Chapter 12 – Corvus
CORVUS
T here were a few things I was good at that didn’t involve violence. Cooking being one of them.
I spooned the honey Dijon white-wine sauce over the roasted chicken and potatoes, laying small sprigs of thyme on each. I wrung my hands in the tea towel, sighing as I hesitated to bring Ava Jade’s plate in to her.
The television in the living room remained quiet as she flicked through the options on one of the streaming services Grey had hooked up to the TV. She’d been trying to decide for nearly twenty minutes already. At this rate, I wasn’t sure if she would find anything at all.
I set down the tea towel on the counter and scooped up the plates, bringing them to the living room. Breaking my own rules. We never ate in the living room. Dinners, at least when I made them, were eaten together at the kitchen island.
It wasn’t the only rule I was going to have to bend if I wanted Ava Jade to hold me in the same regard as she did my brothers. If I wanted her to stop hating me. Did I want her to stop hating me?
I shook my head, upper lip twitching at the idiocy of the internal question. Of fucking course I didn’t want her to hate me. It was just easier that way...in the beginning.
“Hey,” I said gruffly as I walked into the living room, the hot plates burning into my palms. “You hungry?”
She didn’t turn from where she sat cross legged on the long couch to the right of the room, her side profile facing the television.
Showing off the regal shape of her face.
“I already ate dinner,” she muttered, shifting on the cushion as she finally settled on something to watch. Cueing up a Marvel movie.
My grip on the plates tightened. “I didn’t ask you that. I asked if you were hungry.”
I couldn’t help the tinge of acid in my voice and I cleared my throat to get rid of it, clamping down to get a hold on myself, purging myself of the angry thoughts vying for dominion in my mind.
She set the remote down on the table and peeked up at me, catching sight of the plates in my hands. Piled high with perfectly roasted chicken and potatoes and buttered carrots.
“Touché,” she replied, the smallest smirk on her lips. “I’m always hungry.”
“Just like Grey.”
“Why is that?” she asked as I closed the distance between us and handed her a plate.
“You’ll have to ask him. It’s not my story to tell.”
“What is your story then?” she pushed as I went to sit on the armchair across the coffee table from her. My back muscles tight and head heating as the hideous memories flooded my skull.
A small grumbling sound escaped my throat as I fought them back and my Sparrow frowned, dropping her head to her plate. “Sorry, not my business.”
“No, it’s not.”
Fuck. There I went again, but I couldn’t help it.
Appetite thoroughly ruined, I set my plate down on the coffee table and leaned back in the chair to watch the movie, attempting to clear the poison seeping in.
The pop pop of gunfire. The feel of their blood, hot at first, and then later, sticky and cold and stinking. The gore of it all. The numbness. The darkness. The whispers…
Not even Rook and Grey knew what led me to be brought in by the state, left with not a single blood relative to care for me.
The only one who did was Diesel. I had a different name, then.
Diesel wanted us to keep our surnames when he adopted us.
Until we were adults, old enough to make the decision for ourselves.
The St. Crow name was a dangerous one to call your own.
He wanted us to be certain we wanted to wear it.
We all planned to take the name after graduation, becoming the Crows we’ve always been in practice on paper.
James wasn’t my last name, though. It was my middle name.
I’d never own to my true surname. Not ever.
I couldn’t fucking wait to change it. I begged Diesel when I was younger, but he told me it was important to remember where I came from.
That I didn’t have to use the name, but I had to bear it until I came of age.
I came of age last year and Grey suggested we all wait until graduation to make it official. What was another year after being forced to carry it for over ten?
I switched to watching my Sparrow when the movie did little to help distract me. Already over halfway through her meal, she closed her eyes briefly with every bite she took, unable to hide how much she enjoyed it.
Her cutting blue-gray eyes caught me staring and she pulled the fork from between her lips with a small blush. “Where did you learn to cook?”
“Diesel taught me some things,” I replied, and she lowered her brows as though she hadn’t been expecting that response.
“What? Does it surprise you that a gang leader would be a good cook?”
“Well, kind of, yeah .”
I bit out a short laugh. “Well, he only got me started. Showed me some of the recipes his wife used to make before she passed. The rest I taught myself. I like food that tastes good.”
“What happened to her?”
I resisted the urge to bark at her. The second-hand pain of her loss I’d had to feel from my surrogate father since the day he adopted me swelling in my chest.
“She died,” I said simply, realizing how my fingers were curling into the armrest of the chair. I loosened them and coughed to clear my throat, lifting my plate again to try to force myself to eat. If I wasn’t going to fucking sleep, I knew I needed to at least eat well.
“I gathered that,” Sparrow murmured, but she didn’t press the question.
I only knew the gist of it anyway, heard from the other Saints, but never from Diesel himself. He’d been injured in a shootout, hospitalized, and on the brink of death.
His wife, strongest woman I’d ever heard of, led the attack on the offending gang.
She’d planned it expertly. Not a single Saint lost their life that night, but there was a reason you never heard the name Viper anywhere in Cali after that.
She wiped them from the face of the earth. Vengeance for her lover.
All the Vipers dead except for one.
The leader’s son, hiding like a coward from the fight. It was his bullet that ended her once the fighting was through.
The Saints held him until Diesel was ready to deal with him himself. I shuddered to think what was done to him, but I know that if it were me, he’d have suffered for days before I allowed him to die. Weeks even.
I watched Ava Jade finish her meal and set the plate down, leaning back to drop a hand onto her belly. What would I do if someone took her from me?
She was mine .
Ours.
Grey needed to hurry up with decrypting those messages from her phone.
Diesel needed him again tonight, to help with some tax shit that was past due.
But Grey promised he’d be on it as soon as he was finished with that.
Rook tagged along with him, happy to drink at Sanctum to allow me some time to try to repair what I had broken with Ava Jade.
She caught me watching her again and winced, shifting awkwardly. “Are you a good baker, too?” she asked, changing the subject.
“Why?”
She shrugged. “I like cake.”
I snorted.
“I’m not bad,” I told her. “It’s Rook’s birthday soon. He doesn’t like to celebrate it, but I usually make a cake anyway. No candles or any of that shit. Just a big ass chocolate cake.”
“Chocolate’s my favorite, too.”
“Of course it is.”
She tipped her head to one side, considering me before going back to watching her movie.
I half expected her to have fled when I went to pick her up a couple hours ago, but there she was at the door, ready to go when I knocked. If not a little grumpy. Rook had been right after all. She wasn’t going anywhere.
She knew what running would get her.
I finished firing off an email to Max on my phone, getting last minute details sorted before the upcoming show.
Later tonight, I’d have to finish the new song I was working on if I planned to unveil it in Lodi.
And I needed the others to help me once I was through.
Rook was mad good at syncing everything together for me and Grey was the only one I trusted to make the lyrics really hit .
Though showing them the song would mean admitting to them what I’d only just managed to admit to myself…
“So,” I asked after Ava Jade clicked through to start another movie once the credits rolled on the first one. “Did you decide where you want to sleep?”
She shrugged. “I’m good here. I probably won’t sleep anyway.”
I snorted. You and me both.
My phone buzzed in my hand, and I looked down to see a reply from Max and a text from Grey.
GREY
How goes it? You kill each other yet?
I covertly snapped a pic of her across the room, illuminated only by the bluish light flickering out from the TV in the dark room. I sent it.
CORVUS
Still alive.
GREY
Why are you sitting so far away? Go and sit with her.
My teeth clenched.
I glanced at the two empty cushions next to Ava Jade and pressed my lips into a tight line. My attention snagged on the outlet by the wall at one end of the couch, and the charger cord sticking out of it.
My phone still had twenty percent battery but it could use a charge.
Clearing my throat, I rose, crossing the room to fall casually into the cushion at the far end of the couch, reaching for the cord to plug in my phone.
Sparrow raised a brow at me as I settled the phone onto the armrest and turned back to the TV.
“Needs a charge,” I explained, leaning back to watch the next Marvel movie in the queue.
CORVUS
Anything from her phone yet?
GREY
I haven’t had a chance. Diesel needs this done before the start of the business day tomorrow. I’m on it as soon as I’m done.
CORVUS
This needs to take priority. I’m about three seconds from tying her up and forcing her to tell me herself.
GREY
Because that will get you all the brownie points…
CORVUS
Fuck off. You know something isn’t right about that shit. Becca said herself that she didn’t send Ava Jade the messages. We made a deal. I play nice so long as you get us those messages so that we can see what the fuck is up for ourselves.
GREY
I know. Don’t worry man, I’ll get it done.
I clicked off the phone with a sigh and caught Ava Jade sneaking glances at me from the corner of her eye, curious about the rapid-fire text conversation I just had, but not curious enough to ask. Not enough to want to appear like she cared.
I wasn’t sure how long we sat like that, quietly watching Marvel movies until my eyes burned like the fire of a thousand suns and the muscles around my right eye began to twitch.
Until my Sparrow slumped over on the couch, curling herself up in a tight ball on the two cushions between me and the other end of the couch, doing her absolute best not to touch me.
It wasn’t much longer until she fell asleep, though her face never completely softened. A tightness lingered around her eyes even though her breathing evened out and her mouth softened. Free of any of the sharp edges I was used to seeing.
Instinctively, I reached down to lightly brush a lock of hair from her cheek and she stirred, making a small sound of malcontent as she tried to stretch out her legs and was stopped by the arm of the sofa.
Without consciously thinking about it, I guided her to my lap, softly lifting her head as she did all the work of moving herself up with her feet braced and stretching against the armrest.
Her eyes fluttered open for a second and I held my breath, removing my hands from her shoulders, but she didn’t fully wake, only enough to snuggle down, sighing as she fell back asleep.
Her hand brushed against my cock, and if she didn’t stop nuzzling it, she was going to get a really rude awakening when it fully hardened. I gritted my teeth, multiplying math equations in my head until she settled and I could breathe again.
Extra carefully this time, I brushed her hair back, studying the curve of her face. She shivered at my touch. I tugged the throw blanket down from the top of the backrest and draped it over her, laying an arm over her shoulder to hold her there.
That tightness around her eyes loosened as she fell into a deeper state of sleep, her breaths coming slower.
Her perfect lips parting just slightly. She really was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.
I may not have thought so at first, but now.
..I couldn’t imagine anyone I’d ever want more than I wanted her.
My chest tightened, and I ground my teeth against the ache. I already had too many people to keep alive, and I’d shatter if any of them were taken from me. I couldn’t lose anyone else I cared about. I couldn’t afford to care about anyone else.
I relaxed as the realization set in and a hopeless sort of wonder took hold.
It didn’t matter.
It was too late.
She was already my Sparrow.
And I was already her Crow.