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His fingers brushed my cheek, and I pulled back, flushing hot.
“It was a joke,” I repeated, angry, though I couldn’t peg the reason why. “Just a stupid fucking joke.”
I licked my fingers violently to prove the point. “See? Corn syrup.”
His lips parted on a breath, a vein throbbing at his temple when he clenched his jaw again. “A joke?”
“Yeah.”
“You think this was fuckingfunny?”
He shook his head before shoving past me, the smack of his firm body into my shoulder sending me back a step. I felt the hit all the way down to the pit of my stomach. It festered there, the ache spreading to my chest.
The front door slammed a second later. Then another door. The garage outside.
We all listened to the backdrop of Rook’s strained breaths as an engine started. A motorcycle. And then he was gone. The whine of the engine and exhaust loud as he sped away from the Nest.
Rook found his way to the sink, hunched, running the water cold and cupping it into his mouth with his hand to spit reddish water down the drain. He swiped the back of his hand over his mouth when he finished, reaching for the whiskey on the counter to take a swig.
Grey’s hands balled to clenched fists at his sides, his expression darkening by the second.
“Grey?” I hedged. “I didn’t mean—”
“I need a minute,” he interrupted, walking away before I could finish as he left too. Following Corvus’ path out the door, to the Rover, and away down the road.
I pressed a hand to my stomach, hating the guilt that I felt lying heavily there. “That was way less funny than I thought it would be,” I muttered.
Rook shrugged, setting the whiskey aside. “I thought it was pretty funny.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“So I’ve been told.”
He laughed and winced, coughing.
“You’re hurt.”
He licked the blood from his lip and looked away.
I went to him, lifting the edge of his shirt to see his chest. He lifted a brow, but didn’t stop me as I ran my fingers over his tan, muscled abdomen. Over the tattoo on his hip and up higher, to the rapidly darkening bruise on his ribs. I pressed gently over each rib until he hissed at my touch at the fifth one up.
“It might be broken.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
I cocked my head at him. “Do you often try to kill each other?”
“Brothers. It’s what we do. He wouldn’t have killed me. He’d miss me too much.”
“Sure as hell looked like he was doing his best to,” I scoffed.
“You don’t know him like we do.”
A silence stretched between us as I continued to lightly trace the edge of the tattoo curving over his hip bone and disappearing into the low-riding waist of his dark denim jeans.
“What happened to you?” I asked, truly curious. Needing to know what forged him. If he was born or made.
I liked to think I was born good. Happy. Healthy. Without even a touch of madness.
