Chapter 27 Salem
CHAPTER 27
SALEM
“I need my clothes.”
She did. The cold was beginning to get to her again, and she really wanted them before she fell sick.
Caz nodded and walked back to the canvas. Salem ogled his ass for a few seconds, admiring the sculpted perfection of it, before seeing what he was doing. He was covering the canvas with opaque fabric.
“I wanted to see that,” she told him, walking quickly to his side to try and catch a glimpse, but he simply picked up the covered canvas in one hand, the easel in the other.
“Grab the palette and the brush,” he told her, tilting his head toward them. Salem turned and saw they were both on the altar, right beside where she’d been. In her madness, she hadn’t even noticed when he’d put them there or that they were there the whole time.
She quickly picked them up along with the discarded blanket, and turned to see where the hell he was going naked. She hoped they weren’t going to make the trek through the woods like that, especially with come running down her legs. She wanted to clean up a bit before walking any distance.
But to her surprise, he didn’t head toward the woods at all. Instead, he moved toward the abandoned, crumbling, looming structure before them, the one she’d dismissed both times she’d been there, thinking it had no value.
Apparently not, because he went under an awning of some kind, and pushed the large door open with his shoulder. Still surprised, Salem followed behind, more curious than hesitant.
The first thing she felt was warmth.
The inside was much warmer than she’d expected, the thick stone walls protecting against the cold from the outside. She looked around for the source of the heat, not seeing anything yet. There was a long hall, completely empty, with debris around the floor and cracks in the walls that were somehow still standing despite the weathering and the erosion.
Salem clutched the blanket to her chest and followed carefully as Caz avoided the hall completely and instead went through a small door tucked right next to the entrance. She followed behind him, unsure of where he was leading her but trusting him with her safety at least.
A soon as she reached the door, what she saw inside stopped her in her tracks. In a large room, almost the same size as hers on campus except with no windows, just an overhead glass square, there were a few items neatly placed around the area, a large radiator in the corner heating the place up.
Caz set the easel down in one corner, putting the canvas down with another tarp-covered canvas, while Salem took stock of the room. A gym bag had been set down in another corner of the sur prisingly clean room, along with a single chair holding her clothes and his, folded neatly. But it was the sleeping bag in the center of the room that sent her mind racing.
She looked at him with new eyes, pieces and parts of what she knew suddenly clicking into place.
He had appeared at Mortimer out of nowhere. No one knew his family background and he was private. No one knew where he lived but assumed it was one of the houses by the beach outside town. No one knew when he came and went. No one knew he hadn’t slept in a bed in a year.
Salem studied the sleeping bag. It looked warm, comfortable, or as comfortable as sleeping bags could be.
He was squatting here.
The question was why?
She watched him open his gym bag and give her a fresh towel and a t-shirt. “There’s a bathroom in the corner.” He indicated a small door on the side. “It’s not much but it has plumbing. Freshen up if you want.”
Salem accepted the clothes and towel silently, her mind muddled, trying to make sense of everything suddenly pouring into her brain. She walked to the bathroom and went in. He was right, it wasn’t much. There was a small sink, a shower, and toilet, very basic and very old, but clean.
Salem turned on the shower, grateful that she was used to taking cold showers since the water was chilling. She quickly washed up and freshened herself as much as she could, pulling his t-shirt on over her head. It hung on her much smaller frame, almost to her knees, and she wished there was a mirror so she could see how it looked on her body.
As quickly as she could, she went out, needing information more than anything else.
The moonlight coming from the skylight overhead was the only illumination as she made her way to him. He was already in the sleeping bag, and he extended his hand to her. She looked at his hand—that large, talented, tattooed hand that she knew so well. She really had no idea who he was, no clue of his history or even his present. Anything she knew about him was possibly not true. And as she considered his hand, her heart pounding, she realized she didn’t care deep down. She knew he gave her the only semblance of peace she’d ever felt, the only form of affection she had ever craved, the only sliver of life she had ever glimpsed, even if all of it was temporary.
Taking a deep breath, she slid her hand into his, and felt him exhale, like he had been holding his breath with her. He tugged her down and she went down on top of him, her legs straddling him, her hands falling on his chest, her hair surrounding them. She felt him close the sleeping bag around them as silence settled, not heavy but not peaceful either, with questions and explanations hanging in the air.
The creatures of the night continued creating their music outside as she listened to his heartbeats, slowing down more the longer she stayed on him, his hands rifling and sifting through her hair in that lazy way he did.
“I’m too heavy,” she whispered, not wanting to break the silence but aware that her whole weight was on him. She didn’t want him to die, not yet.
“You’re perfect,” he murmured into her hair in an equally low voice.
Salem felt something warm fill her stomach at his words.
And suddenly, out of nowhere, it hit her.
Vanguard.
The family her father had killed.
Salem pulled away, horror seeping into her face as she moved to her side. Was he? Was this some kind of revenge? Because her father had killed his family? Or was she overthinking? What was reality?
“Salem?” He half sat up, alarmed.
“You…” Her words trailed off. “Vanguard.”
His jaw clenched. “I don’t use that name anymore.”
Salem took hold of his shoulder, staring deep in his eyes to discern the truth. “Did my father kill your family?”
Caz sighed, running his fingers through his hair, making him look wild. “It’s complicated.”
“You need to tell me the truth,” she told him, her desperation to know that he wasn’t using her to fulfill some vendetta driving her mad. “Tell me right now, Caz.”
He lay back down, facing the ceiling, and opened his arm for her. “Come here, it’s a long story.”
Salem looked at the opened spot, attracted to it but holding herself back. “And you’ll tell me?”
He gave a brisk nod. She went into the spot, burrowing into his side, her face on his chest, looking at him while he curved his arm in to hold her in place.
“Your father killed the Vanguards,” he told her, softly stroking her hair back and forth, in a gesture that was one of self-soothing almost as much as soothing her. “But I haven’t been a Vanguard in a long time. Twelve years, in fact.”
“What happened?” she asked quietly.
“My parents died in a boating accident,” he stated, his voice flat, as though the event didn’t affect him. Or maybe it affected him too much. “I still don’t know if it was an accident or not. But after they died their estates and properties, everything, went into the care of my uncle and aunt. They had somehow worked with a lawyer to alter my parents’ will, and since my brother and I weren’t adults, they were our legal guardians. We couldn’t contest the will.”
Salem’s heart hurt for the pain she heard in his voice at the end. It hadn’t been there at the mention of his parents or guardians, but at the mention of his brother. She hadn’t known he had a brother. And going by the twisting feeling in her gut, she didn’t think she would get a happy answer.
“Where’s your brother now?” she asked him softly, waiting with bated breath as he kept looking up through the glass.
“He’s in the sky,” he said. “A star, right next to your sister. Look.”
The pain in his voice broke something inside her. Her own pain, the pain she had been keeping and nurturing for years, came to the fore, as though called by his, the melancholy of their agonies meeting in the middle, recognizing each other, and embracing, becoming a dance of melancholies in the air between them.
She didn’t look up at the ceiling, but at his tattoo instead, the one right under her hand, the star over his heart.
For his lost brother.
She pressed a soft kiss to it, not knowing if she could do anything that would lessen the pain. But she knew one thing that might, the one thing he’d taught her when she’d broken down—being there. Being there for him, showing him she was there for him in his pain.
His arm gave her a little squeeze, and she felt the vise around her ribs ease, breathing becoming easier.
“He was almost an adult when our uncle disowned us and threw us out on the street,” he continued in the same low tone. “Our trust funds were dissolved thanks to their asshole lawyers, our accounts frozen, and our lives changed overnight. We went from living in a mansion to being homeless, from luxury cars to walking everywhere until our feet bled.”
He took in a deep breath, as though the memories were weighing on him, and Salem rubbed his chest, again taking inspiration from the way he rubbed her hair and how it soothed her.
“Laz was a big guy, so he passed for an adult and kept custody of me. He was wicked smart but had to drop out because neither of us could afford to go to our old school anymore. Our focus became survival.”
Salem listened, letting him share and unburden himself, willing to carry some of his weight if it made him feel lighter.
“Did I say he was a big guy?” he asked, a small smile on his lips.
“Yeah.” Salem swallowed, the knot in her throat tight. “Like you.”
His smile deepened. “I’m bigger than he was.” The smile slowly faded. “He started working as a bouncer. It made enough that he could get us a small place and food on the table. I switched schools and started working part-time waiting tables for a local catering company to help out. Things were going okay, or as okay as could be.”
Salem waited him out, letting him take his time and find his words, slowly petting him as he played with her hair unconsciously. “Your father spotted my brother at a friend’s club. They met a few times. Your father liked him, and he made my brother a deal.”
Salem frowned. “What deal?”
He huffed a laugh that didn’t reach his eyes. “His daughter was going away to Mortimer University. He didn’t want to send her without protection, because he was afraid something would happen to her.”
Olivia. Of course her father had been worried about her.
Caz continued. “So, he offered my brother a deal. Befriend Olivia, be her protector and secret security, and he would get a full-ride scholarship to the university on any subject of his choice.”
Salem opened her mouth, then closed it, not finding words to say. Knowing her father, it completely tracked. This was definitely a deal she could have seen him making with a young boy almost her sister’s age.
“Your brother took the deal?”
Caz nodded. “Not just for himself though. I had an interest in painting.” He smiled again. “Laz was sure I was going to be great one day. He took a scholarship for himself in journalism, that was his thing. And he had your father get a full ride for me in Arts from a legacy family, so it would appear on paper that I belonged. He didn’t want me to be looked down upon by any peers I’d grown up around.”
Salem looked at him in mild awe, trying to compute that kind of love. What did it feel like, to be so deeply loved and adored and supported? She wished she’d known his brother, if even for a day. He might’ve given her a glimpse of that love, shown her through his love for Caz how true it could be, being loved by an older sibling.
She wished Olivia had loved her like that.
Her nose tingled and she pressed it against his warm skin to keep the sensation contained. It was slowly falling into place with Olivia’s and Laz’s deaths two years ago.
“That’s how you showed up last year?”
Caz hesitated, before nodding. “Yeah. We’d never changed our names but I… had to.”
Salem wanted to follow that up, but a huge yawn cracked her jaw.
She heard him chuckle. “Sleep. More later.”
Salem shook her head. “No, I want to know. I have questions.”
“I’m not going anywhere, little asp,” he told her, his words a promise in the dark against her hair. “You’re exhausted. Rest that pretty little brain of yours.”
“But—”
“But nothing.” He turned on his side, facing her. “We’ll talk later. You need rest.”
“How do you know?” She narrowed her eyes adamantly.
He brushed his lips against her. “Because you fell asleep in my arms on the edge of the cliff. Because your pussy took a pounding. Because you’re feeling too many things you’re not used to. Take your pick.”
The way he understood her baffled her brain sometimes. She had so many questions for him, so many things she wanted to learn now that the Pandora’s box had been opened, but he was right. She was exhausted, and maybe, he was too. Maybe, they just needed a full night of sleep without knowing they were alone.
And looking at him, knowing even the little she knew now, she recognized he was lonely too. He lay alone every night in a world where no one and nothing belonged to him. She could feel his ache, his agony so deeply within herself it was like her own, just a different variant of it.
But it didn’t have to be that way. Not anymore.
She made a decision. “On one condition.”
He raised his eyebrows in silent inquiry.
“You’re moving in with me tomorrow,” she stated. “You’ll sleep in a bed every night till you die, no matter what happens between us. I promise.”
The ferocity of her words surprised her, and ignited something in his flint eyes. He grabbed the back of her head and dragged her face up for a deep, thorough kiss, one that made her synapses fire up again.
He pulled back an inch, and stated just as fiercely, right against her mouth, his words a vow against her lips:
“And you’ll be in that bed with me every night till I die. I promise.”
Salem really, really wanted to hold him to that.
But right then, she just held him and breathed.
The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.
—John Milton, Paradise Lost