Page 68 of Rooke
The kitchen door opens and Jake appears, shoulders stiff, body braced, a cup of coffee in one hand and a bottle of painkillers in the other. He takes one look at us and pretends to scowl. “Jesus. How’s a guy meant to recuperate with this shit going on? You’re about to fuck again, aren’t you?”
“You’re not even meant to be out of bed,” I remind him.
“Yeah, yeah. Save it for when I’ve had three of these and I don’t know my own name,” he says, holding up the pain meds.
I try not to laugh. “I’m glad he’s getting better,” I whisper into Rooke’s ear. There was a second, just after Rooke brought him back here, when things were not looking good. Jake’s temperature was through the roof. He was delirious, ghostly pale and couldn’t stop throwing up. That lasted for forty-eight worrying hours, and then we woke up the next morning and his fever had suddenly broken and he was asking for food.
Rooke, my raven king, wraps his arms around me and whispers back to me. “Me too. But he needs to hurry the fuck up and leave so I can fuck you on the table.” He pauses, then says, “Also, I have something I want to show you.”
I’ve heard this before from him. His show-and-tell sessions nearly always end up with me on my back and his head between my legs; to say I’m a fan of them is an understatement. “Is that so?”
He treats me to the same arrogant, cocky smile he gave me the very first time I saw him in the hallway at the museum. “Dirty girl,” he whispers. “This is different. I can show you right now if you like?”
“Okay. Sure.”
Carefully, Rooke raises his right hand, palm facing me. He looks me dead in the eye. He seems to be holding his breath. Painfully slowly he lowers his middle finger, and then his ring finger, until he’s only holding up his thumb, his index finger and his pinkie.
My breath catches in my throat.
“I learned this earlier this morning,” he whispers.
My eyes are stinging so badly that I know I’m going to cry. There’s no avoiding it. The last person to sign this to me was Christopher, right before he died. Carefully, I mirror the shape he’s made with his hand and I press my fingertips to his, index finger-to-index finger, pinkie-to-pinkie, thumb-to-thumb.
Rooke huffs heavily down his nose. He kisses me softly, his lips skating across mine, nudging me with the tip of his nose. “Glad you didn’t leave me hanging, Connor,” he whispers softly.
I try not to let the moment overtake me entirely, but it’s difficult. The love between us is fire and ice. It’s loss, and it’s redemption. It’s pain, and it’s comfort. It is everything. Having him actually tell me how he feels, especially the way he just did, is something I will remember forever, but in the end the truth is that I already knew. Some things are felt and seen long before they’re put into words, after all.
After so long, my heart is finally healing.
For the first time since I surfaced the frigid, cold waters of the East River five years ago, I feel like I can finally breathe again.