Chapter 40 – Grey
GREY
TEN DAYS LATER
“ A re you just going to keep pretending like it never happened?”
Rook stiffened on his way back from his morning shower, the muscle in his back going rigid as he turned and shook the water droplets from his hair, tossing it out of his face. “What’s with the ambush?”
“You tried to kill yourself, Rook.”
“Today, Bro? Really? It’s fucking Christmas.”
I set my jaw, not budging from his door.
“Fine.” He sighed, brushing past me into his dark bedroom, tossing the towel on the bed to throw on a pair of jeans. He zipped them over his junk commando and perched on the end of his bed. “Well, come in.”
I stepped into the room and shut the door behind me, flicking on the rarely used overhead light. He shied away from the assaulting brightness, his upper lip curling. “Ghost will be awake soon, I wanted to be there when?—”
“This will only take a minute. I’m not going to ruin her Christmas morning.”
“You’re just going to ruin mine, then?”
“You got something to tell me?”
I cocked my head at him, waiting for him to fill in the blank so I didn’t have to. I didn’t make accusations like this one lightly, but I knew my brother well enough to know when he was on drugs. I should’ve seen it sooner, but that night in that fucking bunker cemented it.
Rook was a lot of things, but he wasn’t suicidal.
Unless he was coming down. Then we had to stop him from offing himself in a blaze of glory almost weekly.
It was the ugly, bitter truth we never spoke of.
Other people saw the violence and the bloodshed.
They saw the crazy when he was high, but they didn’t see him come down.
No, those precious fucking moments were reserved only for us. And we’d kept them only to us for his sake. But I wasn’t going through that shit again. If he was using, he was going to get clean now, and I didn’t care how much he fucking screamed for a fix this time.
How had we missed this?
I felt like a failure for letting it get this far.
I surveyed his eyes under the light, my hands itching to tear apart his entire room drawer by drawer, floorboard by floorboard. I’d find it. It was only a matter of time.
“ Rook ,” I pushed when he didn’t answer.
“You seem to have it all figured out, Brother. You don’t need me to tell you.”
My cheekbones flared, but I reined it in. It wouldn’t help to get angry, it would only make him combative and we’d get nowhere. “You admit it, then? You’re using?”
He leaned over his spread knees, pressing his face into his palms. “I was,” he muttered.
“Was?”
“Yeah. When Ghost was gone.”
“And what, you just stopped?”
He lifted his chin, narrowing his black eyes on me.
“She knew,” he said. “She knew right off. That first night at the hospital she cornered me about it in a fucking janitors closet. The look in her eyes… fuck … I never wanted to see that shit again. I crushed what I had left under my boot and rode out the withdrawals. Didn’t you wonder why she was in my room all those nights after the hospital? ”
My face screwed up. I had wondered, but I thought that was just where she wanted to be. That she’d chosen Rook those nights, and I’d been doing my fucking best not to be jealous about it. Not to mention the fact that at the time I figured she’d never want to share my bed again, anyway.
“We weren’t having a goddamned picnic,” he admitted. “She took care of me. Made sure I was okay. I asked her to wait for me to tell you guys myself once we’d gotten through all the shit with the Kings. There was enough to worry about.”
I studied him carefully once more, and found pupils dilated normally under the light. Color in his face. That lazy grace about him where he’d be on edge and constantly moving if he were high.
“You’re really clean?”
“Yes.”
I nodded to myself, letting that settle.
“Does Corv know?” Rook asked.
“He’d have skinned you alive already if he did, but I think he suspects. Not much gets past him.”
“Spit it out,” Rook said when I didn’t continue, knowing there was more I was hesitating to say.
“Look, I know it wasn’t really you…” I started, knowing I needed to get this out before I could go wake up my girl and enjoy the moment we’d all been waiting for.
“But fuck you for thinking if she was gone that you wouldn’t have anything else to live for.
That’s horseshit and you know it, and I fucking hate you for it, drugs or no drugs. ”
“I deserve that.”
I crossed the floor to him and jerked him onto his feet and into a hug. Hating that I almost lost two of the most important people in my life because of that motherfucker. “You’re lucky you’re clean or you’d be spending Christmas locked up tighter than Carson.”
Rook barked a laugh in my ear, slapping me on the back. No one would ever be locked up tighter than Carson.
“Are you going to tell her?” I asked as I pulled away, watching his eyes for the truth of his answer, but they’d already gone dead.
When AJ woke up after surgery with all of us surrounding her, all she wanted to know was where Carson was and if the Kings were all dead.
There wasn’t a whole lot of opportunity for Rook to slip into casual conversation that he almost fucking offed himself in a manic depressive fit at seeing her dead on the floor.
“I should,” he replied, dropping his gaze. “I don’t want any secrets between us.”
I squeezed his shoulder. “It’s your call, man. I think she’d understand.”
“Yeah, after she ate me for breakfast.”
I laughed. “Well don’t worry about it today. It’s Christmas.”
“Speaking of…” Rook said with a wry smile, going to gather her things from the top of his dresser. “We told her we’d be there when she wakes up.”
“Then let’s go.”
I checked the surveillance app on my phone for the fifth time this morning as we made our way through to the loft.
On the live feed, I watched Carson shouting manically at whoever was currently stationed to watch him.
There would be at least three Saints there, surrounding the cage in the underbelly of Sanctum.
Having to listen to him squawk and scream for hours at a time without reprieve.
Whatever switch he’d managed to keep off in his brain all this time had been flipped and the true Carson Bates was out to play in all his pathetic glory.
This feed was the only reason any of us could stand having her be alone without one of us there with her. Though she rarely was. One of us crawled into her bed in the loft with her almost every night. Taking turns. Last night Corv stayed with her so he’d already be there at her side.
It was harder than any of us wanted to admit not to take a little detour into town and carve off pieces of him to bring back and lay at AJ’s feet.
But he was hers to do with what she deemed fit.
She would get the first taste of blood, and the last. Once she was ready.
And today, with the all-clear from the doc for her to move around more than the twelve hundred square feet of the Nest allowed, it was time.
Her drains came out a few days ago and with the breathing exercises, her lung was expanding as it should be. The bullet wound was healing nicely. The scar almost a perfect match to the one Carson put in her best friend.
Marking them as sisters. Twins.
“Shit, did you do the decorations?” I whisper hissed before we reached the loft. I’d completely fucking forgotten. We were supposed to set them up after her sleep meds kicked in.
“Took care of it early this morning. Couldn’t sleep,” Rook whispered back. “You should see Corv when he sleeps with her, I’ve never seen the guy so relaxed. Had his fucking mouth open and everything.”
“No shit?”
Rook nodded, waving an arm for me to hurry up and fuck if I wasn’t excited.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d looked forward to a Christmas this much.
Diesel did his best for us, but we were already mostly grown when he adopted us and the season seemed to always remind him of Jacqueline We’d do a big turkey dinner and he’d hand us a stack of bills and a beer and say not to spend it all in one place.
This one was going to be different.
The tiny box in my pocket felt like it was going to burn right through and my mouth went dry again, worrying about whether or not she would like it.
Rook flipped on a switch when we entered the loft on quiet feet and hundred tiny lights flickered on, illuminating the space in white and red light. They draped across the ceiling, wrapped around the columns, draped over the headboard. Fanned across one entire wall.
Corvus startled awake, reaching for the gun under his pillow before he saw us standing there amid the pinkish glow. He rubbed his eyes, looking around himself like he’d just woken up in fucking candyland.
He might as well have. “What the fuck did you do?” he hissed quietly, trying not to wake her, rubbing his eyes.
“You like? I think it’s got pizzazz, don’t you?”
AJ stirred, letting out a small groan as she turned from her back onto her side, pulling her knees in close as she squeezed her eyes tighter. “No,” she moaned, her voice still raspy, but nothing could ruin the perfection of slightly grouchy, sleepy AJ. She held up a hand. “Five more minutes.”
“It’s Christmas,” Rook argued, going to kneel at her bedside, trying to pull the covers down from her face.
She dropped three fingers. “Two minutes then.”
“Come on, Ghost, open your eyes.”
“You better have coffee.”
I winced. We forgot that part. Probably my fault.
“On it,” Rook said, jumping to his feet, giving me a look that fully confirmed it was in fact my fault before racing through the Nest to get our girl her cuppa.
Corvus cleared his throat, still eyeing the lights like he might try to shoot out each one individually as he pushed up to lean against the headboard. “How the hell did he manage to do this while we were sleeping?”
The question was clearly rhetorical, but AJ answered it anyway. “Admit it, you’re a big softy for your Sparrow.”