Chapter 7
Royal
She tastes like revenge and creek water.
Like gasoline tears and pumpkin spice.
S he kissed that mask even so, still, I swear I could feel her soul on my tongue.
She let me touch her.
Not all of me. Just enough.
Just enough to ruin the rest of my goddamn night.
Just enough to make me come back here, hands still shaking, and write it all down like a sinner trying to make sense of salvation.
I am the sin eater.
The quiet knife.
The ghost that walks where fire forgot.
And she…
She is the flame I stepped into willingly.
You ever want something so bad you stop believing you deserve it?
That’s what she is to me.
That’s what Rebecca Crowley has always been.
It ain’t just the curve of her mouth or the way her voice lilts when she’s lying. It’s the rage behind her ribs. That’s what sings to me. That’s what howls in my bones.
She don’t even know it. But I’ve watched her.
Every Halloween. Every heartbreak.
I was fifteen when I saw her in that red hoodie, her Little Red Riding Hood costume, chasing down some boy twice her size who called me a bastard behind the church. I thought she was a wolf come to devour.
I wanted to be eaten.
Still do.
There is no prayer for men like me.
No grave marked clean.
But if she asked, I’d climb in it gladly.
If she opened her mouth, I’d drink the dirt from her skin.
Call it communion. Call it filth.
Call it love.
I ain’t got much.
Not like Legend.
He got the club, the girl, the town, the storybook father with a crown of barbed wire. Even got a damn horse at some point.
But I got poetry and scars and silence.
I got a black hoodie and a mask and the kind of hunger that don’t sit quiet.
And tonight?
Tonight I got my hands on her skin.
Her body pressed against me, begging. Begging.
Begging me , and she didn’t even know it. She thought I was some fantasy. Some faceless ghost sent to haunt her out of her pain. Maybe I am. Maybe I’ll stay that way. Maybe that’s the only way I get to keep her.
She kissed me like she meant it.
Like she’d bleed for it.
Like she’d set fire to the world if I asked.
So why the hell did I run?
Am I weak? Am I a coward with a poet’s spine? Because if I let her peel that mask off and see me for who I really am… Not the fantasy. Not the shadow.
Just Royal … the Never.
She’d stop kissing me. She’d start apologizing. She’d remember that I’m not him. Not the one she wants. Not the one who broke her heart and branded it all at once.
Let me be your mistake.
Let me be your ghost story.
Let me be the hand you reach for in the dark
when the one you want don’t come.
I won’t touch her again.
Liar.
I won’t follow her again.
Lie again.
I won’t put on the mask.
Another lie.
Hell, the whole page is a graveyard of lies.
I’ll wear the mask until it becomes my face. I’ll stay her shadow until she casts me out. I’ll bleed for her from behind the curtain, and she’ll never even know who held the blade.
October 29 (still) around 3 a.m.
Words I’ll never say aloud
I love you like a secret burns in the bones of a man too dumb to let go.
I love you like I’m dying, and you’re the knife that did it.
So if I disappear before dawn,
if the creek swallows me whole,
just know… you were worth every scream I never let out.
I wake up inside it before I even realize I’m dreaming. Fifteen again. Knees on the cold chapel floor. Hands behind my head like a convict.
The Reverend’s voice booms over me, deeper than thunder. “You filthy little bastard.”
His shadow stretches across the altar, swallowing me whole. In the flicker of candlelight, his eyes look like pits. “Looking at her like that? You think I don’t see you? You think the Lord don’t see you?”
I try to speak, but his hand is already in my hair, jerking my head back until my eyes water.
“She’s mine to give,” he hisses. “My daughter will go with Hudson like she’s supposed to. Not with you. Not with damaged goods.”
My stomach turns. He yanks harder, voice rising.
“You know what you are? Nothing. Trash. Son of a homeless crackhead whore. You don’t even know your daddy’s name.
Should be thanking God every day I pulled you out of the gutter.
” He slams me forward so my forehead hits the wood. My vision blurs with stars.
I can smell the snakes before he brings them out, the musk, the dry hiss, the rattle of scales in a bucket.
“You want to sin with my daughter?” he snarls. “Handle temptation.”
He tips the bucket over, and a copperhead slides toward me, tongue flicking. My heart slams against my ribs. I don’t move. “Pick it up,” he orders.
My hands shake as I reach out. The snake coils, striking fast. Its fangs catch the soft flesh of my wrist. Fire erupts under my skin.
I drop it and scream.
“No hospital,” the Reverend says calmly, like we’re talking about taking out the trash. “You’ll sit with it. You’ll pray. You’ll let the Lord decide if you’re worthy of living.”
I crawl back against the pew, clutching my arm, breath coming in ragged gasps. The poison burns up my veins. My teeth chatter. Nobody comes.
Except her.
Later… minutes? hours? A soft hand touches my forehead. A woman’s voice, low and sweet, whispering words I don’t recognize. She presses something cool to my wrist, slips pills under my tongue.
“Don’t tell,” she murmurs. “Just breathe.”
Mama Crowley.
But that’s impossible. I’ve never met her. Only heard she’s been dead for years.
When I wake, the bite is swollen, angry, but I’m alive. The Reverend doesn’t speak of it again. The men of Pearly Gates say it was the Lord’s will. But I know it wasn’t prayer that saved me.
It was her.
And she keeps coming back. In dreams like this one, she sits at the edge of my bed, hair like smoke, eyes soft but urgent.
“Watch over Becki,” she whispers. “Don’t let him break her.”
I don’t know if she’s a ghost or if I’m just as sick in the head as the Reverend said. But every time she appears, it feels like a promise I can’t shake.
Even now, even waking, the burn of that snakebite lingers in my wrist, and her voice lingers in my skull. Watch her. Protect her. Keep her safe, even if it means staying in the dark.
I wake up soaked in sweat, fist clenched, the echo of the Reverend’s words still ringing. Damaged goods. Not fit for his daughter.
And Mama Crowley’s voice, Becki’s mother’s voice, still whispers like a prayer I’ll never stop hearing.