Rook (Endgame Book 2)

by Riley Ashby

  The fabric slid between her fingers without a sound as she unfurled the sheet. The bottom hit the ground as she held it up at its full length—or as much as she could since it was a few feet taller than her.

  She dropped her hands, bringing down the fabric so I could see her face again. She was beaming.

  “This is great, Castel. Thank you so much.”

  The sheets fell to the floor as she dropped them and launched at me, throwing her arms around my neck. I caught her around the waist, holding her feet off the ground. Her stomach flattened against mine; my belt buckle pressed into her skin just above the waistband of her jeans. She laughed, and I couldn’t help but echo her, so relieved she approved of my offering.

  She pecked me quickly on the cheek and picked up the fabric again, holding it up toward the ceiling. “Can you help me set it up?”

  “Allow me.” I pulled over my desk chair and stood on it, swiftly hooking the eyelets I’d sewn into the top of the sheet over the hooks. I had spent hours watching YouTube tutorials in the library trying to figure out how to sew them right so they wouldn’t tear. I could have paid someone to do it, but that didn’t feel right. It seemed like something I should do myself.

  Once every hook was in place, I let the sheet dangle as she disappeared through the slit in the fabric. She jerked the two pieces open and closed a few times for good measure, making a different face at me every time she pulled them apart again. I laughed, feeling lighter than I had all day at seeing her so delighted.

  She finally calmed down enough to tie back each piece, leaving the bed visible to the room. She pulled me over next to her on the bed, and I sat carefully, keeping a few inches between us. This was meant to give us space, not bring us closer, but she held my hands tight in hers, giving me nowhere to go.

  “Thank you for this, Cas. I can’t tell you how sweet it is that you did this for me. It means a lot.”

  I smiled and squeezed her fingers before pulling my hands free.

  “Am I Cas now?”

  She blushed. “Sorry, I don’t have to call you that if you don’t like it.”

  I tried not to smile. “I like it when you say it.”

  She blushed harder, and I cursed myself. I didn’t need to be thinking about the sounds that I liked coming from her mouth.

  “Then that’s what I’ll call you,” she said, looking away. When she bit her lip, I wondered what it would feel like between my teeth.

  Our hands were resting next to each other on the mattress with our pinky fingers almost touching. She twitched, so quickly it could have been involuntary, and her finger hooked over mine. I took a deep breath as the world compressed. I let myself think for one second about grabbing her hand, yanking her over to me, and pressing my mouth against her lips. They would be petal soft like the flowers on the sheet hanging from the ceiling. I could put my hand on her face and run my thumb over the apple of her cheek as I had so many nights while she was sleeping next to me in innocence and never fearing my touch. She would let me push her onto the mattress, or maybe she would push me down, and she could bring her legs around my hips so I could finally know what the inside of her thighs felt like.

  But it couldn’t happen. She was fifteen and had daddy issues for days, and I had promised that I would take care of her as if she were my own sister.

  I pulled my hand away, putting it in my pocket, and stood at the same moment Ellery’s key rattled in the door. He smiled as he stepped into the room, seeing the newly installed curtain.

  “I guess you like it?” he asked his sister, and she jumped to her feet again in a hurry.

  “It’s perfect,” she said, beaming at the two of us. I stared at her as long as I dared, trying to memorize the exact curve of her lips.

  *

  The thing was, there wasn’t anything to clean up at the cabin. I had been going out there every other day or so—ever since Ellery brought me back out West—to keep it ready. I threw away food as it expired or rotted and then replaced it. I checked the taps even though there was no chance of the water not working. I flipped all the switches to make sure no light bulbs went out and refilled the bird feeders no matter how relentlessly those hungry little creatures depleted the stores. When I went back to New York, I left pages of instructions with the groundskeepers in order to ensure they maintained the upkeep. I wouldn’t be around, but that wasn’t an excuse for it not to be ready.

  It had to be perfect for her when she came back. I drove myself crazy thinking about how disappointed she would be if she came home and found it in disarray with moldy food in the fridge and dust on the fireplace. The cottage had been her retreat, a place of her own away from Ellery’s house rules and regimens. We would come out here on my visits and spend the evenings in front of a crackling fire, reading silently or even out loud if we read something we thought the other would like. Sometimes she fell asleep on the couch with her feet on my lap, and I would sit there all night, no matter how stiff my back got, in order to avoid disturbing her. It surprised me that she hadn’t come out here once in all the time she had been home, but maybe it was better this way. She would know that I was the one who took care of everything and kept it ready for her.

  All afternoon, I went through each room and made my final checks. Smoothed out the already flawless sheets on her bed, fluffed the pillows that hadn’t been flattened in months. I checked and re-checked the fridge to make sure it contained plenty of her favorite foods. I walked out to the garden and pulled up a few sunflowers, stuck them in the tallest glass I could find, and placed it on her kitchen table.

  She’ll be fine. She’ll be fine.

  She wasn’t going to be fine.

  Vail started having night terrors the night after I went back to New York. She woke up screaming nearly every night. Tori said she had been downplaying the severity with her brother, insisting they were getting better and less frequent. But Tori was the one staying with her at night in order to help her through them, and she told me the truth. That Vail was inconsolable in her panic, head flying back and forth as if looking for threats that had materialized out of thin air. Hours would go by before she was calm enough to go back to sleep. Other nights, she was too afraid to go to sleep and would sit up with all the lights on and drink coffee to keep herself awake. But she could go without sleeping for only so long, especially when her body was healing from so much trauma.

  I never should have left.

  I was supposed to protect her when the demons got too close. I always had. I’d held her through normal nightmares in college, the commonplace dreams that plagued us all after a scary movie or a bad night out. We’d always laughed about them once she shook off the jitters.

  I thought when I went to New York, I was going to fight the real monsters and make sure they stayed far, far away. But the dragons I really had to worry about were right here, closer than inside the home. They were right inside her head.

  She needed someone to keep away the darkness, and it had always been me. Until I left her. Again.

  I walked to the far end of the cottage. It hadn’t been built to house many people—the main bedroom was a loft—but off the back of the kitchen was a small servant’s quarters. I had a cot set up and brought over an extra cell phone charger and a change of clothes. It was all I would need. I wouldn’t stay here during the day, not if she didn’t want me, but no way in hell was I leaving her alone at night. Having Tori stay would be out of the question because she needed me. I was the only person for this job.

  I grabbed a trash bag from beneath the kitchen sink and stopped as I walked, picking up stray leaves and twigs to shove into it to make it look full. There was a flash of movement in the window of Ellery’s office as I approached the house, but when I looked up, I only saw Sophie. She raised one hand tentatively in a wave.

  “Thank you,” I mouthed, and she nodded before looking back down at her book.

  Vail might have her reasons for not wanting me around, but I was the right person to help her through this
. I didn’t know what was making her so angry with me or why she was pushing me away, but I refused to be moved.

  I wasn’t going to let her down again.

  I packed a bag after dinner and walked over to the cottage alone, not bothering to tell anyone I was leaving. They would figure it out. The sun was low in the sky as the day trended toward nighttime. Pinks and reds streaked across the cloudless sky. I tried not to think of how much the rivulets of color reminded me of trickling blood. I was free now, and the world was likewise free from such monstrosities. No point in thinking about the thousands of women who would never be as lucky as I was; those who didn’t have anyone to come looking for them. There was no use dwelling on the people I couldn’t help.

  Or so I told myself.

  I sucked in a breath as my hand landed on the polished brass doorknob of the cottage. I immediately felt more at home out here because this had always been my space. Ellery had wanted to demolish it, but I convinced him to renovate it and update the wiring and plumbing. More than anything in his house, this was my space. It was right that I was here and not in some strange apartment downtown. I should have come out here sooner, but something had kept me away.

  Going inside was like stepping back in time. It was exactly as I had left it, only cleaner. The chrome on the sink gleamed, and I could see the lines in the carpet from the vacuum cleaner. I dropped my bag in the bedroom and did a slow tour of the space, letting myself get reacquainted with everything. My shoulders relaxed and my jaw loosened as I breathed in the familiar cedar scent, but something was still missing. I passed my fingers over the petals of the sunflowers on the table and dropped the camellia from my bedroom in alongside them. My figurines of Leo and Max sat guard over the fireplace, free of dust. When I checked the pantry and the fridge, I found them fully stocked. The dishes were clean, and the bed was made. I frowned. There was no way Castel had done a full detail on this place in one afternoon.

  The back mud room had never had anything besides a utility sink, but as I stepped back there now on a whim, I was unsurprised to find a cot with a small pillow and blanket folded neatly on top. Another small piece of paper caught my attention.

  Just at night. No arguments.

  I folded the paper carefully and tucked it into my pocket with the one from my bedroom, and the missing piece of the puzzle slid into place. Cas was what was missing. I had spent plenty of time out here by myself in the past few years, but the best memories were with him. I had always taken such care to clean and decorate the place when he was visiting, wanting to impress him with my little corner of the world. He always noticed every detail, complimenting my taste and appreciating the little things I didn’t expect anyone else to notice. It was right that he was here. Tori had surely told him about my screaming. If he was here, protecting me from myself, it meant something. It meant he wasn’t leaving again. It meant he cared at least enough to protect me. To keep protecting me.

  Don’t let yourself slip, I reminded myself, but it was hard when I held his words in my pocket.

  I took the paper to my bedroom and slid it beneath the mattress with the one from my room. They were the closest I had ever come to love notes. It was pathetic, but it made me feel better to have a little bit of him in bed with me again.

  *

  I had three good nights before the terrors started again. Castel slipped into his room every night after I turned off the light in the main room, and when I walked to the kitchen in the morning, he was gone, leaving the blanket folded into a pristine rectangle across the cot. I’d put my nose to the pillow and inhale his scent. It was pathetic, but it calmed me. Something about his essence seemed stronger as if he were willingly imbuing himself into the fabric for me. As if he knew I couldn’t hate him.

  The fourth night, I woke with his hands on my wrists.

  I was thrashing, crying, trying to fight off that man who wanted to hold me down and have his way with me no matter how much it hurt and how much I begged him to stop. I did everything he asked, everything, but it never mattered except that he would hurt me even more if I didn’t. If I didn’t hold still, then the rope would come out, but I couldn’t stand not defending myself. I was so tired, and I just wanted to sleep and not dream, but he couldn’t even let me have that. When my hand connected with something solid, I thought for a moment I was victorious. There was a grunt, but the grip on me only tightened.

  “Vail, come out of it. It’s me; it’s Cas.”

  The voice brought me back. That voice had never been there before. I had banished it so thoroughly, not wanting to taint it by letting it have any association with my torture. I seized it like a lifeline, pulling myself along it back to shore as I slowly regained my senses and blinked the world into existence. Air flowed into my lungs like the wind in a sail, carrying me away from the danger. Cas hovered above me, and my bedroom light was on. The moment I was conscious, he dropped my wrists and backed away. He fell against the wall and slid to the floor. When I saw the red mark on his cheek, my agony was forgotten in an instant.

  “Are you all right?” I asked, jumping out of bed and running to him. I didn’t even think about how close we were as I fell to my knees and reached for his face.

  “You got a good arm,” he muttered as I stroked his cheek. The skin was red and hot, and his eye twitched. It would bruise.

  “Shit, sorry,” I muttered, sitting back on my heels. “I’ll get you some ice.”

  He patted my hand. “It’s all right. Barely hurts.”

  I ran downstairs anyway and wrapped a few ice cubes in a kitchen towel. I couldn’t stand him suffering at my expense. Back up in my room, I held it against his face gently. He reached up to press his hand against mine.

  He stroked his thumb along the back of my hand. I suddenly grew aware of our proximity and the way the heat rose between us like a tidal wave as he studied my face. My breath caught in my throat as I met his eyes. Fear danced behind his eyes.

  “Hearing you yell like that was terrifying. I thought you had hurt yourself.”

  I looked down at my flimsy white cami and loose shorts. Though the space between us felt hot, the air around us was chilly.

  “I was so scared, Vail. I tripped three times running up here, and all I could think was that was an extra second you were in agony.”

  Dropping the melting ice to the floor, I flipped his hand over in mine and traced his palm, then placed it on my neck. He tightened his fingers slightly. My breath caught in my throat, but I pushed down the fear. I always loved to have him touch me. I didn’t want to let my memories taint the way his hands made me feel or the way he could calm me down more than any medication or distraction.

  “Can you stay with me tonight?”

  When he paused, I thought he would refuse. It had been a long time since we shared a bed. Once we were both adults, it seemed silly for me to seek out his space like that. But after a moment, he tugged me closer, and I let myself fall forward against his chest.

  Get away from him, my mind commanded. Keep him at bay. But I couldn’t. I was too vulnerable. I needed him to hold me, to keep the shadows from pulling me down for a little while longer. Just for one night.

  We were an awkward tangle of limbs, him with his back against the wall and me perpendicular to him with one arm around his neck, but the fluttering in my chest settled as I pressed my ear against his beating heart. It echoed in my ear along with my own rushing blood. It sounded like one sound.

  “I could never feel his heartbeat,” I whispered, and his breath caught. He brought his hand up to my shoulder and squeezed me lightly. His chest moved as he swallowed.

  He put his other arm around me and pulled me a little tighter. I breathed in the sandalwood and mint and reminded myself that this was Cas. It was Cas, it wasn’t him, and it was never going to be him ever again. I pressed my face harder into his shirt, clawing down the collar so I could feel his skin. I was desperate to be closer to the scent that had always told me I was safe. Moments later, I started drifting b
ack to sleep. I woke only slightly as he shifted beneath me, scooping me into his arms, then laid me on the soft mattress. I was cold for the longest moment, and I moaned, thinking he had left me. But then the blanket fell over me as his body slipped in next to mine. He pulled me against his chest once more, and we were back in that dorm room, and it was us against the world. The night wouldn’t ever end, couldn’t end, because being against him like this was the most perfect thing that had ever existed in any world, and something this perfect wasn’t allowed to stop.

  I tried not to sleep, wanting to remember every detail of what it was like to lie with him for the first time in so long. I wanted to know because I could never let him into my bed again after tonight. This was only because I was weak, and he was the only one here. After this, I would figure out something else—ask for sleep aids or figure out another way to keep the nightmares at bay—so he didn’t come running to me anymore. I had to convince him to keep away from me, or the façade I was barely keeping up would crumble like sand beneath his gaze.

  I’d never slept as soundly as I did that night. No more dreams invaded my slumber; I didn’t move an inch for hours. The next time I opened my eyes, the sun was streaming through the window, and I was alone.

  “You had no right to do that!” Ellery’s finger was a hair’s breadth away from my face, threatening to poke out my eye. I had never seen him as angry as he was now, not even that time our RA hit on Vail in front of him. He had been railing against me for the past twenty minutes.