Velvet Thorns (The Broken Devotion Duet #1)

Prologue

PHOENIX

One, two, three, four, five… Breathe, Phoenix.

Halloween.

The devil’s holiday.

The one night a year everyone gets to hide behind a mask.

But I’ve been wearing mine far longer than that.

Mine isn’t stitched from fabric or bought from a store.

It’s built from silence and forged in guilt, and now, I’m walking toward the girl who saw through it—the only person who ever looked at my darkness and didn’t turn away.

It’s too late.

I already know that.

The girl who was made for me—who still does, and always fucking will, belong to me—has learned how to survive without me.

I should admire that about her, but I don't.

I fucking loathe it.

When Ava ran her mouth and told me Brandon Michaelson was planning to ask Shannen to the dance just to rip her apart in front of everyone, I was two seconds away from snapping a neck.

His, hers. Didn’t fucking matter.

Maybe anyone dumb enough to think she’s fair game.

Bets were already being made on how fast they could make her cry, and Ava—fucking Ava—laughed when she said it. She blinked those fake lashes at me like she didn’t just toss a lit match straight into the heart of an obsession I’ve spent the last couple of years barely keeping under control.

Something final inside me snapped in that moment.

It was rage. The kind that tastes like copper and sounds like knuckles splitting bone. But underneath my fury lives shame—soul-sickening shame that I won’t ignore a minute longer.

I carved Shannen out of my life like she was the problem, when really it was me.

I threw her away for locker room claps, fake smiles, and the illusion of power, like some pathetic, approval-starved little bitch begging to be loved by people who’d feed me to the wolves the second I stopped being useful.

I’m pretty sure it comes from my deep-rooted daddy issues.

Maybe all those years of getting beaten and being told I was a fucking disappointment rewired my brain until her friendship, as pure and unconditional as it was, felt insufficient.

But here’s the screwed-up part: It was always enough. She was more than enough.

It was Shannen’s voice that silenced the demons my father planted in my head, and yet I still threw her away like she meant nothing.

I didn’t set out to destroy her, but intention doesn’t matter when the result is the same. I broke the most beautiful thing I’ve ever touched and did it with my bare hands. That’s on me.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry.

The art room is dressed like a low-budget haunted house. Plastic bats dangle from the ceiling, while a rotting pumpkin slumps on the windowsill, its carved mouth sagging at one corner. Someone’s taped fake-blood handprints across the inside of the glass, and it drips red like the walls are crying.

Breathe. Just breathe.

In. Out. Again.

Shannen Clarke.

My beginning and my end, my heaven and my hell, all wrapped into one perfect, devastating package.

I move toward the easel—four down, three to the left—where she stands with a paintbrush clutched between her fingers.

Her blonde hair is scraped back into a ponytail, with messy strands falling loosely around her face.

Her black-rimmed glasses sit low on the bridge of her nose as they always do, like they’re one breath away from slipping off, but they never do.

She’s needed a new pair for years, but when you grow up in a house where nobody gives a single fuck if you can see or even breathe, you learn real quick not to expect anyone to take care of you.

Nobody around here will hire her either.

She’s the kid of the town’s waste-of-oxygen deadbeats, so the stain sticks.

It doesn’t matter that she’s never touched a needle, never stolen anything, and never done half the shit they whisper about behind her back.

People see her last name on an application and decide the poison must run in the bloodline.

But Shannen’s nothing like her parents. She’s light in its purest form, and they’re the kind of rancid shit you can smell before you see.

She looks so goddamn cute it hurts.

She looks almost the same as she did at fourteen, back when I first realized I’d set the world on fire just to keep her warm.

She’s nearly eighteen now, but nothing’s changed.

She’s still so achingly familiar. She's still the girl I’d lie beneath the stars with while she traced constellations on my back with fingers that felt like salvation, whispering stories about a future I could only hope for and never believed Ideserved.

She was hope when I didn’t have any, and I threw it all away. I hate myself for it. I hate that I once had everything I ever wanted right in my hands, and I let my damage and ego smash it to pieces.

I’ll never forget the first time I saw her when we were both fourteen, sitting alone at opposite ends of a lunch table.

I remember glancing up and catching her eye, and I was mesmerized because they’re the most vivid shade of gold.

Something inside me shifted, something permanent, and I knew even then that she would be important to me.

All I’d ever known was the kind of darkness that breeds in broken homes.

A father whose love language was violence and walls that absorbed blood and tears like they were built for it.

But Shannen was something else entirely.

She had this soft voice, like she was afraid of being too much for the world, and her hair caught the light like it was spun from the sun itself.

She was gentle in a way I’d never seen before and the closest thing to an angel I’d ever laid eyes on.

She became my lunch buddy that whole first year, and maybe that’s when I fell for her. No, not maybe. I know it was then because I still remember the moment she marked my soul as hers.

“I’ve claimed you now,” she whispered once, golden eyes burning into mine, promising and threatening me all at once. “In this school full of assholes, you’re mine, and I’m yours, got it? This is where we’re happiest. Not because it’s good, but because at least here, we’re not at home.”

Home for me was fists through drywall, blood on the carpet, and me lying in bed with my hands clenched tight while my mom took punches three feet away and acted like she didn’t.

For her, it was junkie parents who forgot she existed until her piece-of-shit father pissed the bed she was sleeping in and had the audacity to blame her.

Home was survival, but Shannen was the first person who didn’t ask me to survive. She just wanted me to stay.

Bleed if you have to. Break if you must. Just don’t leave.

Those were the rules we both lived by until I went and fucked it all to hell.

I’m closing the distance, and my heart’s thudding so violently it’s a miracle my chest isn’t splitting open with the force of it. Any second now, it’s gonna tear free, drop to the floor, and crawl to her like a pathetic, bleeding thing, begging for something I sure as hell don’t deserve.

Forgiveness .

She was the light I probably never deserved.

Instead of holding onto it, I spent the last couple of years convincing myself I didn’t want it, letting her fade into the background of my life, while I played the part of someone I thought I was supposed to be, all to fit in with people I fucking despise.

As I walk toward her for the first time in too long, I feel every inch of that choice like a weight crushing down on my spine.

The days I looked straight through her in the hallway, the snide jokes I didn’t shut down when those bastards talked shit about her, and the nights I lay awake staring at my ceiling, wondering if she pressed her face into her pillow and cried herself to sleep because of me.

I stop in front of her. She knows I’m standing here. There’s no way she doesn’t, yet she keeps painting like I’m nothing more than background noise. That angel light she used to shine on me is gone. She burns dark for me now, and I know I’m the one who snuffed her out.

“You’re really gonna act like I don’t exist?” I ask,as if two years haven’t passed since I tossed her aside like she was an option .

She doesn’t even flinch. The brush in her hand just continues to casually move across the canvas. “Haven’t you been doing that for years now?”

And she’s right.

It’s brutally fucking fair.

The moment I made the football team in my junior year, everything changed.

I pulled that red and white jersey over my shoulders, and people started chanting my name.

I let it get inside my head. I allowed it to change me, and I became a stranger in my own skin.

My quiet lunches with her turned into parties with people who cheered louder for touchdowns than they ever would for kindness.

I traded our little moments of peace for cheerleaders and the guys on the team—idiots who only liked me when I was winning.

I chose popularity, and I left her behind.

Yeah, I fucking sucked as a friend. That’s why I’m getting the silent treatment.

She hasn’t spoken a single word to me in almost two years, and while I haven’t exactly fought for her, pretending she doesn’t exist is starting to split me open from the inside out.

I’ve tried every way I know to numb it—I’ve drowned myself in parties, let the quarterback crown sit heavy on my head, and smiled when people worshipped me.

The truth is, none of it means shit without her.

“I need to talk to you,” I say, the words scraping out of me because I can’t keep going on like this. I can't keep pretending I'm not dying without her.

She starts to laugh. It’s vicious and mean, and I fucking hate it.

“It’s not funny,” I snap. “This isn’t easy for me.”

She raises her eyebrows like she’s surprised I’d even say that out loud. “Oh, I’m sorry. Are you worried your little friends might see you talking to me?”