than just your looks. Although,” he looks me up and down slowly, “I don’t mind looking at you either. Maybe we bring back poetry speak?”

He’s trying to lure me in with familiarity. His nickname for me honey dripped. Wanting me to give in and play his games while he’s too drunk to remember the consequences that’ll rain down no matter if we win or lose. Poetry speak was a favorite of both of ours. It drove Paxton mad with his inability to keep up, which I suppose was part of the fun. The draw is too overwhelming, the timing of it too perfect to resist. Thousands of quotes flash through my head before I land on the perfect one.

“ There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me .” The words drop into the room like a whisper, pieces falling down long stretches of vowels and rolls of my tongue.

Oliver just tsks softly, stepping closer. “Pride. Prejudice. How fitting. Though Austen is hardly poetry, Eve. Have you lost your edge?”

My face swells, cheeks tinting pink with every minuscule lean closer to me he gives. A light sparks to life in his eyes, a piece of our past igniting the draw our bodies can’t help but feel. I let myself reach for him, my fingers pulling down the seam of his jacket, trailing his chest. I struggle not to think about it bare, as my gaze follows down, desperate to not let the past pull me under. Before I reach the crest of his belt, I release him, tilting my chin up, and softening my lips as if for a kiss.

“Anything can become a poem if tasted on the lips of a poet… Isn’t that what you said to me?” The night you made me a poem when you still believed you could be more than just a Poe. I don’t say the last part. I don’t need to. We both know what came next. I step back, further into the hall, retreating from this game we’re playing. “Besides, for as doom and gloom, as macabre as you can be, you and I both know the lovesick fool beneath your clothes. Austen has just as much space on your poetry shelves as Edgar.”

It’s a knife I can feel slipping between his ribs, reminding him of the years between us, and no matter how I want to pretend, the feeling of it exhilarates me. A tiny sliver of the pain he’s caused me, I can give back. Proof that I’m no longer just the girl he left behind. But when I look up and see the strife slackening his cheeks, my heart squeezes. I work to ignore the guilt, turn my back on his dejection, and walk down the staircase instead.

He follows .

Angry moths tear through my stomach, battering against my ribs and up into my throat. Eight years ago, he would have let me go. Avoided me. Run into his room and scribbled his notes. Eight years ago, he would have made sure his absence was felt and that we both paid the price for my words. And that’s why, eight years ago, I never would have said it. It seems we’ve both changed.

The echo of his steps surrounds me, the creaks and groans filling the space as neither of us bothers to skip them. My foot barely touches the bottom rung before I realize he is towering above me, stopped mid-way down. I glance back for only a second before deciding to leave him behind. If he’s changed his mind about following me, that doesn’t change the fact that I need to go to the Nest. I’ve delayed it too long as it is.

“Evangeline, wait,” he pleads.

I don’t. I keep moving. He has no choice but to clomp down the stairs and follow me if he wants to tell me whatever it is he’s now desperate to share. He probably has an apology on the tip of his tongue. Or an accusation he’s been clinging to for years. There are a million things he could want to say, and there’s not even one I want to hear. Before I can reach the end of the hall, where just beyond I hear the gathering that’s waiting for me, he calls out.

“He didn’t just die.”

His words stop me cold, chills racing up my spine, every hair on my body standing on end. They echo in the emptiness of this house. Of my spine, and my resolve. He comes to a stop right above my shoulder, his breath causing my hair to brush wildly against my neck. He eases it from the hollow of my ear. Goosebumps break across my skins as he leans down to whisper a secret, one I beg him to keep to himself.

“I think someone killed Paxton.”

A choke thunders from my lips. He’s baiting me. Saying things he thinks will prove some theory he has, some fear he’s let grow, by making me react to the news. He must be. If Paxton was murdered, why wasn’t it in the papers? How would Oliver know when everyone else thinks he was sick? Why wouldn’t Madeline be turning over every stone to find the killer instead of serving cocktails in the Nest before his funeral?

At that last thought, I pause. I’m not sure Madeline would demand justice for the oldest son. Not with her chosen namesake still alive and well, wearing the family name better than any before him. She could be holding the information for a more opportune time, waiting on the precipice of greatness to share it. Another piece of factoid to add to the history books or stoke the flames of fame when notoriety runs low. No one ever pegged Madeline Poe as mother of the year.

Still, someone would do something, right?

My teeth gnaw at my inner cheek, an anxious ritual that has left me with the taste of copper more than once. Technically, Oliver is doing something. He’s here. He’s drunk. And he’s following behind me, telling me things neither one of us wants to discuss, Paxton, just one of the many walls that have been built between us. Even in my suspicion of his accusation, I cannot write him off. I turn to see him, chest lifting, up and down, in defiance of the stillness.

“Why?” I ask.

He knows I’m asking more than one question: why me, why now, why us? Why did you leave? Why should I care? Why do you say these things that will only hurt us both ?

He only answers the last.

“Because he told me so.” He looks around cautiously, the dim bass of conversation beyond the walls bringing us back to reality. “I can tell you everything after, but I needed you to know.”

So, I’d stay. So, I wouldn’t dart from this room the second my past caught up to me. So, he can keep me close until he chooses to set me free. The familiar chains of curiosity wrap around me. He knows I would live within these walls until my dying breath, if only to follow the breadcrumbs he’s laid down. Disgust and hate coil through me. I hate that I’m so predictable. Hate that he knows it.

“Fine,” I spit. “But I am only here for the week. Whether or not you give me answers, I’m gone on Sunday night.”

My words are firmer than my actual resolve. I beg them to hold in the depths of Oliver’s hesitation over the years that are lost between us. I need him to forget the girl he knew and replace her with my performance now. He nods, passing by me without a single trace of contact, and I’m left unsure if I’ve won or not.