39. Midnight cigarettes – Aurora
39
MIDNIGHT CIGARETTES
AURORA
I can’t fucking sleep.
Ellie’s been out like a light since we came to bed, and I just know Atticus must’ve been playing with her most of the day for her to be so tired. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to trust the guy after this, but it’s hard to stay angry with him seeing her so comfortable in her new bed. It’s absolutely massive and takes up an entire corner of the bedroom. A fancy-looking memory foam thing with raised edges in a fluffy pink cover. It’s perfect.
I roll over on the mattress, flicking on the bedside lamp before sitting up to pick through the small pile of items Elijah bought for me in Paris. They occupy the space at the end of the bed. I rip the tag off a long, plain black sweater I found at Versace and pull it over my pajamas. It feels smoother than butter against my skin.
If I were smart, I’d have looked for a bathing suit. A soak in the hot tub outside, or twenty minutes in the steam room next to it, sounds like just the thing right now. But I need some air. Maybe it’ll help me think. I suppose I could just dip my toes in.
I bend to retrieve the fallen tag from the floor, trying to ignore the too many zeroes staring back at me with wide, knowing eyes. My fingers brush a rough edge in the hardwood, and I squint to see in the dim light, finding a deep groove that disappears into the shadows under the bed.
Carefully, I run my finger along it, slipping from the edge of the mattress to my knees on the floor. It extends far beneath the bed frame and branches off in either direction. The scratches are too straight. Too deep to have been an accident.
“What the hell?”
I push the bed over a few inches. Then a few inches more, earning myself a chuff from Ellie as she stirs and adjusts her position to go back to sleep.
It’s some kind of pattern…
Carved into the floor in violent notches and scrapes.
I push the bed over more, finding a cross and a ring filled with pockmarks. The lighter wood beneath the darker stain makes the spots look almost like stars. Like some constellation I don’t recognize. Hercules maybe? Or Virgo? I was never good at recognizing them, but I had an older foster sister once who loved that kind of shit.
Why would someone put it under a bed?
I huff out a mirthless laugh. As if I should expect anything to make sense here. From the moment I stepped foot in this house, my entire world has been flipped upside down and turned on its axis. Jesse’s dead. I was just in Paris. I helped steal a few million dollars’ worth of art. I’m wearing fucking Versace. And, oh yeah , I fucked two criminals in an airplane at thirty thousand feet.
It feels wrong to call them that. They’re only a product of what the world made them. Whether it was trauma or legacy—or a bit of both.
My stomach churns when I think of Elijah in that room where Ambrose kept him. Isolated. Cut off from the world and his family. Utterly alone with nothing but paint and pain to remind him he was still alive.
I try to imagine it, but I can’t. I’m not sure if I even want to.
I’ve been through some shit. I know what it’s like to be locked in. Closed out. But not like that. Not for a whole year and seven months. I don’t know how he didn’t go mad.
A flashback of him smashing easels in his art studio catapults to the forefront of my mind, and I think…maybe he didn’t fully evade the madness. I don’t blame him, though. How could I, now that I’ve heard the truth?
Air .
I need some fucking air. I can ask one of the guys about the weird constellation carvings later.
Leaving the bed at an awkward angle so I don’t disturb Ellie any more than I already have, I quietly tiptoe into the hall.
The house is silent as I move through its vacant halls. When I reach the bottom of the stairs, I peek down the long corridor that leads to Elijah’s bedroom and studio, biting my lip when I find it devoid of light. He might still be awake, just staring at the ceiling in the dark. Somehow, I doubt he’s sleeping tonight, either. Not after he had to relive all of his old scars.
He might not want to see me, though.
He might not want to see anyone .
Wrapping my arms around myself, I go around and through the kitchen, stopping to make a quick cup of tea with the honey from the hives—I swear the shit is addictive—and take the steaming mug to the backyard with me.
There’s a chirp as I unlock the door and exit. Atticus must have the security system cranked up to eleven. I wait to see if it’s going to set off an alarm, but the house remains quiet as I step out and shut the door behind me.
The cool night air brushes against my bare legs, and the thin socks on my feet do nothing to stop the chill of the stone terrace from seeping into my bones. But it feels good. The open space gives me room to breathe, and the cold soothes the uncomfortable tension in my chest.
I sip my tea to get some warmth back into my blood as I walk down onto the pool deck under the bright, full moon. The sky is so clear here, so free of light pollution, that if I had a map, I could probably find any constellation. There’s nothing but the sound of the pool water sloshing gently and the din of nature sounds farther in the distance.
It’s so peaceful. You’d have no idea that somewhere in these hills, and probably not all that far away, is a dead gangster.
Sure you wouldn’t rather ask about the bodies buried in the backyard? Seven’s joking words to me at the beehive come back, and I scoff to myself, realizing he probably wasn’t really joking. How many others has he buried in the North Carolina mountains?
The scent of tobacco prickles my nose, and I frown, whirling when I hear the crackle and hiss of a cigarette.
“ Jesus .” My pulse races and a healthy amount of tea sloshes onto the pool deck when I find Atticus lounging in a pool chair behind me. His grimacing face is illuminated in the cherry-red glow of his cigarette as he takes a long drag.
“Nope,” he says, his voice muted as he holds in the tobacco smoke and then lets it out in a plume of smoky gray. “Just me. Couldn’t sleep?”
He holds the cigarette out to me, and I consider him for a moment. He looks different. It’s his hair, I realize. He’s never had it loose before. It’s always been tied back in a short bun.
It’s a lot longer than I thought. Thick and wild. The color of golden wheat with a bit of dark copper laced through it to match his short, trimmed beard.
I close the gap between us and take the cigarette, ashing it before taking a small drag and passing it back. “Didn’t peg you for a smoker.”
“Didn’t peg you for a killer.”
I flinch. “Touché.”
Of all the thoughts racing through my mind, trying to make sense of themselves, strangely, the fact that I killed a man wasn’t even in the top five. I’d barely thought about it at all since we got on the jet to come home. How fucked up is that?
“There’s a weird carving under my bed,” I say as I exhale, letting the nicotine do its job of calming my nerves.
“Yeah. Julian did it. Fucked up all the walls, too, but we fixed those.”
The reminder of what happened to him is like a weight in my stomach.
“Where is he now? Julian?”
“He’s back in the old house. The one where Eli grew up. He has a full staff there. Nurses who care for him. A doc that comes to check in once a week. Security. We tried having him here for a while, but he wanted to go back. Said he couldn’t see her here.”
“See who?”
“His wife, Florence. When he’s there, he sees her. He can talk to her. He didn’t see her here, and he hated it. When he stopped recognizing us, there wasn’t much point keeping him somewhere he didn’t want to be if it was going to cause him so much distress.”
“Why didn’t you go with him? Stay with him in the old house, I mean?”
His face pinches. “We’ve been trying to dismantle Ambrose’s empire for a while now. The only reason any of us are still alive is because he has no idea where we are.”
“But he won’t hurt Julian?”
From what I understood, Ambrose knows where the old house is.
“Nah. We worried about that for a while, hence the security, but Ambrose already got what he wanted from Julian…and he isn’t a threat now. Not with his illness. Eli still worries Ambrose might try to use Julian against us, though.”
“Would he?”
“I don’t think so. But if there were ever any indication that he might, we’d have Julian moved to a secure location in a heartbeat. Trust me, I don’t like him in that house any more than Eli does, but it’s where he’s at peace and we can’t take that from him. It’s all he has left.”
I want to ask him more, but I don’t want to push my luck. This is the most candid Atticus has been with me since I met him. Probably the most he’s spoken directly to me since I came to this house.
But judging by the guarded expression on his face, he’s not likely to answer many more of my questions. He still doesn’t trust me, and that’s fine. I don’t trust him, either.
Funny how I thought I’d be safe here. So far from everything. So far from Jesse.
When in reality, I might’ve escaped one prison cell just to walk into another.
A world with the same bars, but a different warden.
The silence stretches between us in the dark. I sip the remains of tea to try to fill it.
“I should probably head back in.”
“Wait.”
I turn to face him and his Adam’s apple bobs in his throat as he sits up and pats the end of the lounger. “Stay.”
“Why?”
“There’s something I want to say.”
A muscle in my temple flexes as I clench my jaw. There’s a lot I’d like to say, too, but none of it is very nice. I can forgive Seven and Elijah for not saying anything because they didn’t know Atticus’s plan. They probably didn’t even know he had one at all when he first brought me here. And I get loyalty between friends. Between brothers.
But Atticus? He wanted to use me all along. Even if it might be for a worthy cause, am I supposed to be fucking happy about it?
Because it feels like shit.
I’ve been used and abused my whole goddamn life. After Paris, I thought this might be the one place where I wouldn’t have to worry about that.
And I was wrong again.
“Then say it.”
He taps the end of his seat again. “Please.”
Something about the way he says it makes me curious.
“It’ll just take a second,” he adds, his dark brown eyes flitting to mine and holding there.
I sit. “Fine. But only because I owe you for taking care of Ellie.”
Not because you asked nicely.
His lips tug up in a lopsided smirk that he erases as soon as he realizes I’ve seen it. “Yeah. She’s a great pup. Smart as hell.”
Now it’s my turn to smirk. Don’t I fucking know it.
Atticus studies my face like I’m some puzzle he’s still trying to solve. It makes me nervous. He might find something I don’t want him to.
I cock my head, trying to read him right back. What is he playing at?
“Tomorrow,” he says finally. “When I go over the plan with everyone, I need you to remember something.”
I clasp the mug tighter between my hands as he takes one final drag of his cigarette and pinches off the cherry at the end to snuff it out. He puts the butt in his pocket and blows the smoke away from me, downwind.
“Remember what?”
“I want you to remember that it’s your choice.”
I feel my face screw up in confusion. “That what is my choice?”
“Whether or not you’ll help us.”
There’s a black sea of emotion in his eyes that’s too deep and too painful to look at.
I bite the inside of my cheek as I drop my gaze to the small stretch of wooden pool lounger between us.
“The guys…” He trails off. “I can see how they’ve become attached to you.”
It’s clear he doesn’t like it and I’m surprised when it stings. It shouldn’t because I don’t care what Daddicus thinks.
I don’t.
“It could get dangerous, and they might not want you involved.”
I’m not sure what to say to that. I’m not even sure if I want to be involved.
I do want to help them, regardless of that being Atticus’s plan all along. People like the man who kept Elijah captive—who hurt him—deserve every bad thing coming to them. But it’s not my fight. It isn’t my legacy that was stolen. Or my family who was taken.
I don’t even have a family. Not really.
It’s always been just me. And right now, my instinct is telling me to believe Atticus when he says it could be dangerous. Am I willing to risk my life to fight in a war I didn’t even have a hand in starting?
I jump when Atticus reaches across the space between us and places his hands over mine where they clutch the empty mug, making a zap of electricity dart up my arms at the contact.
“They’re the best people in the world,” he says in a low tone. “The only family that has ever mattered to me.”
My eyes sting and I don’t know why.
“And that…that fucking bastard almost broke us. He did break Julian. But I can fix it.”
I look up and immediately wish I hadn’t. He’s set fire to the black sea in his eyes, and I get lost in the flames.
“ With you ,” he whispers harshly. “With your help, there’s a chance I can set it all right. Please. Please let me try. Not for me. For them . They deserve this.”
I pull my hands from his, leaving the mug between us as I try to block out the way my foundations are shaking. Wonder when the fuck my walls started to crumble.
There’s unrestricted passion in his voice that I can’t deny, but I wish I could block it out. Fill my ears with cotton.
He loves them. It’s what he’s saying without saying it. He loves them, and he will do whatever it takes to repair what was broken.
Because they’re his family.
Not blood, but brothers all the same.
It’s more than I ever dared to wish for myself. The quiet prayer that the stars never answered for me. And even if my lack of it hurts, I’m so glad Eli and Sev have found that because they do deserve it.
So, I guess I’m glad they have their Daddicus.
Even if he is a rude dickhead with control issues.
Atticus pushes to his feet, snatching up my drained mug to take with him. “You already saved Eli once, and for that, I’ll never be able to repay you. So, if you say no, I’ll respect it. You can write your own check. Start over anywhere you want. It’s your choice. Yours alone.”
His deep gaze holds me captive for another moment before he leaves.
As his heavy footsteps retreat back into the house, I regain the ability to breathe. But the hole in my chest and the impossible choice in my lap make it harder than it should be.
I turn around and lay back, looking up at the midnight sky.
I stopped believing in fate and the power of the universe when I was fourteen, sneaking drain cleaner into a bottle of Mountain Dew to poison my foster parents.
We make our own decisions, and good or bad, they define us.
I don’t know if I’ll make the right one, but I do know Atticus is right. It is my choice to make.