AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I felt like a failure for letting it get this far.
I surveyed his eyes under the light, my hands itching to tear apart his entire room drawer by drawer, floorboard by floorboard. I’d find it. It was only a matter of time.
“Rook,” I pushed when he didn’t answer.
“You seem to have it all figured out, Brother. You don’t need me to tell you.”
My cheekbones flared, but I reined it in. It wouldn’t help to get angry, it would only make him combative and we’d get nowhere. “You admit it, then? You’re using?”
He leaned over his spread knees, pressing his face into his palms. “I was,” he muttered.
“Was?”
“Yeah. When Ghost was gone.”
“And what, you just stopped?”
He lifted his chin, narrowing his black eyes on me. “She knew,” he said. “She knew right off. That first night at the hospital she cornered me about it in a fucking janitors closet. The look in her eyes…fuck… I never wanted to see that shit again. I crushed what I had left under my boot and rode out the withdrawals. Didn’t you wonder why she was in my room all those nights after the hospital?”
My face screwed up. Ihadwondered, but I thought that was just where she wanted to be. That she’d chosen Rook those nights, and I’d been doing my fucking best not to be jealous about it. Not to mention the fact that at the time I figured she’d never want to share my bed again, anyway.
“We weren’t having a goddamned picnic,” he admitted. “She took care of me. Made sure I was okay. I asked her to wait for me to tell you guys myself once we’d gotten through all the shit with the Kings. There was enough to worry about.”
I studied him carefully once more, and found pupils dilated normally under the light. Color in his face. That lazy grace about him where he’d be on edge and constantly moving if he were high.
“You’re really clean?”
“Yes.”
I nodded to myself, letting that settle.
“Does Corv know?” Rook asked.
“He’d have skinned you alive already if he did, but I think he suspects. Not much gets past him.”
“Spit it out,” Rook said when I didn’t continue, knowing there was more I was hesitating to say.
“Look, I know it wasn’t really you…” I started, knowing I needed to get this out before I could go wake up my girl and enjoy the moment we’d all been waiting for. “But fuck you for thinking if she was gone that you wouldn’t have anything else to live for. That’s horseshit and you know it, and I fucking hate you for it, drugs or no drugs.”
“I deserve that.”
I crossed the floor to him and jerked him onto his feet and into a hug. Hating that I almost lost two of the most important people in my life because of that motherfucker. “You’re lucky you’re clean or you’d be spending Christmas locked up tighter than Carson.”
Rook barked a laugh in my ear, slapping me on the back. No one wouldeverbe locked up tighter than Carson.
“Are you going to tell her?” I asked as I pulled away, watching his eyes for the truth of his answer, but they’d already gone dead.
When AJ woke up after surgery with all of us surrounding her, all she wanted to know was where Carson was and if the Kings were all dead. There wasn’t a whole lot of opportunity for Rook to slip into casual conversation that he almost fucking offed himself in a manic depressive fit at seeing her dead on the floor.
“I should,” he replied, dropping his gaze. “I don’t want any secrets between us.”
I squeezed his shoulder. “It’s your call, man. I think she’d understand.”
“Yeah, after she ate me for breakfast.”
I laughed. “Well don’t worry about it today. It’s Christmas.”
“Speaking of…” Rook said with a wry smile, going to gather her things from the top of his dresser. “We told her we’d be there when she wakes up.”
