Chapter 10 – Grey
GREY
I couldn’t believe the two of them. How either of them thought for a second that their little prank would be funny was beyond my fucking ability to understand. What I felt in that horrible moment when I saw her there on the floor, pale and bloodied and still…
It was unlike anything I’d ever felt before.
The loss .
The terror.
The fucking pain.
All felt through a sieve of numbness. Like I was in a nightmare. Like it wasn’t real. Couldn’t be real. Like I was beside myself, not really inside the cage of my bones anymore, but forced to bear witness as a phantom bystander. Able to feel all the pain, but unable to do anything to make it stop.
A prank.
A fucking prank .
More like a slap in the face, but maybe one I deserved for not trusting my brother. He’d crawled and clawed his way to the man he was now since Barrettes Home for Boys and since the years we don’t talk about that came after.
My bicep ached and burned as I lifted the dumbbell for the last rep of the set, grimacing as I lowered it down to the ground for a moment before switching sides.
Across the home gym we built into half the garage last year, Rook pummeled a heavy bag, dancing around it like there wasn’t anyone or anything else in the room.
I gritted my teeth as I began reps on the left side, watching his lithe body strike blow after blow, ducking low, keeping his face protected.
Funnily enough, their prank wasn’t what kept me up half the night.
I truly didn’t know whether I wanted to punch him in the face or pat him on the back. I’d been vacillating between the two since I walked in on them last night in the kitchen.
As if my brother knew exactly where my head was, hadn’t spoken to me at all since he came in to train twenty minutes ago. He just gave me a nod and went about his business. Patiently waiting for me to make up my mind between that punch or that pat. Happy to accept whatever I decided on.
She’s good for him , the logical part of my mind argued.
I’d already noticed some positive changes in him over the past few weeks.
The itch he usually had by now wasn’t nearly as prominent.
He was drinking a bit less. He seemed happy.
And not I-just-killed-someone happy, but actually happy.
Rook never trained in the mornings, either.
He reserved mornings for late wake-ups, spiked OJ, and the inevitable shouting from Corv for him to move his ass.
I wanted to be happy for him, but there was the other part of me—the one that whispered through clenched teeth she’s mine .
I had her first, after all.
She liked me best, didn’t she?
But didn’t she also like Rook? And even on some level, Corvus, too?
We’d shared before. Once or twice. But those girls didn’t matter. Not like AJ.
Inside the Nest, I heard heavy footsteps thudding down stairs and sighed, letting the dumbbell back down to the mat for a stretch and a break before my next set. Whatever he was coming to say, I didn’t want a dumbbell in my hand when he said it. As it was right now, I was liable to throw it at him.
He came home in the early hours of the morning, not bothering to be quiet as he parked his Ducati and entered the house. He spent the hours leading to dawn pacing his room or rifling through the kitchen. I was having a hard enough time sleeping as it was without his noise keeping me up.
Corvus stepped through the open door to the garage, his back raised and jawline tense. “Why aren’t you watching her?” he demanded of Rook, his bloodshot blue eyes laser focused on my brother.
Rook fell back a step, wiping the sweat from his upper lip before lowering his wrapped fists. He pointed two fingers at himself. “Me?”
Corvus’ brows lowered, his cheekbones flaring.
“She’s asleep,” Rook defended. “Besides man, she ain’t going anywhere.”
“If she does, it’s on you to explain that shit to Dies.”
“Fine.”
But Corvus wasn’t finished, his shoulders shook so slightly that if you didn’t know him well enough to know the signs of his anger, you’d never notice. And right now, Corvus was furious, and he had something else to say.
“Fine,” he growled. “Maybe you want to explain to me why she’s naked in your bed, then?”
...so I guessed we weren’t going to be talking about their little prank last night then.
Rook raised a dark brow at him. “You’re smart enough to figure that one out.”
His nostrils flared for a moment before he turned his rage on me. “And you?” he pressed. “You’ve fucked her too, haven’t you? And don’t fucking lie to me.”
I lengthened my spine, standing to place the dumbbell back onto the rack with a sigh.
“I did,” I admitted, my tone filled with more animosity than I intended. I never lied to him. I never lied to either of them. Except for her. To protect her.
When I turned around, crossing my arms as I leaned against the half rack, he was still watching me. That animalistic gleam in his eyes told me he was on the very precipice of his control. I’d never seen him this bad this often. Maybe he was right. AJ was a threat. She might just be the death of us.
But oh what a sweet death it would be.
As I began to come up with ways I might restrain him if he actually went feral, something in his stare changed and the muscles near his cheekbones twitched as he began to calm and eventually to sag, sighing heavily.
He wiped a palm over his mouth, partially covering a shaky breath.
“I don’t get it,” he said finally, no longer looking at either of us, but searching the mats at his feet instead, like they might hold an answer he was seeking. “Why…” he started but stopped.
“Why not you?” Rook supplied, and I squinted at him, confused.
That wasn’t what I thought Corvus was getting at, but I could see it now. The tightness between his eyes. The set of his shoulders. He was angry, yes, but he was fucking jealous, too.
When Corvus didn’t reply, giving away the truth, Rook stopped the heavy bag from swinging gently back and forth and began unwrapping his hands, squatting to sit on a low weight-lifting bench. “Because you’re a complete and utter dick.”
I cleared my throat to cover a laugh. “He’s right,” I agreed. “And a controlling asshole to boot.”
“When it comes to Ava Jade, at least,” Rook added, and I snorted.
“Name someone he’s not a controlling dickhead with?”
“Don’t fucking push me right now,” Corvus warned and, rolling his shoulders back. “I’m only like that with her because she?—”
“She likes to push your buttons?” Rook interrupted with a mischievous smirk.
“Because she refuses to be controlled?” I added.
“Oh!” Rook blurted. “I know, because you want her all to yourself and you can’t stand the thought of her wanting us more than she wants you. Is that it?”
I grimaced.
“Low blow, brother,” I leaked out through another grimace.
Corvus’ face reddened for a second before the blood drained back out.
“I already want to skin you alive for that fucking shit you pulled last night, Rook. Don’t. Push. Me. ”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s not because of that,” he said. “Not just that, anyway. It’s…”
“Because you care about her?”
I could see it now and wasn’t sure how I hadn’t seen it clearly before.
Corvus cared about Ava Jade. Similar to how he cared about us.
It wasn’t just control for the sake of control.
He didn’t give a flying fuck what happened to any other girl, or many of Diesel’s men.
He didn’t try to control them because he didn’t care about them.
He was a controlling prick with us because he cared. He demanded a reply when he texted because he cared. He wouldn’t let Ava Jade out of our sight for the same reason. I doubted it had anything to do with Diesel’s orders at all.
He just didn’t understand her—the things she needed. What she would and wouldn’t tolerate or understand. She didn’t know him. How could she when he was always so busy erecting walls to cage himself in?
“Admitting it doesn’t make you weak,” I continued. “We all care about her.”
Corvus opened his mouth with a rebuttal, but I shut him up with a glare. “Don’t lie to me,” I said, turning his own words against him. “Lie to yourself if you want, but don’t lie to us.”
“If you were right, which I’m not saying you are…” He trailed off, and I caught Rook rolling his eyes when Corv wasn’t looking. “How would I... you know ...make it up to her?”
“Stop being such a dick, for starters,” Rook put in, going back to the heavy bag bare-fisted for another few hits.
“You could try giving her some trust. Some freedom.”
His upper lip curled.
“Or...you could try flowers?”
He blinked at me like I just said the stupidest thing in the world. “All right, yeah, that won’t work for AJ.” I thought about it. “You owe her a blade, don’t you?”
“I say get her a flamethrower,” Rook grunted between hits.
“You’re not getting a flamethrower,” I told him.
“It’s not for me, it’s for her,” he argued, pausing.
“Sure it is.”
“You really think I can fix this?” Corvus asked, stopping my and Rook’s little sidebar stone dead. “She hates me.”
I shook my head. “Not as much as you think she does.”
“She’s one of us,” Rook said to Corvus, his heaving breaths evening out as he sniffed and reached for his water bottle. He fixed Corvus with a hard stare as he took a swig and set the bottle back down, his stare never wavering. “You said so yourself last night. Remember?”
“I didn?—”
“ You did ,” Rook barked. “She’s a Crow and you know it. She belongs to us... and we belong to her. The sooner you both stop fighting it, the sooner we can all be exactly what we’re meant to.”