6. Rook
Stepping onto the back lawn,I found what I was looking for—Summer, standing in the graveyard of what was once a beautiful and sizable garden. Now, only the husk of what it had been.
For the first time since she’d returned, I realized how different she was from the young child I remembered—ten years old, at her mother’s funeral. Just like now, she’d worn her heart on her sleeve that day, with a sad, desperate look on her face. Then later, shell-shocked from what had happened.
I’d wanted to offer her comfort then, but Douglass had forbidden me to speak to her.
She was three years old the last time we’d spent any time together, clinging to my legs, crying that she didn’t want her Ookie to leave her.
And now, that childishness had melted away. In its place was a young and beautiful woman. She looked much older than her age.
The impending storm’s night air had blown her white-blonde hair into tangled tresses around her shoulders. Her eyes were red rimmed, cheeks stained with her tears. Brown and gray dust sprinkled her ass, and her dress was wrinkled from the waist down. Wild and unruly, barefooted, her shoes dangled from her fingers.
The expression on her face was filled with unrestrained emotion, and I had the thought that her tears weren’t from sadness, but anger.
In one hand was a glass of nearly empty red wine, the edges stained with dark crimson lipstick. After draining the rest, she threw it to the ground, the shattering sound echoing through the garden, then faded into the swamp just beyond the property line.
Angrily, she picked one of the few remaining and newly blossomed roses, fisting the petals, then tossed them to the ground.
She was chaotic and beautiful and savage: my worst kind of nightmare.
I preferred order and structure, a life that I could not only predict, but control. And, in an instant, I could see that she was a wild card—messy and unpredictable. She would be the high-risk bid at a poker table.
Despite having my task in mind—to steer her away from this dangerous world, I couldn”t help but feel compelled towards her. Silently watching as she crushed the scarlet petals, then grabbed another handful, absentmindedly destroying what little was left of her mother’s labor of love.
“Damnit,” she brought her finger to her mouth, making my heart stop in my chest. She didn’t even seem to know I was here, staring at her like a wolf, prowling the garden after her.
“They’re rugosa roses.”
Her spine straightened in surprise, her face jerking towards me. “Oh.” Her lips parted in surprise, glossing as her tongue swiped nervously over them. “It’s you.”
“The roses. Your mother planted those because they’re wild and ferocious.” Like you, I wanted to add.
“What?”
“They’ll grow, even when left alone.” I nodded towards her bleeding finger. “And their thorns are known to bite.”
“I see.” She put her hand behind her back, hiding it from me. Then she stared forlornly out at the dead plants. “She loved her garden.”
I nodded. “She did.”
“You knew my mom?”
Disappointment coiled through me. In that moment, I realized I’d hoped that I might, at the least, seem familiar to her. “A little.”
“Enough to know why she planted these roses.”
My jaw tightened. “It was an offhand remark she once made at a party.”
“Oh.” She turned away from me, as if disappointed, and I wondered how often she got to talk to someone who actually knew her mother. It was painful for Douglass to speak of Melanie, and her sister likely didn’t remember much.
Since I had no intention of spending much time with her, I changed the subject. “I’m sorry for your loss. Your father was an honorable man.” I ignored the ache in my chest regarding his final confession.
“That’s what they’re all saying,” she said bemusedly.
“You say that like you didn’t know him.”
“That’s not what I mean.” She didn’t expand on it more. “How did you know my father?”
“We were…” How did I explain what Douglass was to me? A father figure. Mentor. And, in the past few years, one of my closest, and only, friends. “Business partners.”
“I see…” she stared off across the garden and towards the woods at the edge of her property. “I didn’t even know he was sick until just before he passed.”
“I’m sure it was… Difficult. For him to tell you. Fathers want to protect their daughters.” That had been Douglass’ excuse, anyhow. Though I’d disagreed with him on the subject, I couldn’t tell him how to live his life.
“Maybe the best way to protect me was to confide in me. Honestly, it’s not a—” she cut off abruptly, leaving me to wonder what she really thought of her father. I’d seen things from his point of view, but knew he kept his children in the dark about the dangerous world he lived in. “You disappeared before I could thank you.”
It took me a moment to realize she was talking about the funeral. “Your sister’s grief was palpable. It’s understandable.”
Red flushed the edges of her eyes, tears pooling in them. Big blue eyes blinking, trying to keep them at bay. Her sister may express her pain more outwardly, but Summer felt it just as much. If not more.
She turned away, hiding it, and I felt the sudden urge to grab her shoulders and shake her. To force her to show me the ugliness and despair. To force her to be real. To feel her feelings in front of me. Because I was blocking off my own and I needed something real and colorful to make me feel alive again. I’d seen a brief flash of it as she crushed petals in her fingers, and I loved the force of her ferocity.
“I’m sorry,” she wiped at her cheeks, “I didn’t mean…”
“You didn’t mean to be sad?”
“What?” She blinked up at me, those beautiful blue eyes filled with such beautiful pain. It was tucked in deep, hidden from the world.
“You didn’t mean to cry in front of me? Didn’t mean to be grief stricken at your own father’s wake?” I reached down, cupping her face to force her to look up at me. I wiped at a tear with my thumb. “Don’t hide your feelings. Not from me. Your pain is beautiful because it means you loved hard.”
“I—I’m—” she sputtered, her confusion making her look that much more innocent. She had this look on her face, and it reminded me of the look she would give me when she was so little—it was a look of trust and adoration. Suddenly, I was pulled back into a world where I would do anything to make her happy.. Make her a bottle, wrap her in her favorite blanket, hold her for hours. We were suspended in time, feeling the emotion of our old bond pulsing between us.
And yet, it must have been my imagination, because, apparently, she didn’t even know who I was.
She suddenly stepped back, out of my touch, her expression blanketing over, closing off her feelings from me, and the connection snapped. “I’m not hiding anything.”
A stark and uncomfortable silence fell between us. She turned away, signaling for me to leave, but I wasn”t done with her yet.
I held out my hand, and she stared at it blankly. I nodded towards hers. “Your heels.”
Blinking in surprise, she passed them over, and I held them as I followed her deep into the darkness of the garden. “You’ve abandoned your wake.”
“No one seems to care,” she said bitterly. “And my sister was exhausted. So I took her to her room.”
So, she’d overheard the same things I had at the wake—the sharks of Greybone Island, who didn’t care for your feelings but only their own interests. It reminded me of my purpose.
“A good reason to move on quickly, then.”
“What do you mean?” She bent over to smell one of the few remaining flowers and I forced myself not to stare at her ass but instead to focus on the way her eyes were closed. The momentary peaceful look on her face.
I had the insane urge to destroy it. “You said no one seemed to care that you weren’t at your own father’s wake. There seems to be no reason to stay here.”
“I have a lot of reasons to stay.”
“Of course. I’m sure there are things you have to do to close out the estate. But, as soon as that’s done, you can move back to—“ I caught myself about to admit that I knew where she was living. “Where you were living before.”
“At a prep school?” She chuckled incredulously. “Who says I want to go back there?”
“You would be stupid not to.”
“So, wanting to stay in my childhood home makes me stupid?”
“It’s an old and large mansion. Houses like that need a lot of upkeep—they require constant repair.”
“And you think I’m not capable? Or that I don’t care?”
“I think at your age, you probably have a lot of other things on your mind. College. Or a new career.” I began to circle her, noting the way her chest lifted as I drew closer. “Boys.”
“You assume I prefer the male gender.”
“Or girls.”
“I don’t prefer either.”
This made me still, and I was instantly intrigued. “What do you prefer, then? Are you asexual?”
“No.”
“Then?”
She didn’t answer me right away; the delay making me hold my breath in anticipation. Finally, she responded, her gaze meeting mine. “I mean, men.”
It took me a moment to process what she meant. Men, not boys. For some reason, this made my breath quicken, my reaction a little belated. “Either way, you have your whole life ahead of you. Why bother wasting your energy on an old pile of bricks?”
“Maybe this old pile of bricks actually means something to me.”
“I doubt that.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“I know you better than you assume. Poor little trust fund baby,” I stated in a droll and demeaning way, designed to make her angry. I was standing at her back now, watching the breeze that began to blow her white-blonde hair across her shoulders. She’d taken off her jacket, and her dress was sleeveless and barebacked. The absurd temptation to run a knuckle down her spine suddenly overwhelmed me. I resisted it, instead curling my fingers inward to dig into my palm. “With an adoring father who did everything for you. All you had to do was bat pretty eyelashes and you got whatever your heart desired. You wouldn’t know how to take care of a house like this. It takes more than a pretty face to fix this place up.”
She swiveled towards me in indignation, her expression feral. “Don’t think you know me, just because some rich girl once broke your heart,” she growled out through gritted teeth. Thunder rolled in from above, punctuating the stormy night with its heavy rumble. “I don’t know who you think you are, but I’ve been insulted for the last time tonight. I’d prefer to punch you in the balls for speaking to me like that. But, because I was taught my manners, I’m politely inviting you to. Fuck. Off.”
I stared at her in shock.
I’d expected an easy acquiesce. She had no bonds here, nothing holding her to this place, especially since she would never see Garrett again—I would make sure of that.
So then, why did she insist on staying?
Heavy drops of rain began to fall from the sky. She didn’t run back to the house, but stayed, staring at me with defiance.
She was…unexpected, and I felt something inside me awaken. An awareness—an excitement I hadn’t felt in years.
The wind picked up, blowing her hair in messy waves across her face. She didn’t brush them away, and it made me want to reach over and grip her hair in my fist. To wrap it around my hand, then tug. To watch her bare her neck before me, then lower to her knees.
I wanted those big blue eyes to stare up at me, innocence radiating from them that would shred my heart, because I knew I was going to bleed the innocence from them until they were as dark and soulless as my own.
And then, I would part those stunning, luscious lips with my tongue so that she could taste me.
Have a little piece of me that would go with her whenever she left.
I most certainly would not fuck her, but I wanted her to taste and to know of the raw male power I was restraining inside of me.
Once more, thunder rolled in the distance and I blinked, coming out of my trance.
What was I doing?
She was practically a child. Fifteen years younger than me.
Douglass’ daughter.
I’d seen her wrapped in a bundle of blankets the day she came home from the hospital. Seen her take her first steps.
I’d given a blood oath to protect her, and this—this wasn’t protecting her. She needed to leave this place, and if she wouldn’t go on her own, I would have to force her.
“You need to leave. Pack up all your precious stuff, and move far away.”
She tilted her face upwards, eyes flashing with anger. “Who do you to think are, to intimidate me into leaving?”
I stepped in closer, frustration at my own feelings for this girl making my recklessness surge. She was already beginning to infect me with her chaos. Making me lose my restraint.
I couldn’t help myself, I reached forward, harshly pinching her chin. “You have no idea.”
“Enlighten me, then,” she snarled.
“Humans are nothing but teenage cavemen, playing dress-up in an attempt to appear sophisticated. Our world, so called ‘civilization’? It’s the flimsy mask we wear to hide the primal instincts lurking beneath. Scratch the surface, and you’ll find the raw truth staring back at you. Deep down, we’re all just beasts—savage, brutal, and violent. And the people here, they thrive in that barbarism.” I paused to let my words sink in. “I’m warning you. Leave. Take daddy’s money, pack up everything that means something to you, and move far, far away.”
I was fucking this up. I could see it in the determination settling over her shoulders, the stubbornness in her expression, the hardening of her resolve in her eyes. If she wasn’t sure before, I’d just stoked the fire inside her, pushing her to become even more determined than ever to stay.
But I couldn’t seem to stop myself. There was something about her—the untamed spirit in her that drew me in.
She was messy, passionate, and wild. And I... I felt an unexplainable desire to tame her.
To teach her how to keep her clothes from getting wrinkled. How to fix her hair so it wasn’t so tangled. To repaint her nails when the polish chipped.
To keep her shoes on so her feet didn’t get hurt.
To not pull petals from roses so she didn’t bleed.
It’s because I knew her as a kid, I rationalized. I almost raised her. It made sense, the need to protect her from the beasts of the world.
Monsters, like me. And I promised Douglass, I had to remind myself.
The rain now pelted down around us and within moments, we were both drenched.
But the pretty, little rich girl didn’t run into the house, complaining about ruined clothes or getting her hair wet. Instead, she faced me with the ferocity of a lioness, shivering in the cold air of the spring storm. “I don’t understand why you’re so determined to chase me off, but understand one thing about me, mister,” a thrill shot through me at the word. “I grew up around here. I understand more than you do about where I live. And I won”t let you intimidate me into moving away from the one place I ever loved. This is my home, and I’m not leaving.”
The darkness within me surged, my own savageness rearing its head. My grip on her tightened, but she didn’t pull away. Instead, she seemed to lean into it. It drove me mad.
I barked out, angry. “Listen here, little bunny. You’ve been living in a bubble, sheltered from the realities of this world by your father. But let me tell you something—it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a brutal wilderness, filled with beasts at every turn. If you don’t hop far away, as fast as your little feet can take you, they’ll tear down your door and strip you of everything you own.” I ran my hand across her jaw to the back of her head, gripping her hair, exposing her neck to me in a menacing gesture. “And they won’t stop there. They’ll destroy you in every way possible. They’ll go after every sentimental thing connecting you to the people you love. Not because they truly want it, but only because, They. Can.
“And then,” I leaned in, my fingers tightening around her, my lips inches from hers, “They’ll steal your breath, slowly draining you of life because they enjoy causing pain. You’ll struggle for air as they watch without remorse. They will take pleasure in watching you grow lethargic from lack of oxygen, your face turning red and your lips blue.”
Her chest rose and fell with heaving breaths. We were pressed so tightly together, I could feel her heartbeat hammering in her chest.
“They will fall in love with the sight of your tortured existence. Watching with bated breath as you slowly die. And when they are done—when the spark is gone from your eyes and your body is only a shell, they will bathe in your blood.” I could feel her trembling against me as I spoke. “And once they’ve tossed your body in the swamps for the alligators to feed on, they will go after those you love—your sister will be next.”
She flinched.
I’d hit her soft spot: her sister. The last family she had in this world.
I myself understood how vital those connections could be.
And I’d intentionally slid the knife deep, wanting her to bleed.
Because I needed her to see and understand exactly the kind of danger she was in; I’d made a promise to her father to keep her safe.
“And you?” she asked, her eyes defiant. “Are you one of those people?”
“The most dangerous of them all,” I snarled. “I’m your worst nightmare, little girl. The wolf at your door. I would eat you as much as I would devour a succulent piece of meat. Just because I helped you at the funeral, don’t mistake me for someone you can trust,” I reiterated. “In fact, trust no one, Summer.”
“And you don’t?”
“Don’t what?”
“Trust anyone?”
“Trust is the one commodity I can’t buy, because it doesn’t exist. Everyone will betray you for their own selfish purposes—it’s only a matter of time.”
Her lips parted in surprise. “You don’t trust a single person?”
“Why should I? Trust only leads to disappointment. I’ve learned to be my own fortress and protector. Trust is a trinket people use to manipulate and further their own self-interests. People are blind when they trust, while others take and take, always dissatisfied. We don’t even realize how starved we are for true meaning in this life. They don’t realize happiness is just silencing our wants and opening our hearts instead.”
“And are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Happy?”
I scowled. “I don’t need happiness. It’s not what I’m searching for.”
“And you think that opening my eyes is your way of doing something good in the world?”
“No, darling. I told you, I’m no better than them. I have no desire to feel love. Or do good in the world. I’m just like them—I take what I want.”
“And what is that? Why are you even here? Did you even know my father?”
Resentment burst through me. She didn’t even know me, and yet, I knew her like the back of my hand. Could envision every twinkle of her eye and twitch of her lips as a child.
I swallowed it down, forcing indifference—like I’d done so many times in the past.
“I’m here to warn you of your present danger. I don’t need to reveal the reason why,” I forced a coolness into my voice. “Whether or not you act on it, is up to you.”
Giving me a scathing glare, she reached up and, clasping her fingers around mine, slowly peeled my grip from her hair. Once I was loose of her tangles, she stepped back, putting much needed space between us, and I inhaled a sharp breath, feeling the pressure inside me loosen.
“I need you to leave.” Her voice was low, cold, calculating. Controlled. “Now.”
She said nothing more, just stood there staring at me, fully expecting me to do as she asked.
”As you wish,” I replied, placing her shoes back in her hands before giving her one last warning look. Then I turned, and strode away.
Every step from her felt like a betrayal—to Douglass and to my oath.
The barely restrained anger inside me simmered to the surface.
I needed an outlet for the dark and insatiable beast inside me, and I had the perfect outlet.
Tonight, someone was going to pay for crossing me.