by Tilly Delane
“Stay,” Rowan growls, even before my body language could possibly have told him that I was about to stand.
He just knows. This perfect stranger, this addict, can already read me better than any other person I’ve ever met.
“No, I can’t,” he states factually, as if he just saw directly into my friggin’ mind. “I’m just good at cold reading people. It’s important shit in my line of work.”
“What? In gambling?”
“Betting. Yes. It is, to a point. But no. I meant kicking the shit out of people.”
Now it’s my turn to read him. And I do. He hasn’t been this outright about what he does and he’s gauging if I condemn him. I don’t. I watch him exhale and realize he was holding his breath. It’s the first time I get a hint that he doesn’t just want to get between my legs. It’s important to him what I think of him.
Sweet. And so misguided.
“Don’t do that,” he says into my thought process.
“Do what?” I ask.
“Make it cheap and nasty.”
“Make what cheap and nasty?” I plead ignorance, but he just looks at me.
With hammed up disappointment. And mirth. So much fucking mirth it makes his dark eyes glow from within.
I can’t help but grind my ass into my chair. And suddenly I realize that this is going to happen no matter what.
Not because he’ll hound me until I give in but because I want him.
I sigh.
He leans back in his chair and laces his hands behind his neck to cradle his head as he looks up at the ceiling.
“So, we were saying...”
He pauses, clearly with the intent to taunt me a little, but if he thinks I’m wondering what comes next, he’s more stupid than I thought. I know exactly which conversation we are picking up here, even if it was two days ago.
“You’re not allowed to shag the guests, you’re not allowed to hook up with the other employees, but you are okay to fuck the locals, correct?”
He doesn’t look down to see me nod, just carries on his stream of consciousness.
“But I’ve been thinking, purely hypothetically, of course.”
He looks down with a devilish grin at the wall opposite him, still not making eye contact.
“How would your bosses react if one of their employees was, let’s call it violated, by a guest? Would they back said employee up if she pressed charges or would they try and brush it under the carpet to preserve the company’s reputation? Maybe even buy the employee’s silence off? What do you think?”
His expression has changed to dead serious by the time his eyes land back on me. My heart starts racing, because I know full well he’s propositioning me.
“Raven?” Rowen prompts after almost a minute’s silence. “What do you think?”
I watch his eyebrow tick and I know he is nervous. It’s a fucking bold move. I swallow hard.
“They’d want it buried,” I say with quiet confidence, while a weird cocktail of sweet opportunity and bad taste roils my stomach.
He smiles warmly.
“Good,” he says and gets up. “I’m going to bed. See you in the morning, beautiful.”
I stare at him, my heart still pounding in my chest. What the fuck have I just agreed to? Did I just give consent to be raped? What if...I don’t get to finish the thought because he’s almost at the door when he turns back, returns to the table, leans down on his elbows and pins me with a serious gaze.
“You know, ever since the metoo campaign, I’ve been in a quandary. Don’t get me wrong, no means no, stop means stop. Always. But if you have the hots for a woman and she for you and say you happen to be sleeping in the room next to her and one night you creep in and start stroking her and licking her pussy while she’s asleep and when she wakes up she doesn’t say no, she doesn’t say yes, she just lies there and enjoys what’s happening, is that consensual? Or is that rape? I don’t mean in the eyes of the law, or in the eyes of her bosses. I mean between that woman and that man.”
He stops to give me another one of his smiles while I stare at him, my mouth dry as a desert.
I keep staring into his eyes like the proverbial deer in headlights as a yard sale of emotions, feelings, lust and hurt starts warring inside of me, really seriously flipping my stomach now.
Too close yet so, so different.
My brain floods with random memories, good and bad, until I settle on a clip of Dr. Meyer, my mentor, the bushy eye-browed, kind and ever so wise old man who coached me through nursing school. I hear his voice as he says ‘fight, flight, freeze or please and you were trying to please, my dear, for survival’.
And I realize that right now I’m freezing.
When I don’t want to.
When I don’t need to.
Because for some unfathomable reason, I trust this man in front of me.
This gambler.
This fucking thug and possible killer.
And the minute that realization hits me, some weird shit happens inside of me, as two divergent parts of my being that have been apart forever and a day come back together, and my belly suddenly settles.
“Answers on a postcard,” Rowan says softly, as if he knows what he’s just done.
Then he straightens up again and leaves the room.
This time for real.
Rowan
I lay off her after that for almost a whole week.
Total cunt that I am, I obviously overshot the mark there. I was going for a bit of alpha dirty talk. Most women love it.
It’s that stupid voice of mine. I kind of hate it. I mean after ten years, I’ve grown into it, literally, but I’m still not a fan. It gives people preconceptions. But it certainly helps with getting laid and with Raven, I thought maybe, while we’re at it, we could negotiate a cover story, possibly even a safe word, to protect her just in case we were found out, but instead I hit a fucking nerve a mile wide.
I saw it in her eyes.
The look.
The look Silas had after that shit with Niamh happened.
The raped look.
Raven has history. I’d bet my last penny on it, if I were still betting.
Shit. Fuck. Bollocks.
Not that it makes me want her any less.
On the contrary, some weird part of me that I don’t even recognize wants her even more now. Wants to put her back together, wants...redemption.
And that makes me loathe myself even more.
I will not use her to heal my soul. She deserves better than that. Any woman does, but Raven in particular because she’s fucking awesome.
As I simmer down on the sexual bullshit for the following week and try to simply be around her each day without putting my fucking foot in it again, I realise more and more just how amazing this woman is.
There is an individual rhythm to rehab for everyone in the house and somehow she manages to be the metronome for each of us, regardless of the fact that we're all so wildly different. She watches over us with a quiet competence that makes me feel safe for the first time in my life since my mum, my real mum, died.
Do I have mummy issues? Definitely. It kind of comes with the territory of being solely responsible for your mother's death.
But it's not a maternal kind of safe I'm getting from Raven. It's not protection from the big, bad world that her presence cocoons me in.
It's simply knowing that there is another adult in the room who may not be flawless but who knows what they're doing, what they're about, how to handle themselves and who is looking out for me.
There is reassurance in that.
Reassurance that not everybody you meet is a fucking child out to get all the toys, that there are still people who take a measured approach, people who care.
That’s what Raven is, measured but caring. Especially when she’s facilitating our little group’s widely different stances on life around the dinner table. You’d think that after a day of mindfulness, anger management therapy, group therapy, individual
therapy, physical therapy aka time in the gym or pool and recreational therapy aka gardening or hiking or knitting or whittling or pottering or fuckknowswhat, we’d be too powered out to be at each others’ throats in the evenings.
But these are dark times, and both Simon and Charlie have a habit of getting political.
The weird thing is, they’re the exact opposite of how I would have pigeonholed them if I’d given it a thought.
Despite belonging to a passive-aggressive, alcoholic, self-obsessed businessman, Simon’s heart is in the right place and somewhere beneath the damaged personality there hides a good guy who wants a fair and equal society and all that lark. I could weep at his naivety.
Charlie, despite the rock star credentials, is unashamedly right wing. Though it shouldn’t really have surprised me. He’s a public schoolboy from an aristocratic background with fantasies of becoming one of the mega-rich through the power of music. And for him, it’s guaranteed. At what point Charlie hasn’t cottoned on to the fact that his bass player is still stacking shelves in a supermarket whenever they’re not on tour, not because he thinks it’s cool but because they haven’t made it yet, and may never, but because the bassist still needs to eat and isn’t from a moneyed background is beyond me. Especially since Charlie told me so himself.
Princes and paupers.
Rulers and gladiators.
I could contribute shit to their discussions that would blow their fucking minds.
But I don’t.
While Raven negotiates the debates between Charlie and Simon and even Tristan, who is a political newt, with an unbiased grace that is awe-inspiring, I keep mostly shtum and eat my food.
At least until Thursday’s debate rolls around, which ends abruptly when Simon gets a phone call and leaves the dinner table.
It is then that Charlie turns to me.
“What about you, Rowan? You got an opinion on anything?”
I look up from my summer pudding and zero in on him until he’s fighting hard not to cower in his seat.
“Many,” I growl. “They’re just not palatable for public consumption.”
I’m still eyeballing him when out of the corner of my eye, I see Raven suspend a spoonful of dessert in front of her mouth and shoot me an amused glance. She lowers her laden utensil back into the bowl and leans forward on the table, not quite into my space but almost.
“I don’t know. But ain’t that for the public to decide?” she asks.
My eyes immediately snap from Charlie’s to hers, but my annoyance dissipates as soon as I see the impish light flickering in her eyes. She’s got a fucking point and she knows it.
“Maybe,” I concede as I get lost in the dark blue of her irises.
It really is an astonishing colour. But not as astonishing as the woman herself. We hold eye contact and the longer it goes on, the harder my heart starts pounding in my chest.
It’s a new sensation. I’ve never felt this before.
Frankly, until I met her, I thought it was a load of bullshit, that when people talked about their heart skipping a beat because they’re in love what they meant was that they could feel the fear of rejection.
I know all about the increased heartbeat of anxiety and fear.
Of course I do, I’m a fighter. Anyone who tells you a fighter doesn’t know fear hasn’t got the faintest. It’s a fucking prerequisite for the job. No fear, no adrenaline. No adrenaline, no fight reflexes.
But this is not fear. Or anxiety. Not even lust, though I can’t deny the fact that her challenging me like this has just woken up my dick.
No, it’s a different beat entirely. And as I keep staring at her, I realise it’s different because it’s not mine at all, it’s ours.
“Backgammon?” I hear Tristan ask Charlie in the background, followed by the sound of both of them excusing themselves and scramming from the dining room.
They think two of the grown-ups are having a fight.
They couldn’t be more wrong.
Raven
My heart is in my throat as we keep staring at each other.
Something just changed, something deep and profound.
After a week of him keeping his distance and decidedly not visiting me in my room despite me holding my breath each night, we’re back in the game. Only this time, it’s a whole new level.
I want him to kiss me. Here and now, consequences be damned.
The thought jolts me.
I’m not a kisser. It’s not my thing. Never has been. Saliva exchange with another person does not hold any attraction for me. I do it, sure, to please whoever allows me access to his penis at the time. Because it’s expected, part of the script. But it always makes me feel slightly nauseous. Maybe because my first kiss, tongue and all, was forced on me by one of my mom’s friends. I was eight.
Maybe because it's just not hygienic.
But right now, I couldn't care less. I want Rowan’s mouth on mine, want his tongue down my throat. I want it with a ferocity that sets my entire being alight and scares me in equal measures.
Who the fuck is this person that's taken over my body? This is not me. So, so, so not me.
So I dodge.
“Care to elaborate then?” I ask in a whisper, still not able to break the spell.
Something changes in his gaze then, the warmth is supplanted by a darkness not many would be able to bear. But I’m Ravenna Vanhofd. I can deal. Especially if it detracts from this sudden desire to feel his lips on mine.
“You think you can handle it?”
“What?” I grin. “An opinion? Yeah, I can handle an opinion.”
“It’s not an opinion,” he says darkly.
“What then?”
“Fact as opposed to fiction.”
“I’m intrigued.”
It is then that he breaks eye contact and makes a sweeping gesture around the empty table.
“This,” he says with a snort. “That thing those guys have been doing, night after night, it’s bullshit. They’re discussing shit as if there was such a thing as a democracy. As if it fucking mattered whether you’re left, right, centre, far this or far the other. It’s an illusion. The only thing that matters is if you’re above or below. And, gorgeous, we here are all below.”
“Democracy is dead, huh?” I ask with only a slightly needling undertone.
It’s kind of cute having this growly voiced mountain of a man spout teenage crap.
His smile is scathing.
“It never existed. And if it did then only for about a second. Believe me, Raven. The shit I’ve seen and done when I was fighting in London beggars belief. That wasn’t the shit you see when you type bare knuckle street fighting into the internet. Not even if you type it into the dark net. That stuff, the people who came to see me get my head kicked in, they have their own fucking web. They’re not even on the same satellites. Ask your Irish buddy one day. Though he won’t give you an answer. ‘Cause if he does, he’s dead. Within the hour. Even out here. Trust me, democracy is nothing but the modern day version of Christianity. The Sheriffs of Nottingham are well and truly alive.”
“Huh?”
I frown deeply, because he’s genuinely lost me now.
“It’s the illusion of self direction and having a morsel of power that keeps people in line. The way that the threat of heaven and hell used to keep the great unwashed in line back in the Middle Ages.”
I digest this for a minute. The content and the realization that Rowan O’Brien isn’t just muscle and brawn and sex on legs but brains as well. Then I smile and I can tell it throws him sideways.
“It’s still progress,” I point out.
“How is that progress?”
I shrug.
“I’d say if we’ve moved on from being kept in line by being threatened with eternal punishment by an invisible higher power to being kept in line by being given the illusion of self responsibility that’s definitely developmental progress. At least on our part.”
He cocks his head at
that, and his eyes go from dark back to warm, a genuine smile playing around his lips.
“I’ve never met anyone like you before,” he says, and my heart, which chilled out a bit at some point during the last couple of minutes, skips a beat again.
But before I can answer, Simon bursts back into the dining room, swearing.
“That fucking cow!”
He slams down in his chair and starts shoveling the rest of his half-eaten dessert into his mouth.
“She’s taking the kids away over the weekend! To my mother’s gîte in France. Without me. They’re going to see my mother. Without me. How fucking dare she? While I’m stuck here, in this shithole.”
Chewing shuts him up for a couple of seconds, allowing Rowan to frown at him.
“Surely it’s good that they get to see their grandmother?” he states with an unmistakably threatening question mark at the end.
Simon starts eyeballing him with bloodshot eyes. They often are. Side effect of being a choleric. He needs to watch that. I take his blood pressure every day and it tells me he really should try to practice some more mindfulness. One heart attack during my tenure here is plenty.
“What the fuck do you know?” he barks.
Simon’s spittle, red-tinged from the fruits in the summer pudding, lands on Rowan’s white tee. Rowan looks down at it, looks up and rises from his chair. Simon blanches. He’s not too far absorbed in his little pity party to realize that he’s bitten off more than he can chew if he goes up against Rowan.
I’m about to get to my feet and step in when Rowan holds out a reassuring hand in my direction, without taking his eyes off Simon. Rowan leans forward, placing his lower arms on the table as he gets right up into Simon’s face, studying him intently for a minute.
“I don’t know shit about being a father,” he growls. “Hey, I don’t even know shit about having a father. But I had two mothers, both awesome people, awesome women. Women are amazing, so much better than us dickheads with dicks could ever be. So I don’t need to know anything about your situation to know that you are a cunt if you begrudge your girls a good relationship with their grandmother. And I don’t need to know anything about your situation to know you are an even bigger cunt if you’re not over the moon that your ex is clearly trying to maintain that relationship despite you fucking up your marriage ‘cause you couldn’t keep your head out of the bottle.”