Page 59 of Ravens
“Let me keep you,” he murmurs, burying his face in my hair for a moment. “Don’t run away at the end.”
I shift to my back and look at him. “Would you chase after me?”
“Yes.” He drags his finger along my jaw. “Even if you didn’t want me to.” His hand trails down my throat and stops over my breast where it flattens out. “This sound has driven me mad, I think. When I can’t hear it, I feel hopeless, and I would chase after that.”
“My heartbeat?”
“At night.” He nods. “I listen to it, feel it. It’s strange when it isn’t there now . . . too quiet.”
I blink rapidly as emotion swells, but I keep it together. I’ve never loved anyone, not really. I don’t even recall what it felt like to love my family. The memory of them is only in my periphery now, and it’s just a vague sense of existence, really. I was too young to remember the time when things in my family were good, and too old when things went bad to forget how bad it was. By the time my dad died, there was nothing good left in it to remember.
My grandparents weren't a part of my life until my dad died a few years after my mom, so their home was just a transient space, temporary people in the void between childhood and the freedom of adulthood. This is probably the real reason I avoid goinghome. To their house. A place I never felt comfortable in, a place I inherited simply due to being the last one in the family alive.
Most importantly though . . . I’ve never been loved back. Not that I can recall, at least. That time in my life is too distant, and I need to be loved differently, I think. I need space, but I also need structure, something unyielding to break myself upon becauseI’m destructive like that. I want someone who can help destroy me and then put me back together, and I don’t think I ever understood that before York.
I’ve never known what I needed or what was wrong with me that made me such a bad fit with men. York might be the only one who would never say there was nothing wrong with me, and I love that.
The problem is, I can’t see the end of this. It feels crazy to try to predict and irresponsibly delusional to assume I’ll survive it. I have no idea how I’ll feel at the end or how fucking traumatizing this will be in the long run.
It’s toxic, but so am I.
Rolling over, I put my leg over his hip and tuck my head into his neck.
I’ve been beaten, restrained, and shot so far, not to mention the initial hired-hit situation. There have been a lot of dead bodies that I’m currently pretending not to have seen, but when it’s quiet, I hear the ghost of bullets whizzing around me.
“I don’t want to run, but I can’t say I won’t.” I kiss him. “But if I do, find me, okay?”
Nodding, he kisses me back. A door upstairs opens, and he rises, laying the blanket over me. I watch him walk out of the room and then pull the blanket over my head and let out a shuddering breath.
At least I feel confident enough to say I have his vote now.
The smell of coffee permeates the house, and I slide off the bed, scooping my pants up and sliding my feet back in them. I’vegot them halfway up when William appears on the stairs and stares at me, watching as I pull the jeans over my ass and button them up, before continuing the rest of the way down the stairs.
I haven’t figured this guy out yet.
***
York hands me a coffee and then it’s just the three of us in the kitchen, standing there in silence, so I break it.
“August confirmed I don’t have a tracking device on me, and I know you guys are going to try to destroy the information at the source, although that’s ridiculous, but far be it from me to be the voice of reason.” I set my coffee down. “The information has been taken, which means it’s been digested, which means you cannot destroy it or claw it back.”
“What would you suggest?” York asks, not meeting my eyes.
“As if you could trust any suggestion she makes,” William scoffs.
“Well, they are trying to kill her, so perhaps there is no loyalty lost?” York points out.
“If it were me, I’d get retribution by simply destroying their servers or, at the very least, fucking them up, and then”—I shrug—“maybe get lucky enough to steal some damaging information of your own. Why seek retribution when you could just get even?”
York smiles into his mug. “Spoken like a woman.”
“We don’t have the time, resources, or contacts to steal intel right now.” William puts the milk back in the fridge. “I do like the idea of ruining their mainframe though.”
“You don’t have the contacts?” I screw up my face. “Why do you think they want me dead? Why do you think they want to disavow Raven entirely?I’myour fucking contact, William. Careful who you shoot.”
They give each other a loaded look that makes me pause with my mug halfway to my lips. “What?”
“Nothing,” William says and glances at York, who just shrugs.
