Page 12 of The Blood we Crave: Part Two

A dull throb ricochets across my face, the rush of metallic filling my mouth. I stare down at the ground for a second, accepting the violence he’d just delivered before dragging my thumb across my bottom lip as I turn my head to meet his dark eyes.

I’ve known him a very long time but have never once been on the receiving end of his physical violence. Not once.

“Miss me, Ali?”

He doesn’t say anything, just stands in silence. I can see the words in his eyes, all the ones he won’t say out loud. History lingers in the room, memories.

If he was different, if he wasn’t born in the shadows and raised to be forgotten, he would’ve said something like,

“You left me.”

And if I was different, if I was able to feel and I wasn’t robbed of humanity as a child, I might’ve replied,

“I would have come back for you. Always.”

But that isn’t our reality.

We are simply sharpened weapons created for destruction, desperate for peace and given only endless war.

“That’s it?” Rook grunts, slamming his shoulder unnecessarily hard into mine as he comes storming into his father’s empty office, shutting the door behind him. “You hit me harder when we were fucking twelve. You knocked out a molar.”

He taps his jaw for emphasis, looking at Alistair but refusing to give me anything but his back. Afraid to meet my gaze, scared I’ll see everything he tries to bury.

“You’re the one always screaming harder, daddy,” I bite, slitting my eyes. He turns his head, looking at me over his shoulder, a sick grin on his lips as he twists that match between his teeth.

“How the fuck he’s your favorite will never make sense to me,” Rook mutters, slapping Alistair on the shoulder as he walks past. “God forbid we hurt the perfect one. Can’t have him bruised and wanted for murder.”

He walks lazily towards his father’s desk, sitting in the chair and propping his feet up on the wood.

“I hope your father is at work and not due to return anytime soon? He’d love nothing more than to watch me get shoved into the back of a police car.”

“He’s at the office all day, won’t be back until late. Probably be too drunk to tell the difference between your face and my pale ass.”

I look at both of the people I’d grown up with, knowing the loyalty that kept us threaded together is heavily frayed with my choice to leave. It will only get worse once they figure out I can’t tell them why.

Not the real reason anyway, and they are bloodhounds when it comes to the truth. They’ll see right through the lie but never figure out the truth.

They’d need to trust me. Blind faith.

Which they have little of at the moment, and that does something volatile to my insides. Never once had I put any of them in danger; never once had I risked them.

Why question me now?

“Let’s get this over with,” I sigh, working my sore jaw. “It was in everyone’s best interest that I leave. Telling any of you would have only put you in the way.”

Alistair scoffs, his fists tightening at his sides. I know he wants to hit me again, but he refrains, choosing violent words instead.

“You left us to find your grandmother in pieces. Try another answer. This time, cut out the bullshit.”

Regardless of what either of them says, they feel. Each of them feels emotion in various ways, Alistair on a more drastic scale. He’s either angry or content, categorizing all his feelings into those two boxes, while Rook feels them all on a secret sliding scale.

I know the loss of May hurt them, that their grief is real—I just can’t understand it. She is—was—one of the only parental figures that showed them genuine kindness. They spent holidays at my home, gotten to know the only healthy adult in my life.

Her loss was a ripple effect through each of us. We all felt it, we all handled it differently, but we still felt it.

“I didn’t have another choice. The police would have seen the crime scene, and I would’ve been charged for every single one of those girls’ murders. A done deal—I wouldn’t have made it out of Ponderosa Springs before there were cuffs on my wrists.”

“You could’ve fucking told us. Warned us.” Rook speaks up, lighting the end of his blunt and taking steady puffs.

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