by Tilly Delane
She turns to stare right back at him.
“Why the fuck not?”
She’s really developed that mouth of hers.
“He’s right,” she carries on. “He’s got better credentials than most to run a youth prison. I can see it. He’ll just need an educational program, some teachers and a head of housekeeping.”
“It’s not a prison,” Diego says to Grace, exasperated, but then his grey eyes get a twinkle in them. “Housekeeping, you say?”
He turns his attention to Silas again with a mischievous smirk.
“You reckon your mum’s bored of The Palais yet?”
I laugh when I see Silas’ face fall completely as he looks from his girl back to his boss and oldest friend. I raise my hand.
“I think it’s nuts, but it’s also perfect,” I say.
And I mean it. I can actually see it. I can see them all working in this stupid fantasy of Diego’s and actually make it work. For everyone. Even for the poor sods they’d be rehabilitating.
I just can’t see a place for me in it.
Because in my heart of hearts, I’m still going to America.
I’m still following a woman who thinks she doesn’t want me any longer.
Diego looks at me.
“You in then?”
I shake my head.
Silas cocks his head and focuses solely on me.
“You don’t feel it’s finished, do you?”
He can still read my thoughts like no other human being on earth.
“No,” I answer.
He frowns.
“Then fucking well ring her, you idiot.”
Grace looks at her glass as if it were the most interesting object on earth and swivels it around by the stem.
“You want to be the pot or the kettle there, honey?” she gently ribs him under her breath.
‘Cause it sure as shit wasn’t Silas who came for his woman in their story, it was very much his woman coming for him.
But I have a funny feeling if I wait for Raven to come to me, the Zimmer frame I mentioned to her will be a fucking reality.
If ever.
Raven
After I put Simon’s sheets in the washing machine, I’m at a loose end again. I contemplate going for a hike or for a dip in the pool, since there is nothing to stop me. But some invisible chord ties me to the house. I don’t want to leave it unattended.
I don’t know what I think will happen if I do, but it just doesn’t feel right.
There is a key to the front door I could use to lock up with, but since it’s mostly Rothman I don’t trust not to come in to sniff my used underwear, or whatever other kinky shit he’s into, it’s no use. All the senior staff have a master key to all the houses. I have no idea what exactly I think I’m protecting, but I know I’m protecting something. Maybe it’s just territory and the reason it feels so strange to me is because I never had any to protect before.
So instead of going outside, I waste the afternoon reading and watching terrible pre-millennium British made-for-TV crime dramas, until Christine comes for a visit after all her chicks, as she calls them, have been fed.
Christine is great company, as always, and doesn’t once mention the dead guy, or the guy I miss, as we spend two hours chatting about terrible pre-millennium British made-for-TV crime dramas. Although her version of ‘chatting’ is mostly re-enacting a whole load of iconic characters I’ve never heard of. She does an ingenious impersonation of the actor who played Hagrid as some detective called Cracker, and when she leaves, I know what is on my to-watch list once I get home.
I feel the lack of her as soon as I shut the door behind her.
After she leaves, I make myself a hot chocolate to take to bed with me and switch off the lights downstairs. I’m halfway to the top floor when the house phone starts ringing, and my heart starts pounding in my chest.
There is only one person I can imagine who would ring the house at this time of the night.
I sprint up the rest of the steps, splashing hot chocolate all over the place and not giving a shit. When I pick up the receiver, I’m out of breath, not with exertion but near panic.
“The Village, Ravenna Vanhofd speaking,” I press out between breaths.
“You okay?” The thunderclaps on the other end sound worried.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. I just ran up the stairs.”
He chuckles.
“Knew it was me?” he asks confidently.
He’s still a jackass.
“What do you want, Rowan?” I ask him, snippily, though really what I want to do is tell him I miss him, I love him, I want him back.
I love him?
Shit.
I don’t know.
Is this what this is?
Maybe.
How the fuck would I know?
“You,” he says at the other end, and I realize he left me quite the pause to think in before he answered my question. “I want you,” he clarifies, as if it needs clarification.
And then he hangs up.
What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?
I suppress the urge to phone him back to call him an asshole and choose to go to bed with murderous thoughts and without brushing my teeth instead.
Rowan
It doesn’t take me long to pack my backpack after I speak to her. I grab enough to last me till the end of the week, which should have been my original leaving date. I might be deluding myself, but I just know we’re not over.
She’s my one, I can feel it in my bones. I know so. I knew it when I first saw her, I knew it when I left, and I knew it every second in between.
There is, of course, the very real chance that I’m just justifying an obsession and that I’m about to turn into a fucking stalker, but time will tell. If I get back to Purbeck and she tells me to turn the fuck around, I’ll turn the fuck around.
But we need some kind of actual ending first.
One that is to do with us, not with someone else’s tragic circumstances that have nothing whatsoever to do with either of us.
It’s too late to catch a train tonight, so I will leave first thing in the morning, but I want to be ready, so I can just grab my toothbrush and go.
I roll up my last pair of pants and stuff them in the backpack, and then I go to find Silas.
Silas, Grace, Diego and Kalina are all still in the kitchen, talking. Diego came over for dinner earlier, hoping to ambush Sheena with his idea for her next career, but she’s on a late today and not back yet, thus has yet to be informed of the role she might play in Diego Benson’s newest live-my-life-as-a-movie plan. Prison films were always his second favourite, after all things Tarantino.
I go to rejoin them and as soon as I appear in the door, Silas takes one look at me and just knows.
The women can tell by our faces that something is up and fall silent.
Diego, who’s leaning on the counter by the kettle waiting for it to boil, takes a little longer but eventually he, too, shuts up.
Silas glances away from me, concentrating on stroking Luna, who is standing in his lap, milk-treading his thighs, for a good half a minute before he says anything.
“When are you leaving?” he asks into the loaded silence, not making eye contact.
“Tomorrow, early. First train I can catch.”
He nods.
“Let’s wait till Mum gets in, I’ll ask her if we can borrow the Capri. I’ll take you.”
I can tell in his tone there is no arguing, and I’m grateful. At least that way if Raven does refuse me, Silas will be there by my side on the way back. To mop up my tears. As he does.
Diego looks back and forth between us, frowning.
“Where are you going?” he asks.
“Purbeck,” Silas, Grace and I answer in one breath.
Kalina claps her hands, excitedly.
“To see nurse? Good idea! Bring back here, I want to see woman who fells mountain of man like you.”
Behind her back, Diego rolls h
is eyes and I can’t help but grin at him.
I sit down across from Kalina and give her a comedy wink.
“You like big men, do you?” I tease, one eye on Diego.
His grey eyes gather storm clouds.
She shrugs.
“Big is good,” she says.
I swear she can feel Diego’s miffed reaction in her back and it’s totally hitting the spot she was aiming for. Diego is the welterweight to Silas’ middleweight and my heavyweight, and he never liked that little fact, but that’s just how he was put together.
“But blond is better,” Kalina finishes what she started, on a big grin that Diego can’t see.
Then she gets up and leaves the kitchen without turning around to him.
“That one is a minx,” I say, once she’s out of earshot.
Diego turns to the kettle on a grunt and adjusts himself.
I think about another blue balls comment, but I decide to leave him be.
Every man has a snapping point and I think he might be close.
I like being alive.
I’d like to stay that way.
Raven
I don’t know exactly what it is that wakes me, but it’s still pitch black outside when I burst back into consciousness with that particular start all emergency room nurses around the world know only too well.
It differs from the normal kind of shooting up in bed as it comes with the sure-fire knowledge that all your wits are required about you, right fucking now. It takes me a split second to put the feeling in context of the cottage, but then I realize what’s rattled my cage.
There is someone in the house.
I can’t hear them, but I can feel their presence as they silently pad around the floor below me.
I get out of bed quietly, counting my blessings that I’ve reverted to sleeping in PJs since the night Simon died, and reach for the hairspray on my nightstand.
In the States, I always carry mace, but the Brits are squeamish about that shit. It’s classed as a weapon, and the British don’t do weapons. They’re illegal here. Not just a little bit, a whole fucking lot. So I go for the next best thing. A faceful of Volume Plus Hold might not incapacitate an assailant, but it’ll buy you enough time to turn the tables from victim to perp.
I leave my room, treading as softly as I can, navigating the landing and the stairs in the dark. After a year here, I know this house like the back of my hand, know exactly how many steps there are, and which one creaks unless you step right on the outside.
When I get to the floor below me, there is a moment when I wonder if I’m simply just losing it.
Because everything seems totally normal.
It’s calm and quiet. The doors to all the three guest rooms are firmly shut, the way I left them. I’m about to turn back upstairs and put the whole thing down to paranoia in an empty house, when I hear the faintest noise coming through the door of Simon’s room.
A shudder goes through me. I don’t believe in the supernatural, but the whole thing is too fucking eerie for my liking.
I think for a moment and decide that no matter if ghost or intruder, surprise is the best form of attack. Then I take a deep breath, barge through the door and switch the light on, hairspray at the ready in the other hand.
Frank Rothman drops the flashlight he is holding, and his other hand clasps around an object as he turns to me from the nightstand, cussing.
“For fuck’s sake, Raven, just piss off,” he snarls at me, and I can tell immediately that he’s been drinking.
He’s not super sloshed, but his eyes are glassy and the distinct odor of expensive Scotch comes off him as he comes toward me.
“You fucking Americans, always sticking your fucking oar in. There is nothing to see here. Go back to fucking bed.”
I frown as I try to deduct what it is he’s hiding in his clenched fist, but I don’t get a chance to see it before it disappears in the pocket of his pants, and he’s almost on me. For a moment I think he’s about to attack me, but then I realize that he’s just gonna try to walk past me and out of the house.
Interesting tactic.
The problem Frank has is he sure as shit ain’t no Jedi master and there is plenty to see here, so I grab him by the arm as he tries to push past me.
“Nice try, Frank. What’s in your pocket?”
It’s only when he turns on me and slaps the hairspray can out of my hand that I realize maybe that wasn’t the wisest move. I let his casual attempt at escape lull me into dropping my guard. Big fucking mistake. He leans into me and I can see the humiliation from earlier still burning behind his eyes.
He snarls.
He fucking snarls as his face comes close to mine and his sour breath fans over me.
“What’s in my pocket?” he repeats my question, while he grabs my wrists and bends them behind my back, bringing his body right up to mine.
“I’m going to show you what’s in my pocket.”
He’s so close, I can feel his cock stirring in his pants as he bends my right arm up so high it pins my hand between my shoulder blades, and I want to squeal in pain.
But I don’t.
I don’t, because this is where the voice in my head splits into the familiar duet I haven’t heard in years.
There is Raven and she’s screaming. She wants to fight. With everything she has.
And then there is Ravenna. Cool, calm, collected. She wants to survive. With everything she has.
Only for the first time ever the three of us realize that I don’t have to choose between them. They can work, together.
So when Rothman brings my other hand back around and forces it into his pocket, not the one he’s put the item in, but the empty one, the one right next to his growing erection, Ravenna strokes her fingertips along his hardening length through the fabric. Rothman quivers as his eyes bore into mine, and then a smile unfurls around his angry mouth.
“You like this, huh?” he growls.
He searches my eyes and I allow Raven through. Just a little, just enough for him to see the fire burning inside of me and to let him mistake it for lust.
“Oh, fuck, yeah,” he croaks as he lowers his mouth onto my neck to bite me.
Hard. It fucking hurts.
I push down the curses that want to come up my throat and give him a whimper instead. I think it’s unconvincing, but he buys it.
“I knew it,” he pants and bites me again.
The fucker is gonna leave marks on me.