Page 9 of Rogue’s Promise

By the time I reach the far side of the stadium, emergency vehicles are pouring in at the front, lights flashing against the stone, sirens blending into radio static. Students cluster behind security lines, their phones raised and gossip already turning tragedy into content. I hear Meg’s name, Everest’s, but not mine.

Hanging back in a maintenance path, I watch on as Meg and Everest are wheeled out on stretchers. Because of me, I think and quickly shake it off. We’ve all gone to drastic measures for the one we love, especially when blinded by jealousy. Leaving the EMT’s to work, I wait for an opening before moving down the line of ambulances, my hood pulled over my hair.

Meg is sitting in the back of one ambulance, an oxygen mask over her face and a blanket around her shoulders. Her red-rimmed eyes are unfocused while an EMT checks her pulse, and she doesn’t even notice me slip by. I don’t pause long enough to consider the strange ache that curls through my chest. She just looks so small for someone who is always so large in life. Even in therapy, even when she doesn’t speak, Meg’s energy is the loudest thing in the room. I frown to myself, deciding that sounded far too much like a compliment for my liking.

I move on, keeping a steady pace so as to not arouse any suspicion around the hooded figure working his way around the ambulances. Everest’s EMT is called away and I see my opportunity to duck into the back of the ambulance he’s sitting in. He’s upright in the stretcher, an oxygen mask pulled down beneath his chin. His hair is a mess, soot streaking his cheekbones and eyes bright with fury rather than panic.

“A fire, Cody? Could you be any more obvious?” Everest hisses, his voice thick with ash. Caught off-guard, I glance around, my brows pulling together.

“What?” I ask, then roll my eyes as an old memory creeps back in. “You mean that old witch who caught me jerking off over your picture and told me I was going to hell?” In my defense, I was a horny teen and she wasn’t actually a witch. Just a nanny the Calloways had on speed dial for whenever they went on extravagant vacations without me, although she did have long spindly fingers and a shrewd face.

“You set her car on fire, and yes, you know that’s exactly what I mean.” Everest’s green glare hits me with such animosity, I bristle. It’s not like I wanted to be here, that I wanted any part of this shitshow he and Meg are a part of.

“You told me to create a distraction. What did you expect me to do, streak butt naked down the pitch with ‘I heart EC’ painted on my chest?” If it’s even possible, Everest’s eyes flare even brighter, the heart monitor he’s attached to sky rocketing.

“A distraction, Cody. Not a fucking cremation.” I look away from his clenched jaw. If there’s one person I can’t stand being reprimanded by, it’s Everest. Our dynamic changed when he came to Hollowbrook, or maybe it’s just him that changed. I’m no longer the tough one that takes beatings in his honor, but the problem that needs to be controlled, to be fixed.

Seeming to sense my own irritation, Everest sighs, which quickly becomes a cough. I rush to his side regardless, taking his hand and stroking the back of it with my thumb. Dropping his head back, Everest’s features droop, a frown pulling at his mouth.

“He’s going to know exactly what you’ve done.”

The words are barely a whisper, but I hear them loud and clear. There’s no need to ask who ‘he’ is. Nicholas is looking for any excuse to drag me out of Hollowbrook and as far away from his precious son as possible. He’d have done it years ago if it wasn’t for my mother’s promises that I can change. Spoiler alert, I can’t.

Instead, Everest took over the role of protecting me. Now we’re all stuck in a never-ending loop of Nicholas hanging over our every move, Everest being on his best behavior and me hiding away from the world. Two years until we’re free, I kept telling myself, but everything has changed now. Everest has just risked his life for Meg in the same way I’ve been risking mine for years, and whatever I thought was sacred between us has been truly shattered.

My phone begins to vibrate in my sweatpants pocket. I ignore it, wishing I’d tossed it in with the bag of lighter fuel at the back of the girl’s locker room, but as soon as it cuts out, it begins to ring again. Groaning, I drag the device out to see the name ‘Bastard’ flashing across the screen. If Nicholas is calling me personally, he must be pissed. Rolling my neck, I remind myself this isn’t my fight anymore, and place my phone in Everest’s hand.

“You’d better take that. You’ll handle it better.” There’s an edge of bitterness to my voice, a simmering hatred I hold deep within, trickling to the surface. I’m done with all of it. Nicholas’ threats, Everest’s torn heart, my silent suffering.

Turning to leave, I catch Everest’s grunt as he accepts the call, obeying his father’s every whim in the name of saving something that’s already fizzled out. I guess Nicholas has gotten his way at last.

Chapter Five

I stare at the ceiling. Just stare, focusing on stopping my fingers from twitching. Trying not to reach for a paintbrush and splatter my feelings across a canvas. Trying not to backtrack all the way across campus and drag Everest against me. He’s not mine, not anymore, but the urge to be with him, to protect him, isn’t something I can simply turn off.

Instead, I let the music in my headphones pulse through me as I remain flat on my back, becoming accustomed to the mattress I’ve been provided. It’s nothing like the ones at Calloway Manor, but still miles better than the thin piece of hard foam at the rehab facility. Before this private room, I was in a crowded dorm at the top of a tower block with four roommates who all hated me, my music, and my art. I suppose checking into the rehab and ruining what little life I had for Everest’s side quest wasn’t a total bust. Look at me now. My very own space to still loathe and ignore everyone around me.

Eventually, I draw my hands onto my stomach and ball them into fists in an attempt to settle the twitching. I’ve always sought out a way to express what I can’t put into words, even before I became an art major. Sketching, painting, sculpting, origami, it doesn’t matter. If I can mold it, I can control it. I can understand it. Which is why, as much as my twitching makes sense, I refuse to give in.

I don’t want to paint what I’m failing to process. The haunting memory of Everest’s eyes closed and soot-coated face. His body lying too still, Meg’s hand fisted in his shirt. Smoke and the flames rolling ever closer, licking at his ankles, and the knowledge that I was the cause. I went too far.

That thought has me sitting up so fast, my spine cracks. I can’t open myself up to guilt. That would be like allowing a virus to poison every carefully crafted wall I’ve put in place. That would be like admitting I still have enough of a heart to feel anything except anger, resentment, and affection for a man I was never supposed to love.

“No,” I mutter to myself, swinging my legs over the edge of the mattress. Pressure builds behind my ribs as I tug both hands through my hair, dragging the earbuds out when I can no longer hear the music over the white noise in my head. My breathing is shallow, but despite that, I reach for the drawer in the bedside cabinet.

Tucked all the way at the back, my fingers close around a joint I stashed in there earlier, and I stand on somewhat shaky legs. My chest clenches as if trying to yank me back down, but I force one stubborn foot in front of the other. Fresh air, that’s all I need. Fresh air that I will swiftly taint with the scent of cannabis. It’s a habit born out of necessity, for when emotions flood back in and force me into an outburst or a panic attack. Sometimes both.

Almost trembling with the need to numb myself, I shove my beanie over my hair and throw my door open, only to stop dead at the sight of a figure passing by my room. Meg freezes too, her wide blue eyes levelling with me with accusation. Every thought in my head goes silent. Does she know I’m to blame for the fire? Did she recognize me tugging her out of the smoke? A million questions fly through my head, all while my mask of indifference slips into place like the coping mechanism it is.

Standing with bare feet pressing into the carpet, she holds her ruined sportswear and phone bundled against her chest, whilst wearing nothing but a towel tightly wrapped around her body. Water drips from the ends of her dark hair, sliding down the flushed pink skin of her shoulders and catching in the hollow of her throat. She’s scrubbed herself raw, not a trace of ash left in sight.

For a single moment, we stand and stare. The hallway narrows around us, shrinking down to the drip of water from her hair, the faint rasp of her breathing, the tinny music still bleeding out of my abandoned headphones on the bed. For a woman whom I recently saw sitting in the back of an ambulance and clutching an oxygen mask, she looks too real to be standing there. Too close, too clean, and too aware for someone with smoke inhalation. A sliver of relief works its way through me, which I quickly shove down into the recesses of my soul. There’s no use for sentiment at Hollowbrook.

Still, my gaze catches on the tight grip of her fingers around the phone she nearly died for, and all I can think is that I caused the hell I dragged her out of, and she has no idea.

“You!” Meg shrieks, the sound snapping me back to the present. Oh shit, maybe she does know. Maybe she saw me in the smoke, maybe she remembers my hands beneath her arms as I hauled her free. It’ll only be a matter of time before she figures out I was conveniently in the right place at the wrong time, that I was protecting Everest, and then why. Panic slides beneath my skin, my pulse hammering in my throat. “You were at the rehab facility with me. You were in my therapy sessions. Are you…are you following me?”

As my pulse slams to a stop, I merely blink at her before rolling my eyes. I can’t believe I let myself get so carried away there. Of all the things she could have accused me of, following her is at the bottom of the list.