BROKEN REVELATIONS

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SLOANE

My head lays in Lark’s lap as her fingers rake through my hair. She rocks in time to the melody of her unsteady voice. ‘No one here can love or understand me…’ she sings. Her voice wanes to a shaky hum.

I know I’ve done something I can never take back. Something I would never want to, even though most people would feel regret. But I don’t. I feel relieved. I’ve finally opened the gate where a monster lay rattling its bars on the other side, begging to be freed. Now that it’s  out, there’s no way to close back in.

And I don’t want to.

“My parents will fix this,” Lark whispers as she presses a kiss to my hair. “I’ll tell them what you did for me. They’ll help us. You can come home with me.”

My hands are wet. Sticky. I raise them into a sliver of moonlight from the window. They’re covered in crimson blood.

When I lower my hands, I see the body on the floor. The Artistic Director of Ashborne Collegiate Institute.

And my one wish is that he’d rise from the afterlife so I could do it all over again.

‘I’ll arrive late tonight…’ Lark sings, ‘Blackbird, bye, bye.’

“Blackbird,” a different but familiar voice says. I surface from the murk of memory and dreams that never let go. When I open my eyes, Rowan is there, sitting on the edge of the bed. His hand sweeps the hair from my face. “Just a nightmare.”

I blink and take in my unfamiliar surroundings. Light spills from the ensuite bathroom to illuminate a slice of the guestroom, decorated in hues of deep gray and white and pops of yellow that lose their cheerful brilliance in shadow. Moments come back to me from the haze of strong painkillers. Memories of agony as Fionn rotated my arm. The pain in Rowan’s eyes as he held my hand and reminded me to breathe. The relief of the bone sliding back into place. The way Rowan rested his head next to mine when it was over, as though every moment had carved a deep slash across his heart. When he rose and looked at me, there was both distress and regret in his eyes, and I couldn’t tell which one was worse.

And even now, they still linger in his eyes.

“What time is it?” I ask as I sit up a little with a groan. My shoulder aches, but there’s a certain comfort in having my arm strapped across my body in the sling.

“Eleven-thirty.”

“I feel gross,” I say as I look down at my leggings and the button-up flannel shirt that I’ve just slept in for the last few hours. I haven’t showered in well over a day, not since the morning of Harvey’s house of horrors. It’s as though he haunts me through the film that coats my skin.

“Come on.” Rowan offers a hand to help me sit. “I’ll start you a bath. Might help some of the soreness.”

He leaves me at the edge of the bed and heads to the sliver of light, as though he knows I need a minute to get my bearings. I hear the faucet squeak, the water rush into the tub. For a long moment, I just linger in the dimly lit room until I conquer my inertia and join Rowan in the bathroom.

I say nothing as I stop at the vanity to stare at my reflection and try to will the tears away despite the sting in my eyes and the knot in my throat. Deep purple bruises follow the curve of my eyes, the imprint of Harvey Mead’s bootprint even more vibrant in my skin than it was when I first saw it in the car. Dried blood still rims the edges of my nostrils. My nose is sore and swollen. Fortunately, however, it’s still in the right place. Which is good, because I already look like a fucking dumpster fire and I don’t need a broken nose to add to the current shitshow.

“Ready,” Rowan says as he switches the water off for the bath. When I don’t answer, he comes closer, his reflection drawing to a halt in the periphery. I don’t take my eyes from my ruined face. “I’ll get Rose to help you.”

“No,” I whisper. Tears gather on my lash line despite my best effort to keep them at bay. “You.”

Rowan doesn’t move for a moment that feels stretched thin. When he approaches, he stops behind me, the weight of his gaze so heavy on my reflection that I can feel it through the glass. “Beautiful.”

An incredulous laugh that sounds more like a sob escapes my lips. “I look like shit,” I say as the first tear falls. I know I shouldn’t care as much as I do. It’s only temporary. In a few weeks, this will be nothing more than a memory, probably even a funny one. But the problem is, I do care, no matter how hard I try not to. Maybe I’m just tired from the pain and the stress and the hours on the road. Or maybe it’s just hard to see that my vulnerability isn’t just trapped on the inside. It’s staring out at the world in full color. It’s staring at him.

“You’re beautiful to me,” Rowan says. He reaches from behind me to chase the tear from my skin with his thumb. The next pass of his caress follows the swoop of the bruise beneath my eye. “That color right there, how many things can you think of that are that color? It’s rare.”

He grazes my bruise again, his touch so soft that I don’t feel pain. My lip trembles in the mirror. More tears well in my eyes. “Eggplant,” I say, my voice tremulous. “It’s the worst vegetable.”

Rowan’s huff of a laugh warms my neck and sends a current through my skin. “It’s not. Celery is the worst vegetable.”

“But eggplant is mushy.”

“Not when I make it. I promise you’d like it.”

“I have an eggplant face. That’s basically a dick face. A mushy dick face with a Carhartt logo.”

Rowan shifts the hair back from my shoulder and lays a gentle kiss on my cheek. I don’t have to see his reflection to feel his smile as his lips linger on my skin. “This is not having the intended effect. Let me try again,” he says, amusement warm in his voice. His other arm wraps around me to unclip the first of two buckles for my sling. My wince of pain is met with another kiss. “That color doesn’t remind me of eggplant, for what it’s worth. It reminds me of blackberries. The best berry if you ask me. It reminds me of irises. They have the best scent of any flower. It reminds me of night, just before dawn. The best time of day.” The other buckle clicks free and I close my eyes against the pain as Rowan slides the sling from my arm.

“But—”

“You’re all the best things to me, Sloane. No matter how many bruises are in your heart or on your skin.”

When I open my eyes, it’s not my marks I see. It’s not the swelling or the scrapes or the blood. It’s Rowan, his navy eyes fused to mine, his arm banded across my waist as his other hand traces slow patterns on my skin.

I place my good hand over his, wrap my fingers around his knuckles where scars crisscross over bone. Then I lift his hand away, every nuance of his expression absorbed by my watchful gaze. I guide his fingers to the top button of my shirt and let my hand rest on the tense muscle of his forearm.

No words are shared between us. Just the connection of our eyes in the mirror, one that doesn’t waver.

Rowan frees the first button. The second. The third. The fourth is low on my sternum. The fifth reveals my upper abdomen. The sixth the jeweled bar at my navel. Still he holds my eyes as he works the seventh and eighth buttons free. A slice of skin down the center of my body glows in the light that bathes us from above the mirror.

My pulse pounds. I could see it in my neck if I was willing to break my gaze away. But I’m not. I keep holding on as Rowan’s fingers curl around one edge of my shirt.

He folds it open, exposing my breast to the warm air. Then he does the same with the other side. And still our gazes remain locked. It’s not until I swallow and raise my brows that he finally lets his eyes fall to my body.

“Jesus…” he whispers. “Sloane…”