Page 3 of Rogue’s Promise

“Meg, you’re coming to the end of your treatment here with us, and you’ve yet to share anything. Surely there’s something you want to discuss? Something you could get off your chest before you’re discharged?”

My fingers still against the seam of my sleeve. She’s being discharged already? That ramps up the timeline I’ve settled into, meaning I’m actually going to have to work on my ‘recovery’. I’m not staying here a second longer than I have to, and I sure as shit am not going to sit here, staring at padded walls whilst Meg is back in Everest’s vicinity.

My vision becomes unfocused, that thought taking my mind elsewhere. He’s going to be all over her like a rash when she gets out of here. Unlike before, when Everest kept her at arm’s length, hopefully out of respect to me, he’s not going to be able to stop himself from infiltrating her life. Despite what the world thinks of Everest, he cares furiously. Once he’s accepted someone into his heart, there’s no length he won’t go to in order to protect them. Unfortunately for Meg, I’m exactly the same.

“I’ve heard you’re returning to uni,” Counselor Stevens adds, her soft voice making my skin itch. “How are you feeling about that?” I manage to withhold a groan, just about. Everyone here is too placid, too understanding. Their kindness is evasive, slipping beneath the defenses the fuck-ups in this room have spent years building. I can handle aggression, yet compassion throws me off kilter.

Meg exhales through her nose and tips her head back against the chair, boredom painted across her face.

“I’m absolutely buzzing with excitement. I can’t wait to see the people I used to call friends, who haven’t visited, called, or texted me since I came here.” Her voice is bland with sarcasm, and I raise a hand to hide my smirk at that. Another one of Everest’s orders to protect her that I get to watch backfire in real time.

Upon her rescue, Everest forbade everyone on campus from conversing with her. He said she needs time to heal without distraction, but I’m not so sure. What I believe is that Everest is so worried about keeping the fire inside of Meg from fizzling out, that he’s willing to keep her isolated. Keep her angry. Keep his role in her life protected.

Meg continues to speak, but I choose to tune her out. It’s all a performance anyway. The wounded queen on her cracked throne, furious that her friends have failed her, furious that the world hasn’t rearranged itself around her suffering. Welcome to the fucking club.

Everest would want me to feel sorry for her. Instead, I imagine his face when he watches her on the field, the way his attention changes when she moves, the split-second hunger he thinks I don’t notice because he forgets I know every version of him before he began living behind a mask.

Meg clamps her mouth shut like she’s said more than she intended, and Counselor Stevens clasps her hands in her lap.

“Meg, you’re allowed to be angry. You’re allowed to be scared. But this is a space for honesty.”

“I am being honest,” Meg cuts in, crossing her arms. Her eyes glare at the rest of us as if we’re her biggest enemy right now. I suppose, lying in wait, I am. “I don’t want to sit in a circle and hold hands and pretend that talking about my feelings is going to change a damn thing. What happened to me happened. No amount of group therapy is going to scrub the blood off my hands.”

The air tightens, a girl near the window looking away. Others shift uncomfortably in their chairs, the mention of blood making some uneasy. We all have pasts. We’re all here through one form of suffering or another. Daring her to disagree, Meg glares at Counselor Stevens, her back rigid now. A beat ticks in my jaw. She’s supposed to be weak and broken. Broken people, I can deal with.

“You’re not alone in those feelings, Meg,” Counselor Stevens continues carefully. “A lot of people here struggle with⁠—”

“Don’t,” Meg warns, and her voice goes quiet enough that several people look up. “Don’t try to lump me in with everyone else.” My jaw tightens as she glances around the room at the fidgeting hands, lowered eyes, bent spines, cracked lips, picked cuticles. All of the damage we’re carrying that she’s trying to belittle. “They don’t know what it’s like to wake up screaming because your nightmares aren’t just dreams. They’re memories. They don’t know what it’s like to have someone strip away everything you thought was real, twist you into something you don’t even recognize.”

My veins run cold. I may not belong here, but I happen to resonate with everything she just said. I know exactly what it’s like to have nightmares that wear the faces of real men, to wake with my throat raw from swallowing screams because Calloway Manor has surprisingly thin walls. I know what it’s like to be twisted into something unrecognizable by hands that teach lessons behind locked doors, by a calm, refined voice telling me I am filthy, distracting, weak. I know what it is to hate someone so completely, it becomes part of your psyche. I’m not Cody Calloway. I’m the stepson of Nicholas Calloway, who is so despised, he erased me.

So when Meg sits here, acting like her suffering is supreme over the rest of us, something vicious reopens inside me. Some form of myself that was born behind the door of an office and left to fester on the bathroom floors.

“That’s all we know,” I grind out between clenched teeth. The girls on either side of me flinch, but Meg doesn’t. Her gaze snaps to mine. For the first time since the session started, she really looks at me, and I let her take in the beanie pulled low over my white-blond hair, the sleeves of my sweater tugged low to hide the ink spanning my forearms. Leaning forward, I hold her eyes, bolstered by the rage simmering beneath the surface.

“You’re not special here, and you don’t get to dictate who is suffering more.”

Meg’s lips part, her pale blue eyes flickering with unrestrained emotion. Anger rushes in first, her instincts kicking into high gear before something softer seeps in. Guilt, maybe, or shame. I wonder if Everest has ever seen that look. The clock ticks loudly above the door, the only sound dividing us until Meg’s breath saws out of her.

“Fuck you,” she mutters. A smile threatens the corner of my mouth before I can restrain it. There she is. The girl who has Everest by the balls and doesn’t even know it.

“Language, please,” Counselor Stevens sighs. Meg doesn’t care for her warning. She shoots out of her seat so fast, the chair skids backward with a sharp scrape. Counselor Stevens says her name, but Meg is already moving, all fury and wounded pride, striding away in her provided slippers.

As she disappears into the hallway, the entire room exhales. Not me, though. I keep my eyes glued on the door, mentally composing a message in my head.

Morning update: Attended group. Refused to share. Angry about returning to the academy. Reactive when challenged. Physically stable. Unfortunately, still has her tenacity.

That’s as close to an update as Everest will get as shock horror, I have no access to my phone. No connection to the real world that’s passing by the windows. So I sit in rooms I don’t belong in, wearing a lie on my wrist, watching a girl I hate so the boy I love can sleep at night. When I spent a year alone, stuck in the manor and waiting for the day I could finally join Everest at Hollowbrook, this wasn’t the future I envisioned.

Counselor Stevens turns her attention toward the rest of the circle, trying to regain control of the session, but it’s far too late. The imprint Meg left behind has triggered those who struggle with hostility, and there’s no coming back from it today. The group disperses, our slippers almost silent against the linoleum as we step into the hallway. Meg is almost at the end of it.

Her shoulders are stiff, her fists clenched, her head held high as if her pride is the last weapon she has left in her arsenal. An orderly glances at her and then at me as I stop at the water station to pick up a paper cup, remaining casual. Meg disappears around the corner toward the residential wing, and I stand there with a cup of lukewarm water in my hand, thinking about what Everest told me happened to her.

Kidnapped from Hollowbrook, taken from the very pitch she adored and delivered to an ex-convict who had been searching for one of his long-lost daughters. That’s family for you. Fucked-up and more damaging than they’re worth.

Even without the honor of the last name, I’m Calloway-made. I’m bruises under sleeves, secrets under skin, cruelty disguised as loyalty. I’m the boy Everest kisses in the dark and hides in the daylight. I’m the one who stays, the one who waits, the one who sacrifices time and again.

And now, I’m lumped in the same category as a girl who only had to suffer for a few months to consume Everest’s attention. A girl who is almost free, almost back on campus, almost close enough for him to orbit her, whilst pretending he only yearns for the challenge she presents. What will happen to me then? The loyal ghost lingering in Everest’s shadow. The devoted secret that can be ignored.