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I couldn’t help noticing the differences in their rooms, and my ability to tell whose was whose with barely a single glance.
That part surprised me, made something shimmy uncomfortably beneath my skin. I didn’t want to know them, but there it was. Like it or not, they’d embedded themselves in my life. Made a home in my mind. Roosted in the cage of my bones.
Corvus’: a neat, modern space with soft dark fabrics and espresso finished wood. Not a single item out of place. No personality, either. No posters on the walls. No books or CDs. Nothing that would tell me for certain it belonged to him other than its sterile, magazine page feel.
Grey’s dead giveaway was his desk.
The rumpled bed could’ve been Rook’s, but that desk, it was all Grey. A study lamp perched in one corner, school texts lined up neatly against the wall. Notepads galore, and...a drawing tablet. Unexpected, but also not surprising. I wondered if he were any good.
I couldn’t see much of Rook’s room. He had blackout curtains on the one window and barely a glint of natural light filtered into the space. The overhead light was burnt out, or perhaps purposefully removed from its socket in the ceiling. But I could smell him. Whiskey and tobacco and that musky man smell that did things to my insides. And I didn’t need light to see what looked like empty cigarette packs, clothes, and bottles strewn over the floor and a fur blanket spilling off the side of a large bed. Fuckingfur.Since this was Rook we were talking about, I had to wonder if it was real. Looked like it could’ve belonged to a black bear, maybe. Or a few black bears judging by the size.
Good luck sleeping in your dark cave without a door handle, asshole.
Good luck taking a shit, too.
I bounded down the stairs with my prizes, feeling lighter even with the five pounds of useless metal added to my frame. I strolled out the front door and spun, flipping the bird to the camera above the door before going around the Crow’s Nest to the back. And then farther, through the sparse trees, up a small rock slope and to the edge of the cliffside to stare down to the rocky shore below.
Upending the pillowcase over the ledge, I watched with glee as the metal globes tumbled down like little bells, ringing against the rock until they finally laid to rest in the white-capped waves, burying themselves in the sand.
I sighed, looking toward the horizon as the sun peeked out from behind a hazy pink cloud, warming my cheeks. For a minute I could almost pretend my whole life didn’t just go to shit in the last twenty-four hours.
But the minute passed, and my victorious smile waned.
Fuck.
I turned and started a slow jog down past the Crow’s Nest and into the trees, making my way to Briar Hall. My legs protested nearly every step, but I made it, slipping in unnoticed through the back door and up to my room.
For a heart stopping moment, I wasn’t sure I had the key, but remembered I’d tucked it safely into that tiny, mostly-useless pocket on the inside of my pants.
“Becks?” I called, squinting to see the clock in the kitchen. It was past eleven. Not quite lunch yet, so she was still in chem, and I was supposed to be in AP math. I couldn’t wait for the inevitable text from Aunt Humphrey after she got yet another call from the office to report my absence. Fuckingjoy.
Coffee would have to wait. A shower was absolutely mandatory before anything else. My sweat was sweating, and I had a sneaking suspicion that the sour smell clogging my nostrils was my own.
I plugged in my phone on the way, promising myself I’d figure out my life just as soon as I was caffeinated and didn’t smell like a dead mule.
“Which one is it?”Rook asked as we crested the top of the stairs, sending a trio of girls fleeing in the opposite direction, whispering as they went.
“That one,” I growled, my back tensing with frustration as I jabbed a finger in the direction of her room. The silver number three marking the otherwise plain door.
Rook tried the handle. “Locked.”
I banged on the wood twice, the thudding sound echoing back to us in the long hall of female dorms and apartments.
She didn’t come.
I threw a fist through my hair, an audible growl vibrating in my throat. Christ, why couldn’t she have stayed put? Grey was going to head over and let her out for lunch, escort her back to campus for the end of the day.
Fuck, it was his idea to leave her there in the first place, tolet her sleep. I only agreed once he changed the door handle and locked her in, and only because I doubted she would wake any time soon.
She was dead to the world when I looked in on her. Sprawled facedown with one leg hanging off the mattress, like she just flopped and didn’t bother moving to get comfortable.
I’d kill to be able to sleep like that. Just once.
“Grey,” I gritted out, stepping back so he could slip ahead. He dropped to his knee and pulled out his wallet, drawing two pins from one of the card slots to pick the lock.
He cracked it in less than fifteen seconds, and we were in.
Her shared apartment sprawled before us. A wide space that would’ve been bright with all the natural light from the long windows across the floor, if not for all the black sucking the life out of it. Black couches. Black tables. Black cabinets in the kitchen. Even black throw rugs under our feet.
