Page 6 of Rooke
“I’m fully aware,” James Dean tells me. “I’m preparing myself.”
“Preparing for what? Oscar’s the sweetest man alive.”
“Maybe to you. But to wayward grandsons who don’t visit very often and who cause…” he clears his throat, “troubleon a regular basis, he can be quite the opposite, I promise you.”
“Maybe you should cause less trouble.” I don’t know why I’m engaging with this kid like this. It’s none of my business how he behaves, ormisbehaves for that matter. And it’s certainly not like me to blurt out obvious suggestions like the one I just gave him. The guy just smiles, though, apparently not noticing how strange or bossy I’m being.
“Where would the fun in that be?” he asks.
“Rooke?” A voice rings out down the hallway, echoing dimly. “Ahh, yes, Rooke, I thought I heard someone laughing like a madman out here. You’re an hour early.” Oscar shuffles down the hallway towards us. His pants are pulled up so high that his waistband must be chafing his nipples, and his hair is even poofier than before; it looks like a small cloud of cotton candy perched on top of his head. He catches sight of me and nods.
“I see now why you’ve been held up. I should have knownyouwere behind this somehow.” He casts a scathing yet affectionate glare in his grandson’s direction.
“She tried to kill me, actually,” he says mildly. Rooke. His name is Rooke, and for some reason I find the name instantly fitting. A rook is a chess piece, but it’s also a kind of crow. Dark, mysterious, clever, wily and brazen. I can already attribute all of these traits to the tall man standing next to me and I only met him a second ago. “I thought I was going to have to defend myself. Now you’re here I’m sure I’m safe, though,” he says, biting back a smirk.
“Good lord, Sasha,” Oscar exclaims. “I thought you were a capable woman? What’s all this ‘trying to kill him’business? If you need some help getting the job done, I’d be more than happy to assist.”
Rooke pretends to growl under his breath. “Traitor. You’re meant to be on my side.”
Oscar stops in front of us, puffing a little. He takes a pair of extraordinarily fragile looking wire-framed glasses from the breast pocket of his shirt and hooks the narrow arms over his ears. Squinting, he assesses his grandson, his mouth hanging open slightly as he takes stock of him. “You got taller,” he says.
“You got shorter,” Rooke retorts.
“Yes, well, I suppose gravity has been kind of getting me down of late.” Oscar slowly reaches out and places his hands on Rooke’s shoulders. He seems emotional all of a sudden; his voice is thick when he speaks. “I’m very glad to see you. And I’m very glad, despite my jape with Sasha here, that you weren’t callously and coldly murdered moments ago.”
I begin to feel as though I’m encroaching on a deeply personal family moment. “You know what? Rooke’s early and I’m late. I think maybe I ought to come back—”
Oscar shakes his head violently. “Nonsense. Our meeting won’t take long. Rooke, why don’t you wait upstairs for me in the gift shop? I should only be fifteen minutes or so. Sasha, come now. I appreciate you lending your expertise to me for a while.” He tucks his hand into the crook of my arm and leads me back toward his office. I can sense the guy behind me smiling. I can feel his amusement somehow, burning into my back, skating across my skin, making my ears burn, and for a very brief moment I’m spun around by it. Why should a kid at least ten years my junior make me feel so…odd?
“It was nice meeting you, Sasha,” he calls after me, that maddeningly deep voice booming down the corridor. “I’m sure I’ll see you around.”
I cast a hurried glance over my shoulder, considering what kind of response would be appropriate. For some unknown reason, it feels like I should tell him to go fuck himself. While the words that made up his farewell were civil enough, it felt like he was mocking me, and now I’m gripped by the need to tell him where the hell to go. Instead of heading up to the gift shop, Rooke leans heavily against the wall, tucking his hands into his pockets, smiling at me, and I feel the scowl etching itself into my features.
Oscar squeezes my arm. “Don’t worry. You don’t need to hurl such sharp daggers at him. The boy makes a habit of carting around enough rope to hang himself with and then some. He won’t be coming to the museum again. I’ll make sure of it.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. He just caught me off guard. He has…quite the personality.”
Oscar chuckles. “Personality. Attitude. Call it what you will. I love the boy dearly, but he is his own worst enemy. I’m sure it’s his age. One day he’ll mature, I’m sure of it. Until then, I’m afraid the world is just going to have to tolerate the madness and machismo of Rooke Idlewild Blackheath as best it can.”
FOUR
DARK SHIT
ROOKE
He drew her closer, wrapping his arms around her. She felt insubstantial inside his embrace, like she might dematerialize at any moment, and that scared him. She’d been his for such a short time. Not months. Not weeks. He’d possessed her for a mere matter of days, and yet the prospect of continuing on with his life without her made a cold, dead weight grip at him from the inside. There was no life without Isobel. There was no rhyme or reason, no up and no down. He would do whatever he had to in order to make sure she was safe from the men who would hunt her down and cause her harm. More than that; he would do whatever he had to in order to make her his forever.
“What the fuck are you reading, bro?”
I nearly drop the book I’m holding, the sound of Jake’s amused voice sending a jolt through me. The fucker’s always sneaking up on me, always trying to make me jump. I hate it at the best of times, but now? Being caught with a romance novel in my hands? Yeah, that ain’t good. I consider launching the book at his head, but then I decide against that particular course of action. There’s a half naked dude on the cover of the book, for fuck’s sake. Why give Jacob even more ammunition to mock me? I bend the pages back, cracking the book’s spine so I can conceal the image of the dude with the ripped abs caressing the side of an anonymous woman’s face.
“None of your damned business.” I pick up a dirty sock from the floor (his) and toss that at him instead. He sidesteps the missile, laughing like a hyena.
“Forgive me,” he says. “I just didn’t know you could read.”
“I read. I read plenty.”
“Graphic novels donotcount as reading, my friend.”
