“To end it, the house wants a blood sacrifice, but it has to come willingly. Otherwise it’ll just keep finding ways to break you down.”
There is a silence, loud and throbbing, like the pulse behind my eyes.
“What do you mean, a blood sacrifice?”
Lane’s jaw sets, the muscle twitching. “Means what it sounds like. You offer yourself to it as owner, your blood breaks the curse. But if you choose to stay, then it continues on and on, like this.”
I want to laugh. “So kill myself or be trapped here, ruled by stone and plaster?”
He looks at me, and for the first time there is something like fear in his eyes. “Yes. You can save yourself by staying. By letting the house have you.”
My mouth goes dry. The tea is suddenly undrinkable. “But if I take the deal, everyone else is free?”
He shrugs again, but it’s a broken motion. “That’s the hope. Maeve’s hope. But look, I don’t want to be free. This is the only home I’ve ever known. I may be trapped here, but it’smine, in a way. I don’t want to leave.” He looks at me for a moment, and his voice shrinks, as if he’s nervous to say what’s next. “I don’t want to lose you, either.
I stare at the table, at the mug between my hands, at the heat bleeding out into the cold air. I want to scream at him, to call him a liar, a coward, a child. But instead I say, “Tell me about your father.”
Lane blinks, caught off guard. “What?”
“You said you had nowhere else to go. You never talk about your life before this place. Why?”
He looks down, the lines around his mouth deepening. “There was no life before this. I was born here, remember? My father worked for your aunt. Groundskeeper. He was a good man at heart, but . . . couldn’t deal with the pain of being stuck here. Drank himself sick every night, sometimes didn’t wake up for days. My mom died when I was a kid, and after that, there was just me and the job. Hemlock was the only place that kept us both alive, even if it was killing us slow.”
There is a grief in Lane’s voice I have never heard before. I reach across the table, and this time, he takes my hand without hesitation. His grip is iron and shaking at the same time.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and this time I mean it for him, for his father, for all the ways the house has made us monsters.
He nods, but does not let go.
“You’re the only one who could break it,” he says. “But you can choose to leave here. Hope the house hasn’t claimed you fully and get out now. Never come back. But like I said, it will always call to you. No matter where you go, or what you do, it will have you dying to come back.”
I think of the house, the weight of it, the way every corridor curves back to the same center. I think of the hunger that lives here, and the way it never stops wanting.
I want to tell Lane that I can do it, that I am strong enough, that he is wrong about me. But the truth is, I am terrified.
I sit in the steam-thick dawn, my hand in his, and I let the fear have me. Just for a minute.
Outside, the frost blurs the edges of the world, and the only thing real is the pulse of Lane’s fingers around mine.
His thumb traces the inside of my wrist, the rough pad dragging along the line of vein, up toward the heel of my hand. The difference is microscopic—just a shift of pressure, the smallest claim of territory—but my whole body riots in response. The greenhouse is a jungle now, air so wet I could drink it, every surface glazed with sweat.
“I should have told you sooner,” Lane says, and his voice is so low it barely survives the trip from his mouth to my ear. His hand is enormous, but it cups mine with the same delicacy he used on the seedlings. I feel every scar, every patch of callus, the catalog of his years laid out in a topography of touch.
Something in me snaps. Not a break, but a letting go. If I’m to suffer from this decision, then I’m going to at least take what I want while I’m here.
I lean across the table, grab the back of Lane’s neck, and pull him toward me. The kiss is not gentle. It is a collision, the meeting of two bodies that have been denied too long and have no interest in ceremony. His mouth is hot, open, greedy; I taste earth and tea and the acid tang of something old and fermenting under his tongue.
Lane stands, pulling me up with him, and the stool goes over with a clatter. He backs me into the steel table, the edge digging into my hips, but I don’t care. I want bruises. I want proof.
His hands roam—up my arms, over my back, fisting inthe hem of my sweater. He lifts it off in a single, brutal motion, then strips off his own t-shirt. I can see the sweat pearling on his chest, can see the fine tremble in the muscle as he holds himself back from simply devouring me.
“Tell me to stop,” he says.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” I answer, and it is the first time I’ve ever heard myself sound truly alive.
He grins—a flash of wolf behind the beard—and drops to his knees. His hands make quick work of my jeans, button popped, zipper down, the fabric dragged off with such urgency that the pockets turn inside out and catch on my boots.
Lane yanks them off, tossing them somewhere into the undergrowth, and then he is at my thighs, spreading them with both hands, mouth hungry and unashamed.
