Fox #2
“Let me guess…” Rooke pretends to muse, rolling his eyes to the heavens. “You’re wondering what those names did to draw my attention. Why they deserve to be put down like rabid dogs.”
Kai and Haven’s faces turn stony. Haven lays a hand on Bastian’s leg as if to calm him, and Kai reaches over and lays his hand over hers as if to calm her.
Haven then holds out the joint to Rooke. He considers it for a moment and then takes it from her, studying me over the coiling smoke as he continues.
“Would listing their individual sins help ease your conscience?” He takes a hit from the joint, blows it out. “It’ll take a while.” Another hit. His voice is tight as he holds this one in. “You might have to spend the night...”
“That won’t change anything.”
I have no doubt Kai and Haven both know about the list of names left on my car seat. One of them had to have torn it out of the original ledger, and it wasn’t Rooke.
No wonder Kai starts glowering at me. “You telling me you haven’t done anything with those names yet? I thought that’s what you were after? You were ready to get on your fucking knees for the truth...then Bash gives you exactly what you want and you don’t do fuck all with it?”
I suddenly wish I had another glass of whiskey, even though I can already feel the effects of the first.
Kai and Haven were in Rooke’s bedroom the day of the fire, listening to me proposition their professor while he lounged on the couch. I remember their picnic baskets piled against the wall by the front door, wine peeking out under a blanket.
They’d been ready to run.
I’d been ready to stop them.
Instead, I went home with a list of names in exchange for their freedom.
Every day since, I’ve stared at those names, trying to convince myself it was a fair trade. Some other part of me stayed furious that these three had thought—even for a second—I’d be corrupt enough to take it.
“I suppose you think you’ve got some kind of moral code,” I say sourly. “You think what you do is okay because you do it to bad people. But if you think for a second—”
“Please,” Rooke cuts in, scoffing. “Morality is subjective.”
This earns a quizzical glance from Haven, and even Kai’s face flinches a little at Rooke’s words. Their professor has obviously taught them to keep their composure, because if I hadn’t been looking for their reactions, I would have missed it—they’re that fleeting.
“Justice isn’t.”
The whiskey is warming me even more than the fire.
“You didn’t come all this way for a philosophical debate on ethics.” Rooke slides his arm down to Kai’s shoulders and wraps his fingers around Kai’s bicep, tugging his lover gently against him. “Were you hoping for dinner and a show?”
Haven side-eyes Rooke, her mouth compressing. “Bastian...” she murmurs.
I clear my throat. “I’m not a vigilante.”
“Yet,” Rooke says, his expression blank.
“Ever.”
Kai snorts smoke through his nose. Haven doesn’t laugh, but her mouth wants to. Rooke’s thumb moves idly against Kai’s arm as he smiles.
“Forget it, Bash,” Haven says quietly. “He’ll never understand. Just let him leave.”
“Yeah, officer.” Kai takes the joint back from his girlfriend, hitting it before continuing in a tight voice, “Time you fucked off back to your sad, empty apartment in Agony Hollow. What’s it gonna be for dinner? Wendy’s or McDonalds?”
I don’t know why I expect Rooke to reprimand Kai.
Fuck knows why I’m angry that he doesn’t.
Or am I just angry that Kai is right? There’s nothing waiting for me at Agony Hollow.
There’s never been anything waiting for me back at home, wherever ‘home’ happened to be—trailer park, apartment, backseat of my car.
The fire pops.
Here’s what Bastian Rooke, with all his research and his slick fucking certainty, doesn’t know.
I’m not an honest man. And worst of all, I agree with him.
Morality is subjective...at least to the people who so openly flout their version of it. Why the fuck are the rest of us still pretending any of this shit matters?
Someone’s gotta keep the peace.
I stand. “I have a long drive.”
“You shouldn’t drink and drive, Deputy,” Haven says.
I ignore her, and head for the door. I get three steps. Three whole steps.
Surely that counts for something.
“You’ve got a knack for reading things, Fox. People, places. Situations. I watched you catalog everything when you came inside.”
I shouldn’t stop, but I do. I definitely shouldn’t turn around.
But I do.
“It’s a fascinating thing to watch. Hypnotic, almost.”
Rooke hasn’t moved from the couch, yet somehow, everything about him has changed, like a current under his skin switching direction.
He rises. The gown swings loose around him and he doesn’t bother with it as he walks closer.
“You saw the belt. The mark on Haven’s neck. You asked if you’d interrupted something, even when you knew you had. Yet you stayed. You stayed, and you drank everything Haven poured even though it was more than you wanted.”
He stops an arm’s length away. Close enough that I can smell their sex on him.
“How often does someone give you more than you wanted?” His voice drops, almost gentle as he murmurs, “When has anyone ever given you the one thing you truly want?”
The words fuck you lurches up my throat and lodges there, held in place by Bastian’s dark eyes, and the knowing smile ghosting his full mouth.
“Kai?”
Leather creaks as Kai gets off the couch. I don’t dare look away from Rooke in case he makes a grab for me, so all I have is my peripheral vision until Kai comes close enough to unblur.
“Bring me the belt.” Rooke says it quietly, watching my face the way he’d watch a text he was translating.
My mouth is suddenly dry, the hackles on the back of my neck rising.
“I’m leaving,” I croak, with all the authority of someone asking for a gas station receipt for their energy drink and reheated pizza slice.
“You’re sitting down, Fox.”
And then the most fucked up thing yet happens.
I sit down again.
On the chair that’s been facing the couch since before I took my beanie off.
Rooke didn’t drag this chair over so I’d be warm. It was for this...whatever the fuck this is.
He’s staged a theater for an audience of one.
Kai’s bare feet slap on the wooden floorboards as he returns with a belt dangling from his fist. I swivel to keep an eye on him, turning in my seat when he goes to stand behind the chair.
“Hands.”
I could break his nose from here. I’ve done it to bigger men in worse positions. And I consider doing it, if only to prove that I still have some fight left in me.
But I guess I don’t.
I could blame the long drive. The whiskey.
But it’s my fucking curiosity that gets the better of me. Rooke’s obviously concocted something, and I’ll be fucked if I leave without finding out what.
The scheduled message on my phone is still counting down. If I don’t cancel it by six, three people will receive this location and Rooke’s invitation.
I am not careless.
I am not stupid.
But apparently, I’m just curious enough to make those distinctions irrelevant, because why the fuck else do I put my hands behind the chair and let Kai belt them to the chair slats?
He’s unnervingly good at this. Makes me think he’s done it a couple of times before.
The smell of weed rolls off him as he leans in, mouth by my ear.
“Gotta make sure it’s tight, don’t we, officer?” He yanks the belt hard enough to make me clench my jaw. Then his thumb slips beneath the leather for half a second before he draws away. “Wouldn’t want you getting loose.”
He claps a hand on my shoulder as he heads back to the couch. Haven giggles when he collapses beside her and starts nuzzling the side of her neck.
I test the leather cuffs once, suppressing a wince when they cut into my skin.
Rooke crouches in front of me. “You’ve been a good boy, Fox, but you’re holding back. You have so much potential. All you need is someone to show you how to harness it.”
I recognize the tone of his voice. It’s the one he used in the lecture hall when I visited his class. Back then, I thought he was an arrogant fool. Now I’m not sure what he is.
What the fuck am I anymore?
“Say ‘no’, and I’ll let you leave.” His eyes move over my face like the beam of a torch. “Come on, Fox. You’ve been saying it to yourself your whole life. It should come easy.”
I clear my throat, work saliva back into my mouth with a dry tongue.
“Could do with some more of that whiskey.”
The corner of Rooke’s mouth tilts up. “You’ll want a clear head, Fox.”
He doesn’t go back to the couch. Instead, Rooke crosses to the breakfast nook and drags a second chair across the floorboards, unhurried, and sets it down six feet from mine. Facing me.
“Kai? Come sit.”
“What?” Kai scoffs. “Fuck no.” He shoots to his feet, the lazy insolence from earlier gone, replaced by outright disobedience. “You want to put on a show for that pig, do it yourself.”
Rooke’s voice doesn’t change one iota. “Sit down, boy.”
“Make me,” Kai growls.
Rooke closes the distance, snapping the belt out of his silk robe and looping it around Kai’s throat in one smooth motion as he sidesteps Kai’s clumsy grab.
Kai’s snarl chokes off mid-syllable as Rooke pulls the silk tight, arching Kai’s back against his chest. The younger man gets one fist into Rooke’s gown, another in his hair, but Rooke just shakes off the grip and starts walking him backward, shoving him down on the chair so hard it scrapes a foot over the floor.
“I love how you still think you’ll beat me in a fight.” Rooke stands behind him, the robe’s silk belt wound once around his knuckles, held taut enough that Kai has to sit up straight to breathe.
He’s shaking with anger, but he’s also hard enough to tent the front of his boxers.
“Haven.” Rooke doesn’t look away from me. “Come deal with his attitude.”
She peels the Henley over her head as she crosses the room and drops it where it lands.
Firelight sits on the fading stripe across her throat, the same width as the belt binding my hands behind the back of the chair. The necklace lies in the hollow between her collarbones, sparkling.