Sparrow slept curled in a ball at the end of the couch where Rook was still passed out, their feet tangled together. I’d managed to convince her to go take a shower and change, but she’d refused food and sleep until exhaustion finally took her a few hours ago.
Grey was dozing in her bed and had been since he declared Rook completely out of the woods. Lucky bastard.
It’d been days since I’d slept more than a few minutes, maybe an hour, at a time. With the Ace’s deadline crawling nearer and Ava Jade’s stalker back on the scene, sleep wasn’t a priority.
And now…
Now that the Aces had made their move and vanished. Now that the stalker seemed to have gone eerily silent. Every minute was important. Every second. I could sense the tension stretching around all of us, flexing, tightening.
Something was coming, and I needed to be ready when it did.
I sighed heavily, my stomach aching with a hollow hunger, throat dry.
My tired bones creaked as I stood, head spinning as I made my way to the kitchen on quiet, shuffling feet, holding the counter to steady myself as I searched for a glass.
I drained two glasses of water before going to the fridge, seeing two of it for a second before I was able to realign myself with a sharp bite to the inside of my cheek. There.
There, that was better.
I grabbed some kind of premade salad and lifted some dressing from the door, rifling through the cupboard for some sort of protein. I found a bag of slivered almonds and dumped it on top of the salad with a bit of dressing, leaning heavily against the counter to eat.
Sparrow lifted her head sleepily from the couch and then snapped her head in my direction, wincing as the whiplash from the quick movement seared down her neck. She rubbed out the ache, groaning softly.
I lifted my fork in a silent good morning. “Sorry. Needed some food.”
She pushed her sleep-mussed hair from her face and swiped a palm over the corner of her mouth, sitting up to check on Rook. She leaned over him, gently pressing the back of her hand to his forehead.
“He’s really warm,” she whispered.
I nodded.
“The fever is low. He’s out of the woods, Sparrow. Don’t worry.”
She peeled the throw blanket from her shoulders and got to her feet, her spine popping as she stretched. “Did you sleep?” she asked when she was finished, her body sagging as she padded into the kitchen, going for the espresso machine.
When I didn’t answer she stopped, peering over at me with a harsh gleam in her eyes. “Corvus, when was the last time you slept?”
I shrugged. “I got a few hours the other night.”
She narrowed her eyes at me, setting down the portafilter. “You’re lying.”
My jaw tightened.
Fuck.
It had always been my tell, and if I wasn’t so damned tired, I’d have been able to keep from doing it.
“You are lying. Jesus, you look like garbage.”
I lifted a brow, shoveling another bite of salad into my mouth. “Thanks, Sparrow. Really laying on the compliments this morning.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Grey’s been in there for hours, go and wake him up and sleep in my bed for a while. Unless Diesel needs us for something, we don’t have anything we need to do today.”
I kept eating without replying.
“Corvus,” she pressed. “Did you hear me?”
I swallowed. “Yeah, I heard you, Sparrow, but there’s no fucking way I could sleep in someone else’s bed. I can barely sleep in my own.”
She mulled that over. “Then we can all go back to the Nest. You need to sleep.”
I set the salad back down on the counter, my stomach souring. The idea of shutting my eyes for even a minute was repulsive. It didn’t matter that I could feel the exhaustion like heavy lead in my veins. It didn’t matter that behind my ribcage, my heart felt like it was slogging through mud one minute and fluttering like a caged bird the next. And the voices…
I knew they weren’t real.
Just audio hallucinations. Like before. Distant whispers like radio static that would only become clearer the longer I deprived myself of rest.
I knew now not to fear them. I knew they didn’t mean I was crazy. Just tired.
But sleep wouldn’t come. Not now. Not with all this shit going on. There was no point in trying.
“You aren’t even listening to me, are you?” Sparrow asked, her gaze darkening. “I’m warning you, Bones. I haven’t had my coffee yet. Don’t fuck with me.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, a frustrated heat rolling off my back, but I couldn’t even fully feel that. My body not wanting to cooperate with connecting the proper neural pathways. “Look, Ava Jade, there’s no way I’m going to sleep right now so—”
“What if I sleep with you?”
“What?”
She shrugged, dipping her head to hide the slight flush in her cheeks. “Neither of us thought we were going to sleep that night I stayed at the Crow’s Nest with you. You fell asleep sitting up, and I wound up passed out in your fucking lap,” she laughed uneasily. “So, maybe we can recreate whatever weird shit happened to make us both able to sleep like babies.”
“So you can drool on me again?”
Her face scrunched up, and I felt a smile on my lips, tugging at the stitches in my cheek.
“If that’s what it takes,” she said, recovering with a grimace. “It’s, what…” she looked at the clock on the stove next to me. “Just past seven. So, I only slept for about three hours. I could use a power nap.”
She came over to me, leaning on the counter to look up at me through her lashes. “You’d be doing me a favor, really.”
“You’re relentless.”
“It’s why you love me.”
Something in my core tightened at her words, and I had to bite down on my own tongue to keep from saying yes.
She might’ve been joking, but looking down at her now, her face soft from sleep, eyes slitted, hair an absolute fucking mess, I knew it was far from a joke.
I loved her.
She cocked her head to the side, considering me. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
I wrapped an arm around her waist and drew her into my chest, laying a rough kiss to the top of her head. Maybe it was the exhaustion talking, but right then I’d probably do anything she asked me to. It was terrifying.
I surrendered to no one.
…apparently no one but her now.
I let out a shaky breath. “If Diesel doesn’t need us, then fine, Sparrow, I’ll take a power nap with you. I’ll try to.”
“Would you be opposed to sleeping pills?” she whispered into my chest. “Because I’m pretty sure Becca has—”
“No pills.”
She hesitated. “Okay.”
Becca’s door creaked open across the room and my Sparrow pulled away from me to see her friend exit her room, already dressed and ready for the day. I kept from smirking at her outfit. Fitted Lycra pants, combat boots that looked like they were from a designer label, a loose fitted tank top and ball cap that she’d pulled her long brown hair through in a tight ponytail. Not her usual attire. It looked like something Ava Jade would wear if she knew she might run into trouble.
“You make coffee yet?” Becca asked Ava Jade.
She shook her head.
“Good,” Becca said. “That’s my job.”
She hesitated before entering the kitchen, craning her neck to see Rook in the living room. “He’s still out?”
“Yeah,” I told her. “But he’s all right.”
The crease in her forehead made it seem as though she had been legitimately worried about him and maybe she was. I’d detected no lie in anything she’d told us last night. And anyone willing to lay down their life for my Sparrow was okay in my book. But I’d also meant what I said. If she did anything to betray Ava Jade again—if she hurt my brothers—I would end her.
“And Grey?”
“Asleep,” Ava Jade replied. Jerking a thumb to her bedroom.
“Not anymore,” Grey said, wandering from the room in nothing but his boxers, stretching his arms high over his head, the veins in his biceps and waist jutting from his skin like snakes.
Speaking of…
“Come on, man,” I hissed at the same time Becca cleared her throat.
Grey’s hard-on was squashed between his stomach and the waistband of his boxers, a good two inches of its head poking out for everyone to see.
He looked down, bored. “It’s a dick. Are you offended by dicks now? You’ll be disappointed to know that you have one, too, Bro.”
Ava Jade chucked a tea towel at him. “Go put some pants on,” she said, her gaze sliding to Becca, a tick in her jaw.
She was jealous.
It was a good look on her.
“There’s fucking vomit on them,” Grey complained, covering his cock with the towel.
“Oh!” Becca exclaimed. “I bought these really nice Puma sweats for…well, it doesn’t matter who they were for. I bet they’ll fit you. One sec.”
The reminder of Becca’s mystery Ace boyfriend soured the mood in the room, and I had to wonder not for the first time whether we’d already killed the fucker.
I was willing to bet Becca was wondering that, too. Holding on to the hope that he was dead, which would mean she was in considerably less danger.
I doubted she was so lucky. I’d seen not a single Ace who truly matched the description she’d made. Though Ava Jade was right, that one King definitely did match.
My tired mind tried to work through the puzzle of it all, wondering whether or not Diesel had recorded anything of their conversations where Becca’s boyfriend actually said he was an Ace. Though even if he had, what was this guy’s word worth?
“Here,” Becca said, returning from her room to toss Grey the sweatpants, and whatever I’d just been thinking about was knocked from my skull, and I couldn’t claw it back.
Yet another symptom of insomnia. The inability to hold on to slippery thoughts. To make connections. To see things coming before they did and stop them.
My Sparrow was right. I needed to sleep. If I didn’t, I’d start missing shit that was right in front of me.
Grey pulled on the sweats, and Becca was right, they fit him like a glove. He didn’t seem to like that fact, but it was better than wearing around Rook’s vomit until we could get back to the Nest.
Right on cue, Rook stirred, a low groan falling from his lips as he rolled lazily from his back to his side, arm flopping from the side of the couch.
Ava Jade abandoned her attempt to make coffee and rushed to the living room, grabbing the glass of water from the coffee table.
“Hey,” she said, sitting uneasily on the edge of the couch, hand hovering over his shoulder like she was afraid to touch him.
Oddly, I didn’t feel jealous as Rook settled his hand on her thigh and squeezed weakly, or when she helped him up and pushed the hair back from his face to pass him the water. I felt… glad.
So fucking glad that she was there for him just as much as we were. That she could give him things that Grey and I never could.
Rook sipped the water, grimacing, probably wishing it was whiskey.
His slitted eyes glanced around the room at the rest of us, and a frown curled the edges of his lips downward. “All right,” he hissed. “Show’s over. What the shit happened?”
“You don’t remember?”
“I remember your mom being a cunt and then… just nothing.”
“That was pretty much it.”
Ava Jade dropped her head, unable to look him in the eyes. Maybe it was good if he didn’t remember everything. If I were being honest, there was a small part of me that was afraid for Rook to wake up. It could’ve gone either way, with him pissed at Ava Jade and out for her mother’s blood, or like this… his usual aloof self, not giving two fucks either way.
His hands shook as he drank more water, and he was pale and sweaty as fuck. He needed a shower and to be watched like a hawk at all times over the next couple weeks. He’d be twitchy.
To my knowledge he’d never touched heroin before, but I could vividly remember him coming down off a cocaine high.
Shit wasn’t fucking pretty.
People died.
We just tried to make sure the right people died. It was all we could do.
If Rook couldn’t have his next drug fix, he needed blood on his hands.
Grey rounded the sofa into the living room, sinking onto the coffee table to wait until Rook looked up at him.
Once he did, Grey studied his stare, nodding silently to himself as though he got all the answers he needed just from looking into the black depths of his brother’s stare. “All right,” he said.
“Satisfied?” Rook prodded.
“For now,” Grey replied. “But you fucking tell me if I need to be more worried.”
Rook gave a single terse nod.
“Hey,” Grey barked. “I want to hear you say it.”
“All right. Fuck. I’ll tell you.”
“Good.”
Becca came into the kitchen, picking up where Ava Jade left off, making coffees for everyone.
“I’m not a very good cook,” she said as she frothed milk. “But I can do pancakes if you guys want something to eat. Or we can order in.”
Ava Jade shook her head. “Actually, if it’s cool with everyone, we need to head back to the Nest once Rook’s good to move.”
The man himself flinched at her words, and she noticed, wincing with second-hand shame.
“What for?” Grey asked and my jaw clenched.
“Your idiot brother hasn’t slept in days. Probably longer. I’m going to put him down for a nap.”
Rook laughed at that, and even Grey smirked. Traitors.
I shook my head at her. “You’re dangerously close to making me change my mind about the whole fucking thing,” I warned.
But she only shook her head. “Nope. You’re going to nap even if I have to knock your ass out to make it happen.”
I bit my cheek to keep from grinning.
“Bet you fifty he doesn’t sleep more than an hour,” Rook said.
“Make it a hundred and I say he doesn’t sleep at all,” Grey countered, his eyes flicking to Ava Jade. “Not even if you ask him nicely, AJ.”
Her cut-glass eyes narrowed on Grey and Rook. “You’re on, motherfuckers.”
