I scoot a little closer. Just enough to feel the warmth of her beneath the sheets. She doesn’t move. Doesn’t wake. Maybe it’s the exhaustion, or maybe it’s her.Either way I close my eyes and by some miracle sleep comes for me, carries me away to a place where, for once, nightmares can’t follow.
Chapter five
Carrson
I’m in the room I use as an office. Dark bookcases rise behind me, but they hold few books. The desk I sit at must have been crafted by the same wood-carver who made the headboard in my bedroom. It has similar grotesque, distorted figures caught in the middle of what might be war…or an orgy. Hard to tell.
My phone dings. I glance down and wince when I see the wordFatherflash across the screen. Bracing myself, I open the message. It’s in his usual, formal tone. The one he uses in emails, in texts. Like he has a stick up his ass.
Son, I’m hearing rumors you bonded an outsider. If true, I’m deeply disappointed. This is not just a personal failing, it’s abetrayal of everything you were raised to uphold. You are an Ashford. Trained to lead with discipline and obedience. Not weakness. Be warned, there will be consequences when I return. Pray they’re not permanent.
Of course, he knows what happened last night. The man has eyes everywhere. He probably pays one of the brothers to report back on my every move, every decision, just so he can dissect it. Judge it. I read the text again, slower this time, my eyes catching on that last line.There will be consequences. Pray they’re not permanent.Dread curls in my gut, heavy and familiar. Defiance has a cost in my father’s house. The payment is blood, and he always collects.
I throw the phone onto my desk, harder than necessary, and drop my head into my hands with a low, muttered, “Fuck.”
“You look like shit.” Thomson drops the file onto the desk in front of me with a loudthunk. It’s thick. The manila folder gapes, filled with sheets of paper all neatly aligned. Impressive since it’s seven in the morning. Which means he only had eight hours to pull together the information I requested.
“Nightmares,” I mutter, as I rub the heel of my hand into my dry, aching eyes.
Thomson grunts in acknowledgment. He has them too.
I ask the question I’ve asked every day for the past year. “Any news on Rose?”
Thomson exhales and shakes his head. “We don’t even know if she exists.”
I clench my fists and breathe slowly through my nose. “If she does, I need to find her. Don’t stop looking.” I pause, then add a soft, “Please.”
He holds my gaze for a long moment, then sighs. “I won’t. I promise.”
I force myself to let go of the tension, rolling my shoulders back as I shift gears. I nod toward the file. “All right. What’d you find out about pizza girl?”
“Her name is Laurel Turner. Age nineteen, almost twenty. Her birthday is next month. Maybe you can give her a ring for a present?” He raises an eyebrow at me, his lips in a thin line. He’s angry at me, as he should be. It was a bad decision, the one I made last night.
“You know I don’t have to marry her,” I tell him, working to keep my tone even. I’m on edge as much as he is. First that drug dealer last night. The one I killed. Then the girl. It’s been a lot.
“Oh yeah, you’re just bonded to her for the rest of your mortal life.” My best friend, maybe my onlyrealfriend, rolls his eyes. “No big deal.”
“My immortal life too,” I point out. “At least according to your father.”
I gesture for him to continue. I’ll read through the damn thing later, every single page, but right now I don’t have time. I need the Cliffs Notes version.
“Her mom, a teacher, died in a car crash when she was young. Her dad was the school principal. After his wife died, his heavy drinking transformed into functional alcoholism.” He raises an eyebrow and says, “Almost sounds like your family except for the mom thing.”
He’s right. We don’t have moms here, but my dad is the very definition of a functional drunk. Until he isn’t. Then his dark side is unleashed, and my body becomes his personal punching bag. The outlet for all his pent-up rage. Thomson knows all about that because his dad is the same way. They’re best friends, our fathers, so we were practically raised together. Even beaten together. Tied side by side to the stair banister and whipped. When we were really little, after a particularly violent episode, I remember Thomson beside me as I cried and vomited blood. We did some serious trauma bonding growing up.
“Laurel seems like she had a pretty good childhood. Straight A’s, active in school and extracurricular activities. Did a lot of tutoring, mostly underprivileged kids. A small but tight group of friends. She was accepted into a top college with full academic scholarships…” Something dark passes over his expression. His brow wrinkles as he picks up the file and shuffles through the pages.
“But?” I hold my hands up, palms to the ceiling, mildly annoyed. Thomson likes to do this, draw out a story. Make it more dramatic than it needs to be.
“Something happened right before she graduated from high school.” Frowning, he pulls out a sheet of paper and passes it over to me.
It’s her school transcript. I run my finger down a long line of A’s, until I hit the patch of F’s broken by a single C-, probably a pity grade from some teacher with a soft heart.
“Her perfect attendance record goes to crap. Her grades slip, not just a little but by a landslide, and her dad becomes a full-blown drunk. Like the ‘piss your pants and don’t notice’ kind of drunk. He loses his job, gambles the savings, and loses that too. She loses her scholarships because of the grades. They move here. She enrolls in Ashford University as a pre-med major.”
I steeple my fingers and rest my chin on them. “And now?”
“She’s a freshman, only been here for a month, currently taking summer school. Back to straight A’s but barely leaves her place. No friends. No extracurriculars. She works every single day delivering pizza to pay for the crap apartment she shares with her dad, likeeveryday.” He shrugs like he doesn’t care, but his mouth twists unhappily. “She’s in one of my classes, organic chemistry. She must have tested into it because it’s usually not open to freshmen.”
