28. Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Rook’s fists still slammed against the heavy bag at four in the morning. Sweat soaked the back of his white t-shirt and he didn’t look up until the cage door groaned as it opened behind him.
“Austin,” he said. His eyes widened and whatever he meant to say next thinned and got lost in the humid air between us.
I stumbled two steps toward him, looked down at the soot on my hands, and then back to his face. Pale. The sight of me drained all the blood from his features. He closed the rest of the distance between us and placed a steadying hand on each of my elbows.
“Gray’s dead,” I rasped.
He cursed under his breath and didn’t bother asking if I was okay. I wouldn’t be here like this—a stumbling mess—if I were. He knew that.
“What do you need?” he asked, his voice low and careful, but not soothing. The anguish in my chest was too thick to be penetrated by comfort.
I shook my head, suddenly forgetting how to form a coherent sentence.
I needed Gray to be alive. I’d realized on the quiet drive to Rook’s club that Gray had spent most of the last four years taking care of me.
Not just my business, but me—meals when I forgot to eat, covering my work when he could so I could attempt to sleep, asking me about my day, though I never realized he was the only one who did.
He made sure I didn’t unravel under the pressure of power, not because he was paid to, but because—I thought—he might have actually considered me a friend.
He cared about me.
And I did fuck all for him.
“What happened?” Rook asked.
I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “There was a fire at the warehouse. He was there working late and he got trapped inside.”
“How did the fire start?”
My brain struggled with the question. I’d been so worried about the men putting out the fire and Gray lying lifeless in the wreckage that I hadn’t paused to wonder what caused it.
“I don’t know.”
“Sit down,” he said, ushering me toward a wooden stool in the corner. He cracked the seal on a bottle of water and placed it carefully in my hand. I raised it to my lips, didn’t drink, and lowered it.
“I was a shitty friend to him. A shitty boss. Everything. And if I’d fucking accepted his help tonight, he wouldn’t have been there.”
“Whoa, slow down,” he said. “Help with what?”
“The bloody spell, the knife, everything! I told him what it was for; I finally fucking told someone—other than you—and he offered to help. And I said no because I don’t know how to let someone in like that, not when it matters that fucking much.
If I keep it to myself, I’m the one protecting it, and I’m the only person who can fuck it up.
If I’d let him in, we could have spent the night in the penthouse trying to find a way to make me cry over that goddamn knife and he’d be alive! ”
Rook crouched low in front of me and reached a hand up to brush his thumb along my chin. “It’s not your fault.”
“It is my fault. I’ve made myself so untouchable that even the people who care about me can’t reach me. I’m alone now and someday I’ll die alone, but I’m going to make sure that unholy bitch isn’t around when I do.”
A smirk played around the edges of his lips. “You’re not that untouchable.”
“What?”
“I mean, I killed you. You’re not completely untouchable, and if that’s true, then there’s hope for someone getting through that fucking fortress around you.”
“Why are you smirking at me right now?” I asked, wondering if he’d lost his mind or if my grief had reached a peak and I was losing mine.
“It’s cute that you think you’re so powerful. King Austin lording over all the little people. Lonely and alone with his empire.” He rose to his full height, but did not step back. He towered over me, casting me in shadow under the obnoxious fluorescent lights.
“Shut up.”
“No. You think you’re invincible, but you know everyone else isn’t. Not your mother. Not Gray. Not the voices. You’re too afraid of losing people to let them in, but it didn’t save him, and you’re still alone.”
“Shut up!” I stood and shoved him, which was about as useful as pushing a mountain.
“Make me.” He took two steps back, still smirking, but his eyes…they’d glossed over with panic. Or maybe a plea.
“Hit me,” he said.
No, that was definitely a plea in his eyes: Take the bait.
“No.”
“Why? That rage has to go somewhere. My face is as good a place as any.” He lifted his fists and shifted his stance. “Fight me.”
This was ridiculous. He wanted me to fight him to prove what? A point of some kind. But rage sparked across my skin, numbing the grief. He stared at me expectantly, and I finally puffed a sigh and removed my jacket, draping it over the stool. I unbuttoned my sleeves and rolled them up to my elbows.
One step closer. A swing toward that handsome face he wanted me to break so badly.
He blocked it, throwing me off balance.
“Try harder, England,” he laughed.
I swung at his stomach. He dodged. My fist missed him by five whole inches. I tried swifter punches. He caught both my fists in his hands, holding me away from him.
“You’re freezing,” he said, his lips dropping into a frown.
The cold.
Oh fuck, the cold.
A gray cloth being burned away.
It wasn’t just a vision. It was a prediction.
My knee to his stomach broke his hold on my hands and he doubled over.
“Better,” he gasped. He straightened and readied himself for another hit.
But I was past the absurdity of whatever Rook was trying to accomplish.
I had predicted Gray’s death. I could have stopped this.
My fists flew at Rook like bullets, and the more he avoided them, the harder I tried.
Sweat drenched me, soaking my fine shirt, and rolled down my spine.
I forgot the cold as the heat of fury consumed me.
Finally, Rook twisted me into a headlock. I struggled, turning and pulling, and I realized then—he was stronger than me. Hand-to-hand, maybe magic-to-magic, though he hadn’t given me the chance to try…
He was stronger.
I should have hated him for it. I should have wanted to wipe him off the face of the earth like every other opponent who stood a chance at defeating me.
Instead, it made me want to fold myself into him, to let him protect me and save me from this thing I’d done. I stopped struggling, and when he turned me toward him, he took my full weight as I collapsed from exhaustion and grief.
He held me up around my waist, my head falling to his shoulder.
“You won’t die alone,” he said, as if it were a promise.
“I saw this happening,” I croaked, the smell of citrus invading my nose. “The vision I had. This is what it meant. This is all my fault.”
He shook his head against my temple. “You didn’t understand what was happening. You couldn’t have known.”
When I finally pulled away from him, he stroked his fingertips down my cheek slowly, like his touch might glue all the pieces I was in back together.
“Stay at my place tonight.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
I looked at him—really looked at him—and the sight of his face kept that all-encompassing cold at bay a little longer. I looked at him and thought maybe he was the only one who could save me from it. A dangerous thought burrowed into my heart and made it ache.
“Because I just can’t.”
He pressed his lips together and nodded, and neither of us had any fight left in us.
“I’ll text you the address,” he said. “Just in case you change your mind.”
I wouldn’t. Walking into Rook’s home meant acknowledging that I felt safe with him, and that safety was born of caring for him.
And I swore, standing in front of him, that I would never care that much about anyone again.
***
I stared at the address Rook had texted me for two more hours, and as daylight crested the horizon, glowing pale orange through my raised window blinds, I changed my mind.
Not because caring for him was safe, but because my penthouse was filled with memories of Gray lounging on my couch and raiding my fridge. I couldn’t stay here, and if I didn’t stay here, I had nowhere else to go.
Nowhere but Rook’s.
He answered the door sleepy and surprised, and pulled me inside without a word, wrapping me in a hug that kept me from completely losing my grip on my emotions. I kissed him, pressing him back into one wall, and let his gasp of pleasure fill my ears, drowning out my thoughts of self-loathing.
“Come with me,” he whispered. All the lights were off, but I caught glimpses of his life in the shadows.
I’d expected a place that was messy and thoughtless, but Rook’s home was as straightforward as him—minimalist, but with things that mattered crammed on shelves where anyone could see them.
I wanted to see them, wanted to stare all of him straight in the face in the light, but he led me toward the bedroom and laid me out on the bed in the dark.
The mattress bounced slightly. He threw himself down next to me with a lack of grace completely opposite to the way he fought. This was the real Carter, not the Rook who trained fighters with an iron fist. He threw an arm across my torso and pulled me to him until there was no space between us.
“I’m glad you’re here. You shouldn’t be alone.”
“I’m always alone.”
“You’re not right now.”
The breath I released shuddered against the skin of his neck and I pressed my lips there to avoid thinking about it. I needed him closer and further away at the same time—physical, but far away from the tumult of emotions choking the life out of me.
He tilted his head, lengthening his neck and giving me more skin to distract myself with.
My mouth opened slightly, my tongue dragging against the pulse at the corner of his jaw.
His breaths stilted, and he grabbed my face between his fingers and turned it toward his, our lips colliding at a crooked angle before we adjusted on the bed to align.
His fingers threaded through my hair and he moved my head back to place messy, frantic kisses along my throat, down to the dip between my collarbones, then lower, kissing each inch of skin he revealed as he tore my shirt open.
Buttons littered the bed, and for once, I didn’t care.
He reached the waistband of my pants, his tongue tracing the exposed skin just above it as he untucked my shirt.
I lifted my upper body so he could shove it off my shoulders.
He pulled my pants and underwear down my legs and discarded them like an inconvenience.
Then he licked the length of my cock, his tongue hot and wet and exactly the distraction I craved.
He kissed me from base to tip, eager and open-mouthed.
I groaned as I twitched against his lips.
He wrapped his hand around me and took me deep into his mouth, all teasing forgotten as he jammed me all the way down his throat, moaning around my length.
I fisted my hands in the remains of my shirt.
I propped myself on my elbows to watch his head bob as he sucked me, then scrunched my eyes shut and tried to hold off my release.
“Carter.” His real name was glass on my tongue, ready to shatter and cut me to pieces. We were treading into dangerous territory, that perilous emotion throbbing inside me again.
He sat up and his lips glistened.
“I need to be inside you,” I said.
He let me fuck him slowly, taking my time, drawing out the countdown to when the physical distraction ended and my chest would collapse from sorrow again.
Afterward, we were a ball of limbs twisted together, with my head on his chest, glued together with sweat and exhaustion.
I couldn’t have moved if I’d wanted to, and the sun had risen enough to chase off some of the shadows in the room.
I let my eyes take in his space lazily, noting the polished chess trophies on a shelf along one wall and a tower of DVDs that nearly reached the ceiling, most of which were action movies I’d never heard of.
Clothes were thrown over a chair and in a pile in a corner, mountains of untouched laundry that should have been off-putting, but only made me love him more for this one place where he was fully himself.
My heart paused in my chest, a silent, frozen moment to allow me to realign myself around the word.
Love.
I pushed up on my hands and made for the edge of the bed, but my legs were wedged between his. He tugged me back against his chest.
“Where are you going?”
“Work,” I lied.
“No. You’re going to stay here and sleep.”
I couldn’t tell what time it was, but it might have been mid-morning. I’d stayed too long.
“I can’t.”
He stroked his fingertips along my spine like a sedative and I melted against him.
“There is nothing you need to do that can’t wait until later, Austin. Please stay.”
That ‘please’ was a drug, intoxicating and irresistible. I didn’t acknowledge his win, just scooted up the bed and buried my face in his neck.
“I love you,” I whispered. This might be the only place safe to say it, to even think it.
“I know. Just sleep, okay?”
There were no counted breaths, no trying to quiet my brain. There was only him lulling me to sleep, and one dangerous word hanging between us like a wreck waiting to happen.