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Becca: Everything’s fine! Sorry, I just got a call from my beau. I’m off to see him. Don’t wait up for me, k?
Ava Jade: Have fun!
Rook shifted, stretching his leg out further as he lounged in the back seat next to me. A frown turned down the edges of his mouth as he, too, stared at the device in my hands. I shut it off and cleared my throat, pocketing it with a sigh.
I’d deleted every trace of the so-called stalker from it, but I knew there were ways to recover those messages. Grey seemed like the type to know exactly how to do that, so I needed to make sure I didn’t give him an opportunity to. I slept with it under my pillow all week, refusing to give him any opportunity to snatch it from my bedside table.
Other than that first night, I’d barely slept more than an hour at a time, every time he shifted against the hard floor, sighing, I woke, ready to smother him with a pillow in sleepless frustration. It was a wonder he still drew breath.
“How much longer?” I asked, speaking over the low hum of the radio for the first time.
“As long as it takes,” Corvus grumbled in reply from the seat in front of me, his elbow resting on the window’s ledge, his thick fingers propping up his heavy head at his temple.
I rolled my eyes and caught him giving me a spiteful look in the side view mirror. To which I flipped him the bird and he looked away, appearing bored, but the vein throbbing thickly in his neck told a different story.
“I’m fucking starved,” Rook groused, sliding his tongue over his lower lip. “Let’s stop for food, yeah?”
“No,” Corvus deadpanned.
My stomach rumbled at the mention of food, and Rook shot me a smirk.
“Awe, come on, man. I promised the girl an ice cream.”
He winked at me anddammitif my toes didn’t curl.
“I don’t care.”
“It’s five now,” Grey put in. “By the time we get back, it’ll be past eight. We should eat.”
Rook reached a tatted hand around the headrest to squeeze his brother’s shoulder with a triumphant grin. “Majority rules,” he said, smug as fuck.
“Fine. But make it quick.”
“There’s a diner up ahead,” Rook said, his teeth spinning the lip ring at the edge of his mouth. “Stop there.”
Corvus made a disgruntled sound and sank lower in his seat, bloodshot blue eyes fixed on the horizon.
The diner came into view as we crested the top of a low hill. A short, squat building that looked like it hadn’t been renovated whatsoever since the eighties. Only three cars were parked in the front lot and through the fogged glass windows, I could only see a handful of people seated at purple pleather coated booths.
I’d eaten at worse. Dad always joked I had an iron gut. Forged on trailer park water supply and fifty cent street hotdogs for dinner. I could eat whatever the hell I wanted here and be fine tomorrow, but these guys?
I doubted they could say the same.
“Pull around back,” Rook directed as Grey slowed, the Rover’s tires moving from uneven pavement to the dirt and gravel drive of the diner.
Grey cast Rook a look in the rearview, but did as his brother asked, driving us around to the back of the building to park beside a rusted old black van I assumed belonged to the owner or an employee.
“Who’s going in?” Grey asked. “We should grab some shit to go. I want to be back before dark.”
Rook nodded, his glimmering gaze hedging in my direction.
“We’ll send her,” he decided, still turning his lip ring.
“I’ll take their fattest burger,” he told me, licking his lips. “With fries and a shake. Chocolate.”
“Oh, so now I’m your fucking butler, too?”
“She’s not going in alone,” Corvus huffed, as though he was explaining something for the tenth time to a bunch of dimwits. It wasn’t lost on his brothers, either.
