48. Rowan
FORTY-EIGHT
ROWAN
The common area was quiet when we strolled in, so I made for Lilly’s quarters, hoping she hadn’t decided to head off to sleep just yet. She was like a slumbering bear—if you woke her up, you were in for a very angry interaction.
Nash, still covered in blood, stared straight ahead, as if he wasn’t bleeding from the fucking jaw on both sides like a damn river of red.
And the fuckstick, Clyde, dangled limply over my shoulder, still reeking of piss—thankfully, I had a tarp in the car I could wrap him in so I didn’t get any on me, but still. It reeked.
All in all, not a good day.
Nothing had gone according to plan. Everything was spiraling out of control. All I wanted to do was drop off this dead weight, take a fucking shower, and crawl into bed next to Harper.
It’d been too long since I saw her face. Smelled the soft scent of shampoo in her hair. Felt her satiny skin against my own. Her fingers in my locs, twirling them around as she giggled lightly.
Fuck.
I wouldn’t make the mistake of letting her go a second time.
I knocked absently on Lilly’s door, and before I could pull my hand away, she was opening the damn thing, staring us down like we were the spawn of satan, come to pay her back for some crime she’d committed in a past life.
"What the fuck is this?" She waved wildly in Nash’s direction, and I shook my head.
"Don’t ask."
"I just did."
Nash blinked, still miles away but somehow mildly coherent. "I was just telling Bonnie how I got my scars, boss."
Lilly snapped her fingers in front of his face, frowning. "I think you went a little too far during vivid storytime mode, bud."
"I’ll deal with him later. Can you just tell me where you want me to put this sack of worthless shit?"
Lilly leaned in and sniffed, crinkling her nose at the stench. "The basement, preferably. He reeks."
"Pissed himself watching Nash work."
Her brows climbed higher. "And where is the other half of their little duo?"
Nash giggled like a fucking fiend. "She’s dead. Dead, dead, dead."
"He needs help," Lilly groaned, running a hand over her face in a dead drag. "I’m not equipped to deal with that."
"He needs a cold shower and a bottle of vodka, and he’ll be fine," I muttered, turning around slowly as I reached out to grab Nash by the back of his collar. "I’ll deal with him after I drop this dead weight in the basement."
"You disposed of Bonnie, I assume?"
"Fed the crocs under the bridge tonight. I doubt she had anyone looking for her, anyhow,"
"She was a runaway," Lilly sighed, her voice faint as she wandered back into her rooms. "One I thought I could save. But apparently, life’s not for everyone."
I didn’t care to mull over just how well Lilly might have known Bonnie or how closely she understood the life she’d come from. Right now, the only thing on my mind was straightening Nash out and dropping this asshole off to deal with later.
Nash followed me like a lost stray to the basement, watched me put Clyde in a cell, and lock the damn thing up, before he said another word. And of course, it wasn’t even directed at me.
"Death is too good for you assholes."
His hands curled around the bars of the little window on the door, knuckles white as he practically foamed at the mouth and leaned in until his nose was against the steel frame.
"You better enjoy these last few hours, Clyde. Once St. Clair says you’re fit to be ex-communicated, I’m gonna come down here and rip your head off with my bare hands."
I hoped Clyde was too out of it to hear that threat. Because it was more of a promise, when it came from him in this state of mind.
I had no doubt Nash would be the one to help Clyde right on into the afterlife in the next few days. Lilly would give us that concession after what happened.
Fuck.
I still had to talk to her about Harper.
Now is not the time. Later. She won’t mind if you do it later.
And there was the Nash situation to deal with, too.
"Come on, asshole. We need to straighten you out before Harper sees you."
He didn’t answer but took the stairs two at a time, beating me to the front door of our living quarters by a mile. Yet when I crested the last staircase, he just stood there with his hands hanging limply at his sides, staring at the doorknob like he could will it to turn with his mind.
"You know, you have to use your hand to open it, bro," I supplied helpfully, hoping he’d come out of this catatonic break himself. When he made no move to clear the way, I did it for him, rolling my eyes at this fucking child and the bullshit I was about to have to go through.
Thankfully, I wouldn’t have to go through it alone. Angel was here, which meant I’d have an extra pair of hands to wrestle him into the shower and babysit him while Harper slept in the next room. We could run shifts, if necessary.
As soon as the front door closed behind us, it was like something in Nash’s brain switched back on, and he zipped over to Angel’s door and was in the room before I could stop him.
He didn’t make it far, though. He’d stopped just inside, his eyes glued to the bed before him.
Harper was pale—too pale—and lying in the center of Angel’s big, comfy bed. Her hair splayed out around her like a fan, accentuating her slightly furrowed brow.
She looked like she was in pain. Which made sense .
What didn’t make sense was the man lying next to her, so close to touching her without actually touching her that it was damn near comical.
Angel was curled into a C shape, his forehead almost right against her shoulder, his hands curled around her arm on the same side. His torso arced away from her, and his knees were tucked up level with hers, giving him the illusion of an overgrown child.
His eyes were closed, and his chest rose and fell in short, even bursts. He might’ve gone on sleeping like that for who knows how long had I not coughed and ruined it.
Like a bullet had passed through him and not her, those jarring, violet eyes of his shot open, and he pinned first me, then Nash, with a death glare. When he caught sight of our eldest brother, however, the glare softened in confusion, and he pulled himself away from the sleeping woman in the center of his bed and slowly approached Nash like he might bite if spooked.
Which was . . . a reasonable assumption.
"What happened to you, asshole?" he whispered, a hand reaching up to trail softly along the drying edge of Nash’s new wounds. "Who hurt you?"
"He did," I muttered, my eyes still on the center of my fucking universe. "He’s been catatonic ever since."
Angel was more than peeved, but he reserved his shouting match for later, thankfully. I was beginning to think that staying close to Harper was the best idea to avoid any sort of danger or discord for the foreseeable future.
But this wasn’t my room, and with the way Angel looked at her . . .
It was like she was his little broken doll and he was trying to superglue the pieces back together.
I’d never seen him look at another human being like that in his life .
"I’ll throw him in the shower; why don’t you check her vitals and see if anything’s out of order?"
My hair bounced around my face as I turned to face him. I’d almost forgotten there were two more people in the room. "Sure," I whispered, nodding absently as he led Nash from the room.
Or, rather, he tried to. The second Nash felt Angel’s hands on his shoulders, he turned feral, bucking him off with a quickness, almost snarling at him until his eyes alighted on Harper again.
Well, this isn’t good.
"Nash," I pleaded with him, hoping to placate the beast that had taken over him. "You can’t see her like this, buddy. You’ve gotta clean up some. You don’t want the first thing she sees is you looking like . . . this."
I meant his blood-soaked appearance. The stench of piss still clinging to his boots. But broken Nash was unreasonable and illogical, and the only thing he heard was ‘you don’t want her to see you,’ which in his head meant his scars.
"She might as well see what she’s done to me," he snarled, falling to his knees at the edge of the bed. His blood-stained hand reached for hers, dragging a trail of red across Angel’s pristine sheets.
The latter man cringed, then sighed, laying his hands on either side of Nash’s shoulders again, this time just holding on to him. Grounding him somehow.
"Nash. You’ll give her a heart attack with all that blood. At least find a clean shirt, yeah?"
Slowly, agonizingly slowly, he rose from the floor, still holding her hand in his. "Yeah," he agreed, finally. "Yeah, a shirt sounds nice. Maybe a shower. I smell like traitors."
"That’s right," Angel continued, letting Nash lead the way this time, only offering slight guidance. "Let’s get out of here and give Rowan a minute to check on her, okay?"
"Yeah. "
The door closed quietly behind them, and finally, I was alone with our girl.
The reason I’d been so out of sorts lately. Why I couldn’t think, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t bring myself to form any sort of plan.
And I’d almost lost her.
Because of him.
"I won’t make the same mistake twice," I promised, taking a seat at her side. The way her wrist fit in my large palm made it feel like a bird’s wing—light, frail, fragile, and small. How easily one of us could break her at any moment.
Literally.
Figuratively.
In so many ways.
My hand engulfed hers and I gave it a gentle squeeze, biting back all the things I’d buried for seven years regarding this woman.
How much I relied on her devotion when we were younger.
How she used to be one of the only things that could bring me out of a destructive spiral.
How I looked for her whenever I felt like my life wasn’t worth anything more than a shield for my brothers.
How she was tangled in every one of the worst mistakes in the entirety of my life.
It was a mistake to hurt her. It was a mistake to love her. And in the end, it was a mistake to let her go.
Twice.
There wouldn’t be a third time.
"They’ll pay for what they did to you," I muttered, hoping she could hear me even as she slept, or that she could feel the sincerity of my words. "And then, once I’ve made them pay, I’ll make him pay, too."
I stepped out of Angel’s room just as Nash strolled into the commons, a towel wrapped around his waist, fresh blood on his cheeks, water dripping from the tips of his hair as it hung limply around his face.
He glanced up at me, and I spotted the toothbrush hanging from his lips, foam around the edges of his mouth. "Thought you were gonna take a shower, too?"
I glanced around him, looking for our brother, but he was nowhere to be found. "Did you drown Angel or something?"
"Nah," he muttered around the protruding handle as the scuffle of footsteps echoed around the kitchen. "He threw me in there and went fishing in your room for some needles and thread, then came back to tell me he was running downstairs to see Surgeon."
As if on cue, our middle brother strolled back through the front door, tossed me a well-stocked medical bag, and shot off orders to stitch Nash up or else as he ducked back in his room and quietly slammed the door.
"Huh," I mused, setting the first aid supplies on the couch next to me. "I didn’t even know a quiet door slam was a thing, but Mister Passive Aggressive sure makes it look easy."
Nash eyeballed the kit with a bit of apprehension, his hand already headed for his jaw. "No way in fuck am I letting you anywhere near my face right now with stitches. I’ll suffer, thanks."
"Are you planning to free bleed all over the place like some kind of revolutionary woman on her period or something?"
Nash eyed me with more than his usual glee. "I’m trying something new."
"Idiot."
His laughter echoed around me as the very annoying—and very naked—brother of mine settled on the couch next to me. "You love me."
"Debatable."