Chapter 26 – Ava Jade
AVA JADE
T here was no way in hell I was taking the pain killers, too afraid they’d knock me out to the point of full unconsciousness. So, sleep was just not a thing likely to happen.
Sighing, I hauled my achy ass out of bed, gingerly touching the bandage on my shoulder.
The sharp edges of the stitches Rook sewed into my skin poked me through the gauze, and I winced but continued to prod the area, testing my motor ability with the new injury.
My knee was feeling all right after some ice and a borrowed knee brace from Grey.
But the shoulder was going to take some more time.
I could lift it until it was level with my face but no higher. At least the arrow hadn’t pierced anything too important. Or at least I hoped it hadn’t, only time would tell since going to the hospital was out of the question.
I flicked on the light switch and limped quietly to the bathroom, trying not to make too much noise as I splashed cool water over my face and down my neck to staunch the feverish heat from getting any stronger. Honestly? I half expected to find Corvus in here.
Or Grey. Fuck, even Rook.
Each of them insisted I sleep with them or at least down on the couch where they could watch over me.
I’d said fuck no on account of being absolutely exhausted and wanting to actually sleep, which I wouldn’t be doing with an audience or a bed buddy.
Turned out it didn’t matter anyway. Sleep was a no go regardless of whether I was alone in my dark room or not.
I inched the door on the other end of the bathroom open and peered out into the dim hall, lit only by the pre-dawn filtering in through the window down at the other end.
Corvus’ and Grey’s doors were shut, but Rook’s stood open, a draft whistling through to where I stood.
I bit my cheek, hurrying back into the loft to retrieve what I’d stolen from him a little while back. I wondered if he’d even noticed it was gone, but seeing as I found it tucked mostly behind an old photo on his dresser, I could see why he wouldn’t.
Hell, it made me wonder if my brilliant idea for a gift was even a good one if he kept it hidden away. Maybe he didn’t even like it.
Oh well. No going back now, and I had to return it to him eventually.
When I got back to his door, I pushed it open, poking my head inside. “Rook?” I whispered, squinting to see into the gloom as the smell that was uniquely Rook filled my lungs, making me smile.
“Out here,” came his whispered reply, and I followed his voice to the open window next to his bed, the dark curtain billowing inward in the breeze.
The dark shape of him sat outside on the roof, a blanket loosely pulled around his shoulders.
“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked as I crawled through the window to join him, the chill of the early morning air brushing over the bare skin on my arms and legs.
“No. You?”
He shook his head and lifted one side of the blanket, holding it open for me.
A muscle in my jaw ticked, but the hesitation only lasted a second before I curled up beside him, letting him drape the large furry blanket over my shoulders. His body heat enveloped me as I tugged the blanket around myself, huddling in closer to his side.
His fingers wrapped around the dip above my hip bone, tugging me against him with a small grunt. “You’re freezing.”
“It’s cold out here.”
“Nice though, isn’t it?”
I couldn’t disagree. It was nice. The fog that’d been clinging to my brain while lying in the stuffy loft had been blown away, replaced by a clarity only gained by inhaling clean, crisp air.
It seemed to have affected Rook in the same way. Though he was still tense, this was the calmest I’d seen him in days. Maybe even a week.
I wondered if the clean air was the only culprit or if something else had contributed.
We didn’t speak for a while, content to sit there, staring at the slowly brightening sky in each other’s warmth and company, but I’d come out here for a reason.
“So, um…”
“Hmm?” Rook said, coming out of whatever thought had taken him. He turned to me, his dark eyes searching my face.
“I’m not going to say it because Corvus sort of told me you don’t like to celebrate.”
His brows drew together.
Maybe this was a huge mistake.
“Everyone always forgot my birthday growing up. I mean, I didn’t care that much because when they did remember all I got was a gas station muffin with a lit match as a candle but…I guess I just thought maybe?—”
“What did you do, Ghost?”
I licked my suddenly very dry lips and reached into my Panama pants pocket, a slithering sensation of unease crawling through my gut.
“I found it in your room,” I explained as I tugged his hand close to me beneath the blanket and peeled back his fingers.
“It was broken, and I thought it might mean something to you so I…well I sort of gave it to this girl in my English Lit class whose dad owns a jewelry shop in town, and he fixed it.”
I placed the necklace into his palm and felt him jerk at the feel of it, his expression darkening.
Shit.
He didn’t speak for the longest moment, holding the necklace beneath the blanket while he stared off into the shadows of the trees across the drive.
“Fuck, I’m sorry,” I spluttered, heat growing in my cheeks and the tops of my ears. “I don’t even know what I was thinking. I should’ve just left it like Corvus said and?—”
His wide hand closed over my mouth, muffling my next word. “Stop talking,” he said, a strain in his voice as he slowly turned his attention back to me and dropped his side of the blanket to look down into his palm.
His warm hand came away from my face, and I stared down at the necklace, too. It looked so small in his large hand. So delicate.
The black diamond caught the pink light of the rising sun, and the brand-new clasp that the jeweler had to have custom made glinted like it was made of pure starlight on the thin white gold chain.
That, too, had been broken. Bent and twisted as though it’d been snatched off the neck of whoever had been wearing it.
I was dying to ask, but it was clear I’d already overstepped my bounds so I just waited instead, hoping he wouldn’t be too pissed that I’d touched it.
“It was my mother’s,” he said finally, just when the silence was starting to get too heavy to withstand.
“What happened to her?” I asked before I could stop myself, then added quickly. “You don’t have to answer that if you don’t want to.”
His lips quirked up slightly, making the tension behind my breastbone ease enough to breathe.
“She died,” he explained in a rough voice. “Childbirth.”
My stomach twisted.
“She was going to be famous, you know? Julia Clayton. The rising star; that’s what they called her.”
“Is she the woman in the photograph?”
He nodded, and I remembered the black-haired beauty from the picture frame on his dresser. I’d honestly thought it was whatever had come stock with the frame. The woman in the photo too beautiful to not have been retouched and edited to within an inch of her life.
But it made sense, if Rook was her son. Beautiful, lethal, Rook.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “Is that how you ended up at Barrettes Home for Boys?”
Something in his gaze shifted and his hand curled back around the necklace until his knuckles turned white.
“You’ve done some digging.”
I shrugged. “And you haven’t?”
“Me? No. But I can’t say the same of my brothers.”
I waited.
“Yes,” he said on a breath. “But I didn’t wind up there right away.
I was put into the care of my aunt for years before that.
She never missed an opportunity to remind me that I ruined her sister.
That she died so a little shit like me could live.
She didn’t bat an eye when her boyfriend took out his very particular brand of violence on me.
I think part of her wanted him to do it.
To punish me for taking my mother from this world. ”
“He’s the one who gave you these?” I gingerly brushed a finger over the scars on his arm, the ones hidden by all the ink covering his skin.
His upper lip curled and my inner fire burned hot, wanting retribution on his behalf. To scar the fucker in all the exact same places and in all the exact same ways as he’d scarred Rook before killing him slow.
“I thought I deserved it.”
“It wasn’t your fault she died.”
“I know. I didn’t back then, but I do now.
I found this journal she wrote in just before my aunt finally had enough of my shit and sent me away to the group home.
Everyone was telling her that having me would destroy her career.
That she should abort me and never tell the father.
She didn’t ever tell him, because apparently he was a fucking monster, but wrote that she did want me.
She wanted me more than she ever wanted anything else in her life. ”
“She sounds like an incredible woman.”
He smiled a sad smile. “I like to imagine she was. I don’t know what would’ve happened if I hadn’t found that journal, but soon after I went to Barrettes home for Boys, I met Grey. And not long after that, I went back to my aunt’s house on Sycamore Street and burned it down. With my uncle inside.”
“Good.”
His eyes met mine and something unspoken passed between us before he shifted, turning slightly to face me. Rook lifted the necklace between us, his face growing hard. “Will you wear it?”
My stomach flipped and my lips popped open in surprise, but he said nothing else, only waited for my response as the first rays of morning sun broke over the horizon, painting him in brilliant gold.
Everyone thought he was the devil, but I could see it now. In just the right light, he wasn’t a devil at all but an angel of justice. My dark prince.
Wordlessly, I turned, using my good arm to push all my hair out of the way, holding it up off my neck.
His hands brushed my collar, making me tremble as he draped the dainty chain around my throat, the black diamond weighing heavily in the dip of my clavicle.
Once he finished with the clasp, he brushed his thumb over the chain against the back of my neck, guiding me back to facing him.
His cheekbones flared as he took me in, in the dawn light, eyes passing between the necklace and my face. He smiled.
“It suits you.”
I touched the stone with my fingertips, a sense of belonging taking me so strongly that it hurt. Mixing with a heavy guilt so crushing that it took all the breath from my body.
In less than twenty-four hours I was going to meet with Officer Vick.
And thanks to Diesel’s admissions in the Deadwood, I actually had something I could give him.
If Diesel killed Foley with his bare hands and buried him at the edge of that cliff, his DNA would be all over the body.
I could take him down. I could take them all down.
But when I looked into Rook’s eyes…
His trusting, bleeding heart eyes.
How in the world could I ever betray him?
How could I ever betray them ?
Was it worth my freedom?
Did I even want to be free anymore?
Rook lifted a hand to trace the line of my cheekbone, pushing my hair back behind my ear in a move so gentle it sent shivers all the way to my toes.
“What is it?”
I schooled my face, blinking away what was definitely not fucking tears.
“I don’t deserve this.”
Amusement crossed his eyes, making them slant playfully as he leaned in to whisper against my lips. “You belong to us, Ghost. And we belong to you.”