“Max got me an apprenticeship with a locksmith at Ironclad Security.” My lips twist. “The owner thought I was eighteen. I didn’t correct him. Six months later, I had enough saved for a security deposit on a shit apartment, but it was mine.”
The sunlight shifts as clouds pass outside,throwing shadows across the rumpled bed. In the dimmer light, Rowan’s stare burns brighter, his arms still locked around me as if he’s afraid I might dissolve if he loosens his grip.
“I tried to visit Lena when I could. Brought food, clothes, and checked if she was going to school.” My jaw tightens. “My parents caught me, though, and started using her to squeeze money from me. Fifty bucks to visit with her for an hour. A hundred to ensure she ate that week.”
Rowan shifts beside me, the mattress dipping with his weight. “You were a child yourself.”
“I was her brother.” The answer comes, automatic and absolute. “The day she presented as an Omega, I understood exactly what they would do to her.”
I still remember Lena’s frightened call from a school bathroom, the sweet scent of early presentation clinging to her hair when I picked her up, and the calculating greed in our father when we walked through the door.
“She was twelve. I was twenty-one, established at Ironclad, working just under full-time hours and bringing in enough money for a studio apartment.” I swallow, pushing past the tightness in my throat. “I spent all my savings to hire a shitty lawyer and filedfor guardianship. But my parents wanted more money than I could pay to sign their rights away.”
The muscles in Rowan’s jaw bunch as his eyes narrow to amber slits. The protective rumble in his chest returns, deeper this time, vibrating through the places our bodies touch. “How much?”
“Twenty thousand.” My mouth twists. “It might as well have been a million. They never expected me to find the funds. They just wanted to see me chasing the illusion.”
The silence stretches between us, heavy with unspoken questions. I can almost hear the gears turning in Rowan’s head, connecting the dots I left scattered.
“Then they overdosed.” The statement comes out flat, stripped of emotion. “Both of them on the same night. They were found with the needles still in their arms. They were known drug users, but the police investigated it as a homicide.”
Rowan’s hand slides up my arm, his touch gentle but insistent. “Were you suspected?”
“Not for long.” I meet his stare without flinching. “I was working the night it happened. Security cameras at Ironclad showed me at the shop until two in the morning. By the time Lena called me from the police station, they’d been dead for hours.”
His fingers trace the line of my jaw. “Convenient timing.”
“Very.” My pulse jumps beneath his touch. “Lena became my ward without contestation.”
The question hangs unasked between us, Rowan searching my face. I wait, allowing him this moment of scrutiny, this silent interrogation.
“Was it an accident?” he asks, more curious than accusative.
My stomach tightens, throat dry as bone. “Are you asking if I killed my parents to protect Lena?”
Rowan’s thumb brushes the corner of my mouth. “I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”
The confession hovers on my tongue, the truth I’ve never spoken aloud to anyone. How simple it would be to unburden myself, to share this final secret with the man who’s seen me at my most unguarded.
“Their addiction killed them.” The statement hangs between us, technically true. My hands never held the needles. My fingers never pushed the plungers.
Rowan studies me, searching for the thing I haven’t said. That while I didn’t kill them, I didn’t claim their deaths were accidental.
As his lips part to respond, the distant sound of the front door opening breaks the moment.
“Hello? I hope you guys are decent!” Lena’s bright, cheerful call echoes from the entryway, breaking the moment. “I brought home presents!”
Panic floods my system, and I bolt upright, suddenly self-conscious of my nakedness. For three days, I belonged to Rowan without question. Now the real world is intruding, and I’m not sure the version of me who survived without him still exists.
Worse, I’m not sure I want it to.
20
“Shit.” I scramble off the bed, wincing as my overused muscles protest the sudden movement.
The sheet tangles around my ankles, almost sending me face-first onto the carpet.
Lena calls out again, her footsteps coming closer down the hallway. “Hello?”
