I just kept eating my omelet. Whatever he would or would not refuse to do was frankly none of my problem.
“Fallon. Fallon, can you even hear me?” he said louder.
I continued ignoring him. The cook here was excellent. When Mama H came to collect our dishes, I’d have to tell her to compliment the cook. The omelet was mouthwatering, with some kind of fancy white cheese in the middle. A far cry from the Kraft singles I’d toss in mine growing up while Mom worked a double shift because Rafe’s family threw some party and they needed her to clean up after them.
One time when she described the fancy party they’d had and all the fancy food, I asked her if she could bring home leftovers next time. Her face had clouded over, and she’d hurriedly explained Mrs. Jackson preferred to throw out the leftovers than allow the “help” to take any home. Mrs. Jackson thought it would disincentivize them to serve as well, or maybe they’d hold some back, if they knew they could take home what wasn’t eaten.
I stabbed the next bite of omelet a little harder than was necessary.
“Enough, Fallon,” Rafe said, standing up, leaving his breakfast behind and walking down towards my end of the table. He towered above me, looking down.
“Are we gonna talk about last night?” he demanded. Oh, he’d really worked himself up. Good to know some things never change. Rafe could never hold it in long when he was upset about something. It would blow one way or another, and in his repressed fucking family, usually that meant with me, playing rough when we were kids and then later, driving fast cars, staying out late with me, the town goth girl everyone else rejected.
For a long time, I thought that’s all I was—hanging out with me was one big Fuck You to his parents, his one lingering rebellion. Or rather, like everything else, a desperate cry for attention from his uptight family. Especially his mom, who completely ignored him in favor of his so-called golden-boy brother Timothy who Hung The Moon in her eyes.
But then Timothy died. And mommy dearest finally turned her eyes on forgotten little Rafe.
So naturally, he had no more use for me. In reality, I’d always been as disposable as those party leftovers. He’d been using me just like his family used my mother. But at least they’d paid her.
What did I get out of it? A broken heart and a ticket out of town on the first bus, courtesy of his mother who felt her New Golden Child didn’t need any more distractions. At least not ones as uncouth as the undesirable bastard daughter of the help who looked like the rejected offspring of Marilyn Manson and Ozzy Osbourne. I’m sure Rafe got a whole new fleet of fast cars to drive. Mommy Jackson did so love to spoil her favorites.
He certainly didn’t use any of them to come after me, even though I sent him repeated emails in my weaker moments, praying I’d misunderstood things, that it had just been grief for his lost brother that had kept him silent, longing for even a couple of words from him even if they were: “not now” or “I need time”.
But those never came.
Only silence.
“Why the hell are you here?” Rafe continued. There was fire in his eyes. He was furious at me.
I wanted to laugh. After all this time, after we’d had sex for the first time, these were the first words out of his mouth?
“Are you crazy?” he blasted me, so upset his handsome face was getting those red blotches high on his cheekbones I’d always found so irresistibly sexy when we were teenagers. “Do you even know what you’re getting yourself into? You have no idea!”
But then I fought through the haze of his sexiness and how the closeness of his body heat was doing things to me to focus on his words.
Mistake. Or maybe my saving grace.
Because every word out of his mouth only pissed me off more. “I’m crazy? I’m crazy?” My voice went up about an octave. I shoved my chair back and stood up so that he could no longer tower over me, looking down his stupid gorgeous nose at me.
I glared at him. “I know this might be incomprehensible to your little pea brain, but I am a full-grown woman who knows her own mind. Yes, I know what I’m here for. Yes, I know what I’m getting into.” I briefly glanced around the room, the sturdy, aged and stained floorboards and wallpaper, and thought of how my own mother might have once walked through this very same room.
My eyes flashed back to Rafe. “Your family kept me down my whole fucking life. I’m not going to let any Jackson tell me what I can or cannot do ever again.”
Rafe’s brow crumpled, like he was confused. “What are you even talking about?”
God, boys could be so obtuse. If he couldn’t connect the dots, I wasn’t going to spell it out for him.
I put a finger in his face. “I’m here to get what’s owed to me. What I deserve. What my family deserves. And you are not going to stop me.”
Rafe just shook his head. “You don’t know what you’re saying. You don’t know what this place is—”
I scoffed at that. This place had used up and spit my mom out as an impoverished single mother with zero support. And Rafe thought I didn’t know what this place was? I was pretty sure he was the one who needed an education on the Oleander’s history and what really went on here.
But no, that would require him actually listening and maybe, just maybe, being willing to admit he wasn’t a master of the universe who knew everything. Something I was pretty sure no one in his family had ever, ever done. So, I wasn’t holding my breath. Rafe had proven to me long ago that he was a Jackson through and through.
Rafe’s brows drew together. Oh, I was really frustrating him now. That was the face he got when he wasn’t getting his way and he didn’t like it. This was almost fun.
“Fallon, stop it, this isn’t funny. This isn’t like stealing a candy bar from the corner store when we were kids. I’m not joking. This is serious. You shouldn’t be here.”
You shouldn’t be here. Dagger to the heart. Because, oh right, he’d rather have fucked some other woman last night. The delicate little fainting blonde.
Fuck him. Fuck Rafe Jackson, that he still had any ability to hurt me. I felt my eyebrows rise to my hairline. I got right in his face.
“No, Rafe, you’re right. You thinking you can tell me what to do certainly isn’t funny. At all.”
He huffed out a breath through his nose like an angry bull, the spots on his cheeks getting even brighter. “You aren’t even trying to listen to me. I’m trying to protect you—”
At my loud scoff the spots in his cheeks turned even redder, though I seriously wouldn’t have thought that was possible at this point. He was going to light on fire any second at this rate. Still, I couldn’t resist poking the bear.
“God save me from the ‘protection’ of anyone with the last name Jackson. I’ve seen how your kind protect—you only protect your own, even when to the world it looks like charity. I know the truth.”
Like giving the poor little housekeeper’s daughter a “scholarship” to prep school because Rafe’s father felt guilty about not choosing her mother during the Initiation. Instead, he doomed her to a life of just above poverty, all for the privilege of cleaning up after him and his wife for the rest of Mom’s life. The least he could do was provide her daughter—a bastard daughter fathered by some known or unknown friend of his—with an education.
Either that or Rafe’s mom was terrified my mom would spill her guts about Rafe’s dad and what went on in the Oleander. Mama H theorized that if Mrs. Jackson would have had her way, Mrs. Jackson would have run us out on a rail the second she found out about any of it. But Rafe’s dad put his foot down, and she’d come up with the idea of paying for my school as a means of leverage and silencing Mom instead.
Until Timothy died. Then Mr. Jackson stopped giving a shit about everything, apparently. And Mrs. Jackson got rid of me like she’d always wanted.
Rafe stepped back from me, looking baffled. “What are you talking about?”
Now I really did want to laugh. He hadn’t known? It had tormented me, wondering if he’d
been in on it, if they’d ever told him—if he knew his “best friend’s” education was being paid for by his own parents as an insidious form of manipulation. After all, who could fault them for such a generous act? If anyone knew of it, they’d think I should shut my mouth and be grateful.
Certainly not my mother, who was desperate for me to have a better life than she did. She wanted bigger things for her daughter than the business end of a mop and dustpan.
Look how far I’ve come, Mama, I thought sardonically. Right back to where you began. But I’m gonna get it right this time. I’m going to get everything they owed you.
“How was breakfast?” Mama H’s cheery voice broke into our tense standoff. “Did you like the omel—” She broke off mid-word when she saw how we were posed, in each other’s faces, obviously both frayed and upset.
She let out a long breath, then set down the little box with a black bow she’d carried in with her. She put her hands on her hips and whistled, so loud it felt like it pierced my eardrums. I winced and covered my ears. She waved at me to put them down.
“Enough of this. Whatever lover’s squabble you two are having can wait.”
She didn’t wait for me to object that she had absolutely not walked into a lover’s quarrel, but she was already barreling ahead.
“Enough of this, the both of you,” she chastised us like we were still small children. “You”—she pointed at Rafe—“take a seat.” Then she pointed her sharp finger at me. “You, too. Sit.”
I obeyed. When Mama H got that voice, you sat down and shut up. I had common sense, and apparently so did Rafe, because he did the same as me. We’d both felt the wrath of Mrs. H many, many times as children.
“Yes, ma’am,” Rafe said. I’d managed not to say yes ma’am along with him, but only by biting my bottom lip. My hands were still tucked obediently in my lap. I didn’t call Mama H Mama for no reason. She could put the fear of God into any soul when she got that tone.
“Now you listen to me, do you hear me? You two are going to need each other, and I won’t see any more of this pettiness. Rafe”—she arched a glaring eyebrow at him, but even though it wasn’t directed at me, I cowered in my seat—“you may not have wanted it to be Fallon going through these Trials with you, and I understand you want to protect her. You want to protect everybody. But you’re going to have to grow up someday and realize that a woman like Fallon can take care of herself.”
Ha. I looked over at Rafe and just barely kept myself from sticking out my tongue. Take that Rafe Jackson. Even Mama H saw my side of it.
“Now, don’t you go thinking you’re so high and mighty, lassie,” Mama H said next, zeroing her laser glare my direction.
I sat back, shoulders straight, feeling skewered like a bug underneath a magnifying glass. Oh shit, why did I have a feeling it was my turn now?
“Yes, I know being here isn’t all hearts and flowers, but it never was going to be, and you were deluding yourself if you thought any different. I tried to prepare you, but you can’t really know how the Trials will test you until you step under this roof and feel the pressure of these walls. They carry secrets and dreams you can’t even fathom.”
She waved her curved pointer finger at the both of us. “The only way the two of you have a hope of surviving—much less thriving in these Trials that will test your mettle, your will, your very soul—is if you work together and lean on one another. And then you have a chance, and I do mean just a chance of passing these Trials. You never know what they’re going to throw at you next. Not even I know what’s coming, but I do know that the only couples who make it are the ones who let go of their egos and cling to each other for strength.”
Rafe’s head bobbed up and down. “Yes, ma’am. We’ll do better.” He looked over at me, his eyebrows knit in sincerity as he reached out and took my hand. “I’ll do better. I’m sorry, Fallon. I swear I’ll do better.”
Well, what the fuck was I supposed to do with him being all sweet like that? I still wanted to be pissed at him. That was much easier to understand and compartmentalize.
A sweet, sensitive Rafe was just a mind-fuck.
But I wasn’t fool enough not to heed Mama H’s warning and advice. So, reluctantly, I squeezed Rafe’s hand back.
It didn’t mean anything. So, I’d work with him instead of against him. We had common goals, that was all. It wasn’t like I agreed to marry the man. Just to work with him since he was the only partner I had.
I was strictly being practical.
A flash of Rafe’s naked body thrusting into mine from last night played out on sudden repeat in my head.
Ha, practical. Yeah, that was it. My wanting to work with him instead of against him had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that it likely meant getting my body underneath his again and feeling him inside me. Again and again and again if what I’d heard about these Trials was true in even the smallest measure.
So, I squeezed Rafe’s hand and arched an eyebrow of my own. “I’m in if you are.”
Rafe took a deep breath, his large chest expanding outwards. But then he let it out in a huge whoosh of air and nodded. “Fine. I’m in, too. You, Fallon Perry, are my belle.”
And then, more under his breath as Mama H beamed at us, I didn’t miss his following murmur: “God have mercy on us both.”
7
Rafe
“Oh death, oh death, oh death,” an Elder chanted as we all filed outside the Oleander Manor to the large wraparound porch.
Candles were lit, adding to the fiery light put out by the hanging gas lanterns. Glass bottles of various colors dangled from the awning, and I wouldn’t be a true Southern boy if I didn’t know that their purpose was to chase away the spirits of the night. Fireflies flickered in the thick and sticky air of the night. An owl hooted in the distance as if warning me to run as fast as I could away from what would occur this night.
Elders in their silver cloaks lined up near the large entryway and the members flanked behind us. Both Fallon and I awaited what would come next with bated breath.
The Elder continued on with his chant. “We ask you dubious haints to leave the Oleander. Cross over to the other side and not enter our dwellings.”
I watched the Elders raise their palms to the covered porch they stood beneath and point to the arched architecture.
“We paint our entrance blue to chase the haints away. But tonight, since we are sure there is one particular ghost haunting us now, we offer the belle to be covered in haint blue. This is our offering to you.” The Elder spoke as if we were surrounded by our deceased ancestors and they were all listening.
Chills ran through me as I reached for Fallon’s hand, only to have her pull away from it.
I noticed the cans of paint surrounding the Elders and tried to figure out exactly what was about to occur. The entryway was already painted haint blue and had been for centuries as was tradition. So why the paint? And why so much?
“Fallon Perry. You are to stand beneath the blue to help us chase away the spirit of Rafe’s older brother. He’s here. His haint is here taunting us, and it’s our job to chase him away. We’ll paint your body blue with our hands. Every. Single. Inch. The hands of the man will join as one.”
The words were like a punch to the gut. Rage surged through me. My brother? They were not allowed to talk about my brother! How dare they? How fucking dare—
My fury came to a screeching halt when Fallon began to move forward.
“Absolutely not,” I said under my breath, grabbing her by the arm and tugging her back toward me harshly.
Fallon’s breath hitched, but she yanked her arm away from my grip and took a step away from me. “I got this. Don’t you dare fuck this up.”
“You’re not a whore,” I hissed. “You shouldn’t let them touch you. You aren’t a goddamn whore.”
Her head snapped in my direction and daggers shot from her eyes. “Exactly!”
She moved toward the entryway by the front door and stood with her c
hin held high and shoulders back. She stood naked with the light from the gas lanterns reflecting off her flawless skin.
I closed my eyes briefly wondering if I could just block out all that was about to occur. I didn’t want to watch this. I couldn’t. No way could I just stand back and let these wrinkled dicks touch her.
But when I opened my eyes, I saw her staring at me. Silently telling me to remain where I was.
“Let the Trial begin,” an Elder declared, hitting his cane hard on the planked porch. “Chase the haints away!”
Cans of paint were lined up on the porch beckoning, and several members of the Order dipped their hand into the blue, approached Fallon as if she were a blank canvas, and began painting her with their caresses. Hands groped her, hands invaded, hands touched and stained her skin with their sins. Blue-covered hands slapped her bare ass, leaving behind blue handprints. Some stroked her pussy; others rubbed her breasts as if she were nothing but a statue.
Fallon remained in place, emotionless, blank.
Her glare was locked with mine, and her defiance challenged my rage.
How could she?
Why would she?
And why would I just stand here and watch as these men violated her body with their touch?
I moved forward to put a stop to it, and Fallon shouted, “Stay!”
I froze, but the Elders and the members all continued on as I watched. Her body dripped in paint, her hair wet with the color, and yet she appeared pale as man after man marked her as nothing but a broken belle.
I looked to Montgomery for help, but he simply stood with his clean hands at his sides. His eyes were focused toward a weeping willow tree in the distance near the cemetery. It was as if he could actually see the spirits of our forefathers watching on. Montgomery was here physically, but his mind had detached. I suppose I needed to learn this if I were going to be able to pass the Initiation myself.
Block the evil out.
Opulent Obsession: A Dark Secret Society Romance Page 6