9. Get. Out. – Elijah
9
GET. OUT.
ELIJAH
A urora’s room is just as empty as it was twenty minutes ago when I checked. The bed is unmade with the basket of laundry I washed for her sitting atop the rumpled covers.
This room used to be my dad’s. He barely stayed with us three months before he took a turn and started needing more care than we could give him, but there’s still evidence of him if you look hard enough.
We couldn’t quite fill the lines he carved into the walls and you can still see the slight depressions through the dark green paint. And under the bed is a series of angry gouges and lines he scratched into the hardwood with nothing but the prongs of his lamp plug when we stopped letting him near sharp objects.
We really need to go see him. It’s been over a month since our last visit.
Guilt compounds like laid bricks in my gut, but they can’t stack high enough before that familiar nameless thing that eats away at me from the inside can start chipping them down.
He did this to my father.
He destroyed us.
I blow out a shaky breath and close the door. Ambrose may have broken us, but we’ll make him watch while his entire empire falls to ruin, until there’s nothing left of what he built. Until he feels just as empty as I do.
And just as shattered as my father.
Pushing the poisonous thoughts away, I resolve to find Aurora.
Atticus said I should leave her alone to work and I will, but I have to make a run into town. I just want to know if she needs anything. Or maybe if she’d like to come with me.
When I went to pull the clothes from the battered suitcase Atticus quarantined in the garage, I couldn’t help noticing how little she had. Barely enough clothes to make more than three or four outfits. Nothing warm for the cool evenings. Nothing much I could see as far as food or toiletries.
She’s welcome to whatever’s in the fridge and pantry, but not everyone wants to eat the green smoothie and heavy protein regimen Atticus has us all on right now. She should be allowed potato chips and nuggets if she wants them, even if Sev and I have to watch her eat them.
I check the other rooms down the hall, listening for her, but she’s definitely not upstairs.
Sev is pulling on his boots when I head back down to the main floor.
“You seen Aurora?”
“Still can’t find her?” His brows draw together, and if I didn’t know any better I’d say that was worry flattening the line of his mouth.
I shake my head.
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” he decides, shrugging off the tension. “She’s probably outside somewhere. I’m headed to the hive. If I see her, I’ll text you.”
“Do you really think telling Jack to send that asshole up here was the right move?” I ask before he can leave, and his blue eyes slide to me with a defiance in them only Seven can achieve.
He scoffs and shakes his head, not giving me a reply before storming out.
I huff out a sigh. The fact he didn’t defend it means he isn’t sure himself if it was the right move, but what’s done is done. If the guy shows up, we’ll be forced to deal with him, which is probably exactly what Seven wanted.
There’s a reason only a very trusted few have our address.
If Ambrose knew where we lived—well, there’s a good chance we wouldn’t be living anymore.
Maybe Aurora will want to talk about it—about this Jesse person. Maybe we can fix her problem before it becomes our problem.
I nod to myself.
Yeah.
That’s it.
Since Sev has the outside covered and I’ve looked pretty much everywhere else, the only places left to check for her now are the library and my bedroom, but I’m guessing Atticus would’ve already warned her against cleaning those. At least until we know how trustworthy she is.
There are too many things she could find hidden away—or in Seven’s case, proudly on display like little trophies of all his many crimes.
Between his jacket and his bedroom, the FBI would have a fucking field day with slam-dunk convictions. But with Sev, we choose our battles.
“Aurora?” I call, pushing into the library. It reminds me so much of my father’s study when I was a boy. We set it up the same way, but the heavy antique desk in the middle of the space belonged to my father back then, and when he had the library doors shut, no one was allowed to enter.
I remember the first time I snuck in, trying to make sense of the blueprints and other scribbled notes and documents arranged neatly over the surface of the desk like some puzzle I was beyond understanding.
“Aurora?” I call again, heading back around to my room. I mean, I guess if she were going to start with a bedroom, mine would be the safest. I used to keep a lot of things in my room none of us would want her to see, but not anymore. Not since what happened.
The door creaks as I push it open, finding the space empty.
There wouldn’t be much in here for her to clean, anyway.
A long time ago, mine would’ve been the messiest room in the house. I got like that when I was creating. But now that I can’t paint anymore, I get to exist in a space that is free of clutter and half-drunk refreshments.
Silver linings.
I guess I could just grab her a few things from town and?—
A soft hum sounds from the door that leads into my connected studio space and my mood instantly sours along with the food in my stomach.
No.
I listen with a tightness in my chest that won’t ease, swallowing past the hard lump in my throat.
There it is again, the humming. Aurora’s humming. The sound of a broom sweeping debris off a wood floor.
Fury, red hot and slithering, coils around my spine like a fucking parasite.
I’m at the adjoining door without any memory of moving my feet, my fingers poised over the handle I haven’t touched in over a year.
My teeth clench as I twist it and shove inside, controlled by the parasitic rage now building in my chest.
It’s me. But not me.
I’m not going into the studio. It is.
Breathe .
Aurora whirls with a scream from where she’s standing facing away from me with a broom clutched tightly in her hands. She pulls out an earbud, her green eyes going wide before she relaxes.
“Oh, it’s you.” She laughs. “You scared me.”
The studio hits me like a five-finger death punch right in the fucking chest.
It’s just the way I left it, and yet somehow even worse than I remembered.
There are cobwebs in the corners now and other webs that connect the spaces between the busted easels that are somehow still partially upright in the corner. The remnants of the ones that didn’t survive that day are mostly all swept up now. Their bits of sharp, splintered wood in a pile with snapped paintbrushes and flecks of dried paint.
My focus zeroes in on the wide paint stain in the center of the floor. The empty tub is gone, but Aurora hasn’t finished scraping the paint splatters from the hardwood yet. My right hand aches at my side, shaking as I pull it into a tight fist that only makes it hurt even more.
An involuntary image of the jagged ivory stone fills my mind and then it’s not just the stone.
It’s the stone covered in red gore as it’s brought down against my hand again and again and again .
“Did you paint those?” Aurora asks, completely oblivious to the threatening skies closing in on us. Can’t she feel the electricity of the coming storm? It prickles against my skin like a thousand tiny needles.
I breathe through my nose, trying to remember why I was looking for her. Trying to grasp onto anything to use as a lifeline to pull me out of these violent waters.
Aurora crosses the room, going to the far wall. The artworks there were scattered throughout the room, most of them destroyed, but now she has them in a neat, gently leaning stack.
“They’re beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like them.”
She smiles up at me, but when our eyes meet something falters in her unguarded stare. She swallows. “You’re an incredible artist,” she continues, but her tone is different. It edges her words in a question I won’t answer.
I’m not even sure I can speak.
Was, the parasite hisses in my ear.
I was an incredible artist.
Not anymore.
Not after what he did to me.
What I was forced to do to myself.
“Get. Out.”
I don’t recognize my own voice.
“What?”
“I said get out!”
Aurora freezes, the broom still in her hand. I can’t make sense of her expression. I can’t make sense of why the fuck she’s still standing there.
“I—I didn’t mean to?—”
Her words break off when I stalk over to her and rip the broom from her hands, chucking it across the room.
“ Leave. ”
She recoils from me, her shoulders turning in, eyes filled with a horror that cuts at the rage with claws and teeth, making it want to fight back.
“I—I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—I should’ve—i-it’s just that Atticus said—” She stops rambling, cutting herself off with a gulp as she lifts her delicate pale hands in a gesture that a distant part of me recognizes is meant to be disarming, but that part isn’t in the driver’s seat.
Atticus.
That motherfucker.
“Elijah?”
A hollow laugh fills my chest.
Aurora tiptoes around me like I’m toxic. “You know what, I’m just going to—yeah, I’m going to go.”
She keeps her eyes so firmly fixed on me that she doesn’t see the edge of the stacked paintings before it’s too late. She yelps as she trips over them and they fall with a thud, splaying mutilated artwork over the floor in full, unobstructed view.
It reminds me of everything I lost. All the parts of me I will never get back.
All my remaining control dissolves, slipping through my fingers like sand.
My pulse thuds loud in my ears, uneven and cold. Distant, like it might decide to give out at any second.
Not again.
I slam a fist against my temple.
Stop. Stop. Stop.
I throw my arms out. Something crashes. Breaks.
It feels good so I do it again.
Again.
I don’t stop until the cold broken bleating in my chest feels stronger. Until my muscles feel weak from exertion and my thoughts stop spiraling and the parasite detaches.
“ Fuck ,” I slump, dropping my head back against the wall, trying to catch my breath, but the smell of paint in my nose makes me want to vomit.
When I open my eyes, my studio is in a worse state than the one I left it in last time.
And Aurora is gone. Long gone. I wouldn’t be surprised if she left for good.
Because of me.
Fucking Atticus. I told him I wasn’t ready. I fucking told him.
My chest burns as I kick a busted easel away from me and drag my hands over my face, hating how they come away wet with the salt of my tears.
The bones in my right hand ache like hell after what I just made it take part in and I force myself to feel the pain. Hold the paint smell in my chest until it doesn’t make me want to be sick anymore.
I exhale sharply and push to my feet, ignoring the part of me that wants to chase after Aurora and tell her…
What would I even say?
It doesn’t matter. She doesn’t know me. She doesn’t owe me the courtesy of hearing me out.
I’m probably the last person she wants to see right now.
Swallowing the urge to walk back through the door and lock it for good, I bend and lift the broom from the floor, and start to clean my own mess.