Page 63 of Roan

“Not unless you want the plan to backfire,” I point out, but then I think about that for a minute. If I had a plan—which I do—having Tiller’s help might not be so bad. Someone to take the fall should it go wrong, and let’s face it, it will go wrong at some point. Besides, Tiller owes me one.

Downstairs, Tiller’s in the kitchen sitting in the booth drinking coffee, River beside him eating marshmallows with chopsticks. I step around the island to the coffee pot and pick up on their conversation. “Why are you using chopsticks?” he asks her, his hair in what looks to be five different braids, not doubt, a product of the little hairstylist beside him.

“So my fingers don’t get sticky,” she tells him, rolling her eyes, as if she shouldn’t have to explain herself to her dad.

He shrugs and denies the one she tries to stuff in his mouth. “Makes sense.” Tiller nods to Camden. “Cam-man, isn’t it early for you to be up?”

Camden shakes his head and pours himself a coffee. “Nope. Roan and I have a wedding to crash.” His smile beams at me. “Don’t we?”

I smile around the coffee cup in my hand but say nothing.

“You’re coming with us, Tiller.” Camden pats his shoulder, as if he’s going to convince him.

Tiller rolls his eyes, uninterested already. “I have plans today.”

With my coffee in hand, I take a seat next to River, who climbs on my lap. She traces her fingers over the tattoo on my shoulder. The one of a woman lying in a bed of flowers with her eyes closed. If you look closely, know the meaning behind it, you’d understand why I got it. You know Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, right? Ophelia? If you don’t, I’ll be brief. Ophelia, a naïve girl, is in love with Hamlet, who believes women can be deceitful. Including Ophelia, who he thinks is only leading him on. He believes they pretend to be pure and innocent when really they’re controlled by sexual desire. In turn, he believes they’re all pro-hos looking for fame. Or that’s just my opinion. Anyways, her dad forbids her to see Hamlet, she agrees. Hamlet kills her dad, mistakenly, apparently, and grieving and mad, Ophelia kills herself. Or that’s what some say. Others say she fell out of a willow tree and the branch hit her and she drowned. This is fucking Shakespeare so who the hell knows the true meaning behind any of it.

The tattoo on my shoulder? It’s the one of a girl lying in a field of flowers, doing what she thinks others want her to do, incapable of her own distress. Do you get the meaning?

I’m not one to tattoo a woman’s name on my body so a portrait of one with black hair, a heart-shaped face, plump sexy lips, that’ll do. So I hide it behind the meaning of Ophelia, a woman whose tragedy lies in the way she lost her innocence through no fault of her own.

Now that hits home, doesn’t it? It should. The girl believed a lie, so she reacted and you know, fucked the dude’s brother? Okay, maybe it doesn’t relate, but it kinda does when you think about the meaning in a blurred sense. It could also hold a shred of resemblance to a kid who lost both his parents and had to grow up fast.

“Why is she sleeping?”

I stare at River and then my shoulder. “I thought it’d be creepy to have her eyes open.”

River’s brow furrows. “Is she dead?”

“No. She’s alive.” I don’t want to explain the tattoo to a five-year-old, so I steal one of her marshmallows and quickly remember I’ve never liked marshmallows. I spit it out on the table. “How can you eat those?”

Another shrug as she picks one up with her chopsticks, her brown eyes gleaming with a childlike innocence you would have never seen from her dad next to her. “They’re sweet and puffy.”

Immediately, Tiller grins, and I know exactly what he wants to say. We both laugh.

River gets down when Amberly, Willa, and Berlin make their way downstairs. It’s not long and cartoons fill the silence in the house. That is until Shade and Scarlet wake up.

“We’re getting married,” Shade announces, keeping his sunglasses on even with the early morning sun filtering in through the large windows. If I know my little brother, it’s because he’s hiding from reality. He’s fucking twenty-four and on top of the freestyle world. Why the fuck would he want to get married? One could argue that he loves Northwest, but what the fuck does love have to do with anything anymore?

I think about Ophelia and blood boils in my veins.

Tiller groans and tosses his head back being the typical insane shithead he usually is. “Not another wedding.”

With her hair looking like she stuck her finger in a light socket, Scarlet kicks his shin. Hard. “Fuck you.”

Lifting his eyes to her, he gives her a nonchalant wink and strokes the bottle of water in his hand. “I’d like to.”

Amberly gasps and smacks his head. “Tiller!”

He never thinks before he speaks, which is why he’s constantly kissing Amberly’s ass.

Tiller groans, as if he forgot his girlfriend is sitting beside him. “I’m sorry.” He isn’t. “I’m just being honest.” See? Told you. But then he grabs her and smashes her cheeks between his palms like the devil he is. “I love you, but I still think with my dick. Doesn’t mean Iwillfuck her. I’m just saying he likes women. Doesn’t matter who it is.”

Disgusted, Amberly pushes away from him and stomps out of the room yelling, “You’re awful.”

With a scowl, Tiller’s eyes lift to Shade, then Scarlet’s. “I can’t wait not to attend your stupid wedding.”

Shade clears his throat and scratches his eyebrow. He looks just as confused as to what getting married really means. Had they even thought this through?

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