3. Rook
THE END
I sat in darkness next to the dying man, where I belonged.
The heavy weight of his demise intensified the ache in my ribs, slowly tearing them apart, one by one, until my chest was split open. Bleeding my insides out until they were slithering onto the shiny and waxed hospital floor.
With every second marching towards death, the once unbreakable bond between us had grown taut, stretched thin like a fragile thread. This delicate filament was the only thing sustaining the rhythm of my heart. A solitary strand, woven with love, light, and laughter in an otherwise corrupt world.
And now, gone was my cool detachment, my shield against vulnerability, crumbling under the weight of his sickness. When he died, I would be cut adrift, a stranger to the world. Swallowed up by the darkness, ignored symptoms, and a diagnosis proclaimed too late.
”Rook?” He moved, gasping a labored breath that rattled in his lungs like a caged animal trying to get loose. It was painful to the ears.
My throat constricted at the sound—the hand of death emerging from it to clutch at my heart.
“I’m here.” I didn”t hide my pain; it bled through my voice. I wasn’t afraid to show it—not in front of him. This man was the only reason I was still alive, the only man I trusted in this world. The only person I truly loved.
“My girls.” His eyes blinked open, filmy and already nine-tenths dead.
It wouldn”t be long now. In fact, this moment could very well be his last.
I leaned forward, the cryptic note crinkling in my shirt pocket, and grasped his hand. “They will be here soon.”
A low gasp, a moan of endless pain. He was hanging on for one thing: the arrival of his daughters, his only source of light, besides me.
He nodded weakly, his eyes filled with a mix of anticipation and fatigue, slowly drooping closed. “I can wait.”
“Yes.”
The time stretched, a ticking clock of pain.
Unable to watch him any longer, I stared through the hospital glass window, watching a man in a gray jumpsuit swipe a mop back and forth, back and forth.
There was a slump of his shoulders. Gray whiskers poking through aged skin. A defeated gaze downward.
Had his eyes seen the same floor, the same tiles; his lungs inhaled the same floor polish and soapy water, for years and years?
I watched him as he worked, wondering curiously, almost obsessively, if he was the reason the flooring in this hospital room was so sparkly and shiny. A man”s pride in his work, hiding the suffering that was seeping up through the floor, wrapping around my legs and holding me in place, even though I wanted to run from this room and never return.
I hated the shiny floors.
They hid the truth: hospitals only carried pain. They should be covered in dirt and black sludge, dark stains of blood and barely beating hearts, lungs that only floundered, like a soon-to-be-dead fish.
Walking death.
”Rook,” this time, his tone demanded my attention, tearing my gaze away from the man with the mop and towards Douglass’ grey-blue eyes.
”Yes?” It was a choked, half-sob.
Another rattling breath from blue tinged lips. “You have to save her. From Garrett. He betrayed us.” Crooked fingers that were once so strong, now, too thin and angular. ”She cannot be dragged into that hell.”
I nodded, biting down on my lip where acid edged at the tip of my tongue: the sign of my grief, though I couldn”t hold back the trickle of snot running from my nose. The silent tears down my cheeks. Was death always this terrible? I didn”t think so, not even when my nana had died had I felt this horrible. This ache. ”I swear, I will take care of it.”
I didn”t mention that Garrett was already handcuffed and detained. His own death looming, waiting for me.
As soon as I had what I needed from him.
”That”s not good enough.” Bony fingers grasped my wrist tight. ”They want her. They hate what I”ve done and will want their retribution.”
”They won”t get her.”
”Swear it.” For a dying man, his grip was strong, the clench of desperation. “Swear that you will protect them both for the rest of their lives, or until the day you die.”
“I swear it.”
“With a blood oath.” After noting my stunned silence, “Please,” He pulled open the top of his hospital gown. “Swear it…with your blood.”
My chest tightened. I never made such a promise, not like this. And yet, how could I deny him? He had given me everything in this world and never asked for a single thing in return.
No, I couldn’t deny him a single thing.
Nodding, I pulled a knife from my pocket. Slicing into my palm, I gripped his shoulder with one hand, while pressing the bleeding hand to his chest, where I could feel a weak heart beat beneath paper-thin skin. ”I swear upon my life and honor, Douglass, that I will protect Summer and Callie, no matter the cost. I will give anything I have for them, including my own life. Their well-being will forever be my duty.”
A loosening of his grip on my wrist, an easing of his shoulders. A, “Bless you, son.”
He hadn”t called me ‘son’ in a long time, not since the day I waved goodbye from the university entrance, watching him and Melanie continue their life without me. Since then, our relationship changed. We”d seamlessly transitioned from mentor to friends, then friends to confidants, even though I was still several years younger than him.
I didn”t answer, except to kiss the top of his hand, clinging to it like the lifeline that it was. Straightened his gown. Wiping the tears of relief from his cheek.
”Now.” He sucked in a breath, the rattling growing louder.
”No, no more talking,” I whispered urgently. “Sleep, rest. Your daughters will need your strength.” I had someone watching out for their arrival. Tonight would be my final goodbye.
Once they were here, they would take up the remaining time he had left. I wasn”t his real son, not blood and flesh, like them. They deserved his remaining moments more than I did.
”No.” A stubborn glimmer in his eyes, that tilt of his chin that he was so well known for. ”We have unfinished business.”
My thoughts immediately went to the note in my pocket. The anonymous warning written in script, Ask him about Greybone Estates. I quickly smothered the emotion it brought out, shaking my head. ”There is no unfinished business between us, Douglass. Be at peace.”
He shook his head, his dark hair a shadow across his white pillow. ”I have two more things I require of you. Two last things.”
”Anything.”
A slight pause, a swipe of his tongue across dry lips. I jumped to my feet, grabbing the yellow plastic cup and pushed the straw in between trembling lips. He took a weak sip, his throat bobbing as he swallowed it down. Then another rattling breath told me he was done. I placed it back on the table, my attention on him once more.
”Do not weep for my death.” His sad and all-knowing eyes took me in. ”I am not the end of life, Rook. There is more to life. Learn to love again.”
Once again, the man knew me better than I knew myself.
”Yes,” the word stumbled out, a lie, bitter and acrid on my tongue. I would not deny this man, but I would not, could not find happiness after he was dead.
There was no one left in this world for me. The selfishness of our world stuffed bellies full but choked off any other genuine emotion.
I”d been living a half-life for so long, I didn’t hope for anything more.
Douglass, the only man who hadn’t betrayed me in this life, would die, and my trust in this world would go with him.
He searched my eyes, as if seeing the lie behind my acquiescence, but he didn”t say anything more, forcing it back into me through my guilt. He nodded, then his eyes slid downward, his fingers slipping from my grip. ”And now,” he exhaled, squeezing eyes shut as if to hide from his next words, an action so unfamiliar I had to blink to reorient myself. ”I must beg your forgiveness.”
“There is nothing to ask. You never need to ask for my forgiveness. I owe you everything?—“
”Shhhh,” he waved me silent, ”let a dying man speak.”
I clamped down on my next words, swallowing them down with their uneaten truths. ”Okay.”
”It”s my fault, and I did not tell you.”
I didn”t answer him. I was confused, but I knew he would tell me, though my chest tightened with fear.
”It”s my fault,” he repeated himself. ”It was my, my...” licking dry lips once again, but this time, I didn”t reach for the drink. He didn”t need water but a cleansing of his soul. ”When they killed her,” he didn”t need to clarify who, ”they went after Summer. And so, I gave them…” he faltered, two breaths before he could speak again. ”I gave them you.” His eyes finally met mine, unafraid. ”I gave them you. And. Be-because of me, they kill—killed your nana.”
The fear clenching my chest roared up, choking and suffocating. It burned the back of my throat, rancid and acidic.
I shook my head, blinking. ”No. That”s not true. If it was, you would”ve told me years ago.”
”You loved me, and I could not give that up.”
“What?” I jerked to my feet, unable to believe what he was saying. Realization washed over me. “Greybone Estates.”
“Yes.” He didn”t falter but stayed, staring into my eyes, his back straightening. His last act of courage before death claimed him. “The land; it belonged to you. I gave them your information, and they killed your nana. Then I looked into your eyes and lied to you. Lied in everything I said and did because it was my fault that they killed her. It was my fault that you had no one and not a penny to your name,” His fingers again, around my wrist, tightening as his voice changed, growing desperate, ”It was my fault. I hated myself for what I did.” He shook his head, his hold on me releasing as he turned away. ”I don”t deserve your love or forgiveness.”
Leaning down, I grabbed his chin, forcing him to look at me. To be a man. To tell me the fucking truth. My voice hissed, betraying the rage I was feeling inside. ”Who did it?”
His chin tilted upwards, his eyes meeting mine. ”Saul.”
The thread of our connection, of the bond giving me life, snapped. My heart stopped as the betrayal became clear.
”And you didn”t tell me?” I exploded outward, slapping against the cup. Water sprayed, the sound of cheap plastic hitting the wall behind me bouncing, bouncing. ”All this time, he was right there. You knew I was looking for the truth, and you didn”t tell me.”
Salty tears were once again dripping from his soul-filled, guilty eyes. ”Yes. I am a coward.”
”You most certainly are.” I wanted to regret my words, but I couldn”t.
I turned away, turning my back on my closest friend, raging inside. I clenched my fingers into fists, the need to smash something overcoming all else.
How could he?
My whole life was one betrayal after another.
The only man I ever trusted.
And it was a lie.
”I”m sorry.” A whispered tone, filled with agony and grief that I knew was all too real.
It had haunted him for years. Tortured him.
And I…I didn”t want it to end like this. Did I? Could I leave him with his guilt? After everything he’d given me?
He wasn”t leaving this hospital room, except in a coffin.
I funneled all the rage inside, pushed it down deep, deeper, then locked it away. The thickness of his betrayal left no room for a beating heart—I was dead inside.
I took a calming breath, and then did the hardest thing I”d ever done in my life.
I forced my shoulders to relax, turned around, and forced the words through unwilling lips. ”I forgive you.”