Chapter 19
SAGE
My heart pounds so hard that I can feel it in my throat. I spin around, pushing my hands against Kaiden’s chest with all the force I can muster up. “Why the fuck is there a picture of my dad in here? Is this another one of your sick little Games?”
His eyes narrow at me, but I can see confusion in his gaze as his dominance wavers. He moves his gaze behind me to look at the wall, to where there’re three portraits hanging.
After a moment, he looks back at me.
“Which one is your dad?” He waves a hand toward the wall.
I turn around again, walking to where the frames are hanging, and point a finger at my dad’s smiling, youthful face. “This one.”
Kaiden blows out a choppy exhale, and Beckham steps toward me. “Your dad is Andrew Blackmore?”
Exhaustion has crept into my bones, so I’m sure I’m hearing him wrong. I blink through the daze over my vision as I address Beckham, trying to understand as I stare into the dark sea of his eyes. “What?”
Vinny slides up next to Kaiden, and all three men study me through the three feet that separate us.
I point to the portrait again. “My dad is Andrew Lindman.”
Vinny walks over to me. “Sage”—he points in the same spot I am—“this is Andrew Blackmore. He created The Hallows Games. His ancestors founded the town.”
I open my mouth like I’m going to speak, but my throat and tongue have run dry, so my mouth just hangs open while I stare at Vinny. Confusion simmers inside of me, and the fact I haven’t slept makes everything so much harder to comprehend. I swallow thickly, trying to get some saliva into my mouth.
“Wait, what?”
All three boys watch me, and when the words replay in my head, I drop to my knees so suddenly that pain radiates through my legs.
Andrew Blackmore, Andrew Blackmore, Andrew Blackmore.
My eyes go wide. “What the fuck?”
Beckham rushes the three feet to reach me, dropping down on the floor to put a hand on my back as my chest heaves. He doesn’t say anything, just stares at Kaiden like he’s waiting for answers too.
Kaiden runs a hand through his freshly fucked hair and starts to pace the small space in thought, and all three of us just watch him.
After what feels like a century, Kaiden stops dead in his tracks and looks at me. “We’ll figure this out. Go home and get some sleep, Sage.”
Beckham stops rubbing up my back. “Kai—”
His friend cuts him off, snapping, “I don’t have answers right now.”
I’m hyperventilating, my vision spotting with black at the edges, making my exhaustion that much stronger. I feel like something is trying to claw its way from my chest bit by bit as a storm of anxiety rains down over me.
“I need to get out of here,” I mumble to no one in particular, my eyes closing for a moment as I take a deep breath.
“I’ll walk you home.” Beckham rubs circles with his fingertips on my back tenderly, like he’s trying to calm me, remind me that he’s here with me. “C’mon.”
I stand up quickly, feeling the air whoosh from my lungs. “No.”
Taking the four steps toward the door of the crypt, I rip it open, making the dawn shine through into the candlelit room. “I need to go. I need to get out of here. I can’t breathe.”
My hands shake as I step out into the morning dew of the cemetery, then I run for my life.
Ignoring the shouts from behind me, I run until my legs ache.
Through the graveyard, I dodge branches and headstones somehow, jumping and skipping over any obstacle that comes before me.
The panic and urge to get away from this place is so strong that my senses are on high alert.
I’m unable to stop my legs from moving, no matter how much pain tenses my tired limbs, until I finally hit my breaking point and fall to the dirty ground.
My palms scrape against the concrete of the street, my knees landing so roughly that I can feel the shock in the tips of my toes. I try to catch my breath, both from running the entire way through the graveyard but also from the anxiety that’s wrapped tightly around my lungs.
“Sage!” I hear Beckham yell, his voice close behind me, and it lights a fire in me once more.
I stand up, ignoring the pain in my palms and knees, and push my legs to start running again.
I move faster this time. My mind feels as if it’s floating above me, not attached to me anymore, but watching as I run and run.
I only start to slow once I’ve turned the corner onto my street, realizing my face is drenched in tears.
I wipe the backs of my shaking hands across my cheeks, but tears continue to stream from my eyes.
I notice my breath fanning out in front of me as I try to catch my breath, the autumn air creating a burn in my throat and lungs.
A sob rips through me just as I’m walking up to my grandmother’s house, and I try to take a deep breath to calm myself down before I face her, but it’s impossible. I’m so fucking overwhelmed that I just keep crying.
I feel fucking spent and used, my body aches as if it’s been working overtime all night, and the thought that my dad created the very same sick-and-twisted game I just played sends waves of nausea rolling through me.
After pulling open the screen door to the house, I open the wooden front door. I hear my grandmother in the kitchen, so I wipe my face with the backs of my hands once more. Although tears still stream down my face, I don’t want to scare her.
“Sage? Honey? Is that you?” she calls out, making another sob pulse through my body.
I walk through the house, then into the kitchen slowly. My grandmother turns when she hears me, and when she sees the state I’m in, she drops the spatula she’s holding and rushes toward me. “What is it, Sage?! What’s the matter?!”
Before she can reach me, I step backwards, making her freeze in place with her arms extended as if she was going to embrace me. “Sage…?”
I lick my lips as tears roll across them. “What’s my last name?”
Her hands fall back to her sides. “Sage…” Her words fall dead, and she gives me a sympathetic look that makes my stomach turn over.
“Gran.” Tears drop from my chin onto the floor. “Please, don’t give me this shit anymore. Who is Andrew Blackmore?”
Clearing her throat, she puts her hands against one another. “Well, sweetie, that’s your daddy.”
I shake my head, then my voice flows from my lips in a scream. “I don’t fucking understand!”
“Now, don’t you use that language with me, Sage Grace Lindman!” my grandmother admonishes, giving me a stern look.
I huff. “Don’t you mean Sage Grace Blackmore?”
My words come out sharper than I intend, but it’s genuine.
I’m so angry and upset that my entire body is shaking.
I feel as if my entire life has been a lie, like I was born, and then everyone decided to rewrite the narrative of my story, and that isn’t fair.
I should’ve been given all the information and been able to make my own choices.
Instead, I was shoved into a life that wasn’t really mine, given a name that didn’t belong to me, and my parents died before I discovered any of it.
I laugh, even though there’s nothing funny. “You know what, Gran? I can’t do this. I don’t want to hear it. I need to go lie down.”
“Sage, please.” She reaches out for me, but I’ve already started walking away.
“Later, Gran. Please,” I say, walking heavily to the staircase. “I just need to sleep.”
I make it to my bedroom just in time for my sobs to start up again. A sharp pain shoots through my ribs as my lungs heave, agonizing grief weakening my legs as I drop to the floor just in front of my bed. I grab the blankets in my fist, burying my face and yelling out endless cries.
How could my parents not tell me the truth?
What was so bad about their past that they had to hide from it?
Turns out, they hid it pretty well, though, since they died before anything could come creeping from the shadows to haunt them. What other lies and secrets are going to unravel around me? What else have my parents hidden away?
The fact that my own father is the founder of a fucked-up game makes my stomach churn so violently that I want to vomit.
The very fucking games that his daughter was just subjected to.
What kind of tormented and filthy mind must my father have had back in the day to begin a tradition like The Hallows Games?
I shoot up, running like a rocket to the bathroom down the hall, making it just in time to spill the contents of my stomach into the toilet.
I cry, choking on sobs and dry heaves as I grip the porcelain.
Whatever happened to my father when he lived in Blackmore is his story—a story I’ll never hear from his lips, but it’s one I need to hear. He kept something from me, something so important that I can feel my soul shattering piece by painful piece as the words replay in my head.
Blackmore. Andrew Blackmore. Sage Blackmore.
I flush the toilet, dropping the lid closed before I lean my elbows on it to prop up my head.
What else is a lie? Is my birthday even January 14th?
I wasn’t born in California, so what’s to stop my parents from doctoring the date on my birth certificate as well.
Bitterness sweeps through me, replacing the nausea.
My tears slow, and I clench my fists so tight as I stand up that my forearms throb.
I rip my clothes off, pain radiating through my lungs as I try to breathe deeply.
I don’t bother hitting the light switch.
I just let the small window cast a soft glow over the bathroom as I turn on the shower.
I step in before the water has a chance to warm, standing under the freezing spray and wrapping my arms tight around my body.
Life’s a bitch, and karma is a nasty cunt too, and maybe my parents are watching me suffer as a part of their own punishment. That is, if they actually did care about me after all. Who’s to say their love and affection wasn’t one giant lie as well?
My whole life, I’ve believed that destiny is written out for you—whether it’s at birth or through the choices you make—but today, right in this very moment, I can feel that I was wrong.
No one’s in charge of my destiny besides myself, and I’m going to find out everything I can about who I really am.
I may not have answers right now, but I’ll stop at nothing until I get them.
Maybe it won’t be today, or tomorrow, or next month, but one day, I’m going to know where I came from, and what happened to my parents.
Maybe I’ll end up being the Sage Lindman I always was, but something is creeping inside of me, something that feels knotted and cynical, something that’s telling me that I’m more Sage Blackmore than I could’ve imagined.
Looking back, maybe I’ve always been this person. Maybe the bright, cheerful, peppy cheerleader who was raised in California was only that way because of experience and environment.
Maybe the girl born in Blackmore, the one who finds peace in a cemetery and likes the attention of three dark, twisted, sinister boys—maybe that’s who I was supposed to be all along.
That girl? She’s the one left standing after her parents have died for a second time.
The shower heats to a near burning temperature, making me drop my hands to my sides and lean my head back to feel the rapid spray against my face. I try to clear my mind the best I can, even for just this moment, and let the heat soak my aching muscles.
I wash myself meticulously, keeping my back against the wall as I shampoo my hair and scrub my body.
When I’m clean, I twist the knob to turn off the water and step out onto the bath mat, wrapping myself in a towel.
The skin of my back stings as I press the towel tight to the wounds the Hallows Boys gave me only hours ago.
My pulse picks up as my mind travels back.
I picture Beckham’s soft hands threading into my hair as he fucks my face.
Vinny’s talented tongue on my nipples as I ride him.
Kaiden’s palm slapping down on my cheek as he grits his teeth through pleasure.
I sigh, desire racing through my veins all over again.
When I look up into the mirror above the sink, reality hits me. It’s almost sitting in a split frame with the Hallows Boys, and my eyebrows kick up in realization.
Did they know all along? Did they know who I was—what I am—and choose me for the Games as some sick little joke?
And what do they know about my father?
“Your dad is Andrew Blackmore?”
Beckham said it with such certainty, a level of respect lingering in his voice. Like my father was someone of nobility to them…
Questions roll around in my head at such speed that I start to feel my sanity slip.
Who the fuck was my father?
Everything I once knew about him is being called to my attention. He’s a Blackmore. He’s from the family that the town is named after, a town laced in lies and ominous secrets that looks pretty in the light, but as soon as night comes, monsters lurk in the streets, coming out to play.
I flick the light on in the bathroom and drop my towel, a gasp sucking the air from my lungs.
There are marks all over me, decorating my flesh like displays of ownership.
Bruises, bite marks, welts, cuts, and scratches cover me from neck to ass.
There’re hickeys and bites on almost every inch of my chest, trailing down to my nipples like a little pathway.
I lean closer to the mirror, examining the slice on my throat, then I spin around when curiosity creeps along my skin.
Looking over my shoulder, I catch sight of the letters carved into my back: B, K, V.
I shudder as I remember how hard I came when they marked me, how loud I screamed and how quickly I bucked my hips at the feeling of bloodshed.
My eyes roll back a little, and I bite down on my lip.
Taking a deep breath, I trail my gaze down to my ass, where there’re long, red welts from Kaiden’s belt marked across my creamy skin. Somehow, they make a smile pull up my lips. As a placebo feeling of pain ripples through me, and I groan deep in my throat.
The marks on my body only solidify my previous thoughts, because Sage Lindman never would’ve done what I did last night… She never would’ve fucked three guys at once, she never would’ve been sent flying over the edge of an orgasm from being whipped, cut, or choked.
I’ve experienced more after one short month in Blackmore than I did after a lifetime in California, and I don’t ever want to go back.
Bending over, I pick up my towel and wrap it around my body again. As I walk back to my room, I hum one of my favorite songs, refusing to let my mind become overtaken by the dark and depressing thoughts of my parents.
All I want is to spend the day under my heavy comforter, sleeping through this headache until I have the strength to conquer everything that’s been handed to me in the last hour.