Chapter 29
The sigh that escaped Granite's lips in his sleep stirred my hair. I buried my face into the pillow in an attempt not to smile. His alarm was in progress, the music from his phone set to awaken him the way a steady stream of beeping usually awoke me. I reached out and produced it from his jacket, swiping away the sleeping screen to unlock it. I drew an inverted pentagram and once his lock had dispelled, I tapped the screen to turn off his alarm. Granite's phone was like any other teenage boy's, but it held the significance to him that Garrot's journal had held. His background was a Guns 'N Roses album cover; I figured I'd save the music for last, then. It was probably extensive. He had maybe ten contacts in his phone, and I could tell why. Holt. Heath. Clawd. Manny. Catrine. Me. Garrot. Home. R Home. Veronica. I backed out to flip over the pictures, only to find that there were two: his precious bike and a shot of an undone, unpainted interior that vaguely caught a glimpse of people in the corner of the shot. My breath released slowly and I dropped his phone onto the bed to run my fingers through my hair.
Sometimes I just couldn't help myself. I cared about him much more than it felt like it should be natural. I wanted to share the world with him, every waking moment of his and mine both. I wanted to experience the brush of his lips against my neck while we looked out over the city of London from an extravagant hotel. I wanted him to make music, enjoy his life, and carry me on that journey with him. It wasn't a difficult idea to process that finally losing Garrot had thrown away all of the aspirations for a normal, natural life that I felt were necessary with him. Going to school, getting a job, leaping forth into the adult world, it didn't seem like it needed to happen with Granite. He was a lot like Frankie in a less positive manner; he had an entire world before him. He wanted to go run and play and touch like a child on a new playground.
His arm around my waist pulled me closer, his fingers dipping beneath the hem of my shirt to run up my stomach. I swatted him before he reached my chest, but that hardly deterred him. His fingers rested at my solar plexus, thumb brushing my skin slowly and sensually. I melted back into his arms, fully aware of what those fingers had done to me a little more than twelve hours ago. He didn't push away my hair, but kissed my neck with the strands in place as if conveying that our relationship would never be perfect, and he didn't care one way or the other. He traced his fingers slowly back and slid them out from my shirt. I felt the bridge of his nose and his upper cheek brush my ear and my jaw as he moved closer, his arm squeezing my torso gently.
"Morning," he muttered, stretching with my body still in his grasp. I felt the tender ripple of his awakening muscles and blushed; sometimes I forgot how solid he was.
"Good morning," I replied. He let go of me, shifting so far away that he almost fell off the bed. I remained in place and simply lifted myself to turn toward him. "How'd you sleep?"
"Like a brick," he muttered. He grabbed his phone from behind me and kissed my forehead, "Thanks for turning off the alarm. I didn't know you had my lock."
"It's an inverted pentagram," I replied, "You might want to change that. It's on like half of your album covers."
He shrugged, "Nothing hugely important on here anyway."
It was total bull and we both knew it. He brought up his code change anyway and turned it away from me. I stuck my tongue out at him. He laughed, eyes glinting beautifully, and leaned in to kiss me. Before he drew away, he muttered, "FoxyRoxy666."
"You and Satanism," I muttered, trying to tease him despite my blushing cheeks.
He shrugged, "You'd never believe it, what with the good Christian kid I am." We both laughed out loud. He reached over me to grab his jacket and rose. As soon as he had stood, I rolled out from the bed myself. "So what is this foxy Roxy." It sounded like he had taken himself back to the nineties all over again.
"The new lock screen," he muttered. "It's an actual code now."
It felt gorgeous to have our own secret code. I couldn't imagine anything different; I felt like a child playing secret agent again, only this time, there weren't any amused werecats watching on knowingly. He draped his coat over the end of the bed and pocketed his phone. I rolled that way instead of rising, shifting to my knees at the footboard and propping up my elbows. "What do you have on there?"
He quirked a shoulder, "Classic rock, metal, electronic, the works. Not a lot to sit on your ass to, if you know what I mean."
I nodded. He glanced around for some inclination of what I might listen to before meeting my gaze, "Tell me you're not into that boy band stuff."
I could've laughed out loud. "You insult me."
He rolled his eyes, "Prim listened to that N-K-O-T-B stuff. Oh god, every time she turned on the stereo I got ready to cringe."
I grasped his hand. His eyes flickered upward to mine, a smile flickering across his face. He shrugged. "It's not a hugely difficult thing, y'know? To miss that, I mean. I might've hated her music, but...you know how it goes."
Trying to put together time for him was like trying to paint a picture of an infinity. Sixteen, seventeen years in captivity had been a good thirty on his soul at least. All this time in the outside world made me feel as if I were missing out on something crucial to his life. "Do you ever miss that?"
He looked up, knowing instinctively what I had implied. He met my eyes, the turbulence in them more violent than the emotions I had seen in recent days. I had almost forgotten that I was in the presence of a different, dangerous man.
"No," he said softly. His eyes betrayed more than I had ever thought to witness, his own personal infinity of pain, violence and regret. I rose, slipping around the bed to wrap my arms around him tightly. Dangerous man or not, he was the one who had chosen to care for me. He hesitated before embracing me tightly, pressing his lips very softly to my head. "That was a long time ago, okay?" We were both exaggerating that, but for his sake, I went with it. I nodded, clutching his shirt gently in my hands. "Roxy...Rochelle...if you knew what I was like then, you probably wouldn't want to be with me now."
I shook my head defiantly. "You aren't that boy anymore. You grew up."
He scoffed. "Not as much as I'd like to." I drew back slightly and placed a finger to his chin. He looked into my eyes with a little gentle prompting. "I love you, right here, right now. I have for a very long time. Don't give up on yourself when I haven't even gotten a say myself yet."
Whether there was truth in my words or not became irrelevant; I was clutching the straws I had grasped. The fear of being alone, being left here with my family and Garrot's looming over me, it was too much to worry about the warrants behind his fears. The lesser of my evils had been the exact one that had gotten us into this mess in the first place. Whether he saw it that way or not was not up to him. For the first time in a very long while, I let the composure slip away. His guardedness melted with mine; his hand cradled my elbow while the other rested comfortably on my lower back. Our eyes met, the fear of becoming a monster in his eyes mingling with my fear of being overcome by the monster inside. "I can't do that to you," he murmured. "They don't even know if Farnum's dead, and the other guys are in juvie. They're gonna be out in a couple years. Granted, they're probably going to fuck up along the way and land themselves back in prison-"
With that acknowledgement, I placed a finger over his lips. He paused, allowing my touch to slip to his cheek. "We will be alright. And you don't know, you're right. I could walk out of this house in twenty minutes and be hit by a bus. I could die of old age, I could get cancer-" He shook his head and attempted to silence me the same way, but I shifted and spoke over the contact of his skin to mine. "There is no guarantees. So yes, we're going to go off and do something dangerous and potentially very stupid, but I don't want to live my life away from you. I don't know what to do with myself, Granite, I've lost every sense of sensibility that I've had in my entire life. Please don't make a pun right now. Let's just go. Why the hell not? Throw caution to the wind, forget that you belong to these people the way I have."
He laughed out loud, his fingers slipping into my hair. His nose met mine and he broke into the biggest, most wild, beautiful grin I had seen on his face all morning. It was the grin of the afterglow; satisfaction coupled with victory and coated in relief. "If you're really that hellbent, then finish your packing. Cause right now, we're wasting daylight."
I kissed him. He melted a little, lowering to my level and clutching my hair a bit more tightly. We broke apart before we could be distracted by the action, though. His eyes glinted beautifully and he smacked my backside a little harshly. I jumped slightly and pushed his arm, "Go grab me something to eat."
He rose his arms and crossed them Macarena style, hands at his elbows, and nodded once sharply, "As you wish."
I couldn't help but laugh as I cracked open my suitcase again. "Don't you dare try to pass off Hammer pants as genie pants, either!"
"I don't have clothes from that decade!" he called up the stairs to me.
"You could fool me!"
I felt the same as his smile while I placed my folded shirts into the little square roller. I felt like if my mother popped in and asked me how I was, the okay I would reply with would be genuine. Even though it had become the most transitional period of my existence, I understood. Nothing in my life would ever be perfect, but right now, the sense of the emotional afterglow would be enough.
