17. Haven
Chapter 17
Haven
There are these special moments in my life, little vignettes, that I drink in and save like a mental snapshot. So I can savor it later, or wallow a bit. Bastian made it sound like I don’t cling to the past, but he’s wrong.
The further I look back, the harder I push forward.
But that’s my secret.
No one else needs to know how fucking desperate I am to succeed.
That I think about it night and day.
That I’ve done things—will continue doing things—I’m not proud of to keep this fucking ball rolling.
Rolling stones gather no moss.
And wrecking balls gotta have a ton of momentum.
I’m still not sure what kind of snapshot I’m taking right now. Whether I’ll pore over it and smile, or glare at it when I’m in a spiteful mood.
Breathing the air inside Bastian’s home makes me feel more alive than I have in a while. Painfully, achingly so. Is this what taking drugs feels like? Every sense set to max.
But with clarity, comes, well, clarity.
I feel dirty. Poor. Dumb. So out of my depth I’m in desperate need of scuba gear or I’ll drown.
And he notices.
Of course he notices. He’s Professor Rooke. He notices everything.
And I’ve just entered his domain.
As much as this house belongs to Professor Rooke, I’m seeing strong evidence of someone else.
Outside the university, in here, he’s Bastian….and it shows.
The hard, geometric lines outside the building are drawn inside too. Angular furniture. A massive central fireplace that joins with the flat, featureless ceiling. But so many textures soften those harsh edges.
A mottled fur throw slung haphazardly over the couch.
Overstuffed, velvet scatter cushions.
The cream-colored fibers on a thick rug.
And that’s just the living area. There’s a large kitchen to one side, a black stone island declaring its border.
On the other side, the fireplace creates a second border. I don’t see any other door, so I assume that’s for the sleeping area?
It’s giving eccentric billionaire bachelor vibes, and I’m so here for it.
Bastian was already inside by the time I reached the door. He’s in the kitchen, and I stand in the doorway watching him stride over to the gas range to flick on the burner. Moving effortlessly to one of the frosted-glass cabinets to retrieve a pair of mugs.
He pauses, as if feeling my eyes on him. Turns, one hand still on the cabinet’s handle.
“Kai knows where I stay, Haven. I promise, if you go missing, he’ll be the first to know.”
I cough like I swallowed a fly.
Yeah, Bastian. If I went missing, Kai would be dancing on my empty grave.
I shake off the thought and step inside Professor Rooke’s house. But I don’t get far.
“Shoes.”
I’m compelled to argue, because goddamn, make a girl a cocoa before you start undressing her, amiright?
But the white carpet is just so clean .
“Do me a favor and turn on that fireplace? It’s always so damn cold in this place.”
Did he see me shiver?
I turn to the imposing wall of textured stone, throwing Bastian a panicked look.
“With the power of my mind?”
“There’s a control panel right beside it. Just press the power button.”
I pad over to the fireplace, my entire body coming alive at the feel of the thick, fluffy carpet under my toes.
Even college professors are better off in this hellhole than Riversiders.
As much as I want to lean into that spiteful thought, I’m enjoying myself too much. Even trying to figure out the control panel Bastian directed me to is fun.
I stab experimentally at a button. There’s a whoosh beside me, and I hear Bastian chuckle from the kitchen as I fall on my ass, trying to get away from the sudden burst of flames.
Dramatic, sure, but I almost lost my fucking eyebrows.
I sit on the carpet, holding my hands out to the flames as they flicker along the large gray pebbles placed just-so on the hearth. What the hell is burning in there? Gas?
Bastian is so quiet that I peek at him over my shoulder. He has his head down, staring into the pot on the stove.
I can’t help it. I’m curious as hell about this guy, and he’s basically set me loose in his little fiefdom. Who wouldn’t look around?
Standing, I wait to see if Bastian will notice before ambling innocently to the bookshelf beside one of the enormous wall-to-ceiling windows. I don’t know if I want to stare at the view or browse his collection of leather-bound books, but I tell myself the forest will always be there, and doesn’t require a key and an invitation to view.
A minute later, I feel seventy-five times more inferior than I did when I first walked into Bastian’s house. The books on these dark shelves are dense. If Bastian’s gas ever got cut off, he could easily burn a handful of these babies for heat.
My eyes wander lower. The titles down there hint at philosophy, psychology, science. A lot of “Human” this and “Mind” that.
Then there’s this row of slim, almost invisible books right at the bottom. Dark spines. A collection of some kind. A hundred, maybe more.
I tug one out.
ACTIVI—
“Shouldn’t you wait until I’m in the other room before you start snooping?”
I shove the notebook back in its place and straighten so quickly I almost knock into the mug Bastian’s holding out for me.
“Fuck! Sorry.” I reach out to take the cocoa, but he’s pulling it away with a grimace like I’m about to have a seizure and he doesn’t want to spill on his rug.
I hold out my hands. “Sorry.”
“You weren’t kidding about the lack of motor control,” he says, his eyes darting to the bruise on my jaw.
I’d forgotten about it.
Forgotten, briefly , about Kai.
Why is it so easy to live a lie when I’m around this man?
The mug is scorching. I hurry over to the coffee table to set it down. A slab of glass over a polished wooden log. It almost looks like a petrified wave.
Bastian takes a seat on the two-seater sofa, swinging an arm around the back as he turns to lean into the corner. “You’re more than welcome to join me. Or you could sit in the kitchen, if you think I’m going to tie you to the radiator.”
“Okay, you can stop with the whole serial killer thing, all right?” I shake my head, smiling ruefully as I cradle my mug and take the seat next to him.
“Woah, that escalated quickly.” He chuckles. “First I’m kidnapping you, now I’m making tacky lampshades with your skin? You kids watch too many crime shows.”
“Boomer.” I roll my eyes at him, blowing on my cocoa to cool it down. The clouds are growing darker outside, and I don’t want to miss another class.
Of course, I’d rather stay here all afternoon.
Because of the fireplace, of course. It’s really started warming up the room. And I love the flicker of the flames, even while longing for the crackle of wood.
He widens his eyes. “You take that back, dearie. I’m barely thirty-four.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” I murmur into my cocoa before taking a tentative sip.
Bastian crooks an eyebrow when I splutter as the liquid hits my throat.
“Is there booze in this?” I wheeze.
“What heathen doesn’t put bourbon in their cocoa?” He takes a long sip from his mug, then frowns. “And please don’t pretend you don’t drink. This is Agony Hollow. Everyone here drinks.”
“I’m nineteen!” I squeak, in case that somehow slipped his notice.
“Pleasure to meet you, Nineteen. I’m Boomer.”
I stare at him.
When he laughs, so do I. Because God, it’s so fucking easy.
He takes another swallow from his mug, his brown eyes sparkling as they catch the firelight. A cool breeze comes in from somewhere, and I draw my feet under me before I realize what I’m doing. As I try to drop them down again, Bastian holds out a hand to stop me.
“Please,” he says. “I’m a guy. Really think I’m going to care if you put your feet on the couch?”
I grin, shrugging a shoulder as I draw my feet under me again. Bastian takes another sip and then leans over, dragging the fur blanket over my legs.
“Better?”
I nod, my cheeks warming when he doesn’t look away. I angle toward the fire, squirming my toes under the blanket as my body slowly starts warming up.
This is intoxicating as fuck, and I’m not sure it’s the bourbon to blame. I mean, I’ve had a few sips of beer. Some wine coolers. I even tasted some of my dad’s vodka once, because I wondered why he handled something that looked like water as if it was a precious commodity.
I was six, so I didn’t know water actually was precious, or that vodka was toxic.
Kai explained both to me.
He taught me a lot about the world. Some of it was bullshit.
You don’t know what you don’t know.
When kids think they know something, even a little, suddenly, they’re wise.
He was the dreamer, Kai. He’d concoct the biggest load of nonsense as we played. I tried to get him to listen to reason, to ground him, but I guess at some stage even my five-year-old self realized he was trying to escape reality.
Me, on the other hand? I was trying to make sense of a world where the rules kept changing. Out there, in the woods, was the only place where we always stuck to the rules…even if they were silly and based entirely on Kai’s imagination.
“Look, I’m just going to come out and say it, Haven. And you can hate me if you want, but I’d be a pathetic human being if I just pretended I didn’t know.”
Bastian’s terse words make me flinch.
He’s staring at me with a mix of annoyance and frustration, and something else. Not quite pity—I’m hypersensitive to that by now—but maybe sympathy?
I take a nervous sip of my cocoa. “What are you talk?—“
“Jesus Christ,” he mutters, turning to the fire, shaking his head. Then he snaps his head back to look at me. “Who are you protecting? Dad? Mom? Friend? Foe?”
He leans closer, cradling his coffee cup in both hands. “I want all my students to be safe. It’s obvious you’re not. Whatever you’re dealing with, I can help.”
He’s gentle with his cup, I’m not. I throttle it like I want the ceramic to shatter and slice my palms into ribbons.
Sure, Professor, let me break it down for you.
I fought tooth and nail to get a grant to AHC, because my life was a shit show and I was about two steps away from jumping off a cliff.
Literally.
Like, literally , literally.
But my ex-best friend has decided to hate me so much for leaving town when I was sixteen that he’s making my new life as hellish as the old one. He wants me out, but I refuse to back down, because my entire life changed when I was awarded that grant.
Now I finally have hope. I finally have a purpose. My misery suddenly feels like a precursor to something great. Not a portent to an awful life.
“Telling you won’t change a fucking thing,” I mutter, dropping my head to glare into my mug.
Where are my fucking marshmallows?
This fucker lures me in here with false promises, and all I get is awful tasting cocoa and someone prying into my private life.
“Haven…” He says it in that tired voice people use when they’re trying to talk sense into someone young, dumb, and full of?—
Ha! Almost, but not quite.
“I’m going to miss my next class,” I tell him, standing so fast that the fur blanket slides to the floor. But I leave it there, because fuck him.
“Please sit down. I just want to?—”
“Are you taking me back, or should I get an Uber?” I stand there, arms crossed, staring at the door. I’m bluffing, of course. Don’t even have the app installed on my phone. And if I did, they’d need a credit card.
I see him in the corner of my eye. Glancing down at his cup. Looking at the warm, flickering fire.
Hate to inconvenience you, Professor, but you’re the one that brought me here. Should have known I was a loose cannon. Don’t they teach you that in professor school?
He rises, sets his cocoa down next to mine, and walks silently to the bookshelf. Plucks out a slim volume, presses it into my chest as he passes on his way to the door.
“Here. It’s a fascinating read.”
We drive back to town in silence, the mood inside Bastian’s Tesla as gloomy as the weather outside. Clouds have gathered en masse on the horizon, throwing the entire town into an eerie premature twilight.
“You don’t have to drive me all the way back,” I say when we pass a bus stop.
“I’d rather make sure you arrived safely.”
He stops right at the entrance of the college.
A few students give us a casual glance as my car door opens.
Bastian doesn’t seem to care if anyone sees him dropping me off. That should make me feel better, but all I can think about is the way I shriveled up inside when he gave me that soul-fucking stare.
Who are you protecting?
I slam the car door a little harder than I’d wanted to, and cringe when I walk past his driver’s side door, expecting him to lean out and yell at me.
But I made it clear
I watch him drive away, and wait for the regret to slam into me like it always does. But this time, it’s not immediate.
It only comes later that day, when I’m back in my car after an exhaustively boring Urban Studies class.
Professor Rooke invited me into his home, and I spat in his face. Sure, he provoked me, but he was just being kind. When was the last time someone was kind to me?
That’s when the regret hits.
But it’s not aimed at Bastian.
All I see is Kai’s frowning, concerned eyes. I hear his nineteen-year-old self whisper, “Last chance, Heavenly. There’s no coming back from this.”
That I regret.
My hand slams into the steering wheel. Then I do it again, because the pain isn’t intense enough, and I can still see Kai’s eyes, that eleven between his brows.
Again.
Again.
Breathing out slow and steady, I take my phone out of my tote bag and balance it on my thigh. Then I hesitate and push the button to open the glove box. It falls down, scattering a few things into the passenger-side footwell.
I ignore them.
The good shit is buried deep.
Deep, deep, deep .
I take out an envelope, fold it open, and slip out the page folded up inside.
Smooth it out on my other thigh as I blink back tears.
Don’t need to read it. I’ve committed it to memory years ago.
I WISH I NEVER MET U
I FUCKING HATE U
BURN IN HELL
Swallowing, I unlock my phone and hold it up over the piece of paper, waiting for my hand to stop shaking. Then I zoom in so the words scrawled on the bottom like an afterthought aren’t visible in the shot.
Click.
I carefully fold up the paper and slide it back into the envelope. But I don’t put it back in the glove box, because what’s the fucking point?
If I had a lighter, I’d burn it.
But until I get a wallet, I can use the envelope to store my cash.
I take a breathe, wipe my nose, and DM the pic to Bastian.