The Rush (The Siren Series)

CHAPTER Sixteen



Phoenix’s room was the last room down of four, just past a bathroom and linen closet and completely overstuffed with furniture. A single bed, two dressers, a tattered love seat, an old school plywood TV stand and box TV set that I wasn’t even sure was in color and then a battered oak desk with swiveling computer chair. The door to the walk in closet hung open, revealing a space a quarter the size of his bedroom, an enormous amount of clothing for a guy or really anyone hung haphazardly on plastic hangers and a full and obviously well-used drum set. Posters of bands from the eighties till now were tacked up around the fake wood paneling and the door frame was decorated with ticket stubs I went ahead and assumed were from concerts.

I pressed my lips together, trying to hide my equal disgust and intrigue in the space. My first instinct was that the room was filthy, but spinning around so I could take it all in I got the feeling it was cluttered but clean. Ryder bent down to fiddle with the DVD player and I walked into the closet to better inspect Phoenix’s drum set.

I was a musician of sorts. Not like Ryder and Phoenix, not like in a band kind of musician. But my mother had followed the traditions of our circle and I had taken piano and singing lessons since I could walk and talk. Nix firmly believed music was in inherent part of what made us and so I had been classically trained in both.

I wanted to hate my lessons, hate my skill…. my talent another reminder of what my life dissolved into. I was a showpiece, a trophy wife, a worker bee if gender roles were reversed, sent out into the world to make money and bring it home to our king. I shuddered at the analogy.

But I decided a long time ago that I couldn’t hate music. Even though it represented every ancient curse I wanted to run from, it was as much ingrained in my soul as the desire to live was. And it had become an escape. When I played the world disappeared behind me, melted into the recesses of my mind and I existed in a way that I normally didn’t.

Music felt like something I could control, my fingers went where I wanted them to, commanded the keys and created something beautiful. When everything else in my life felt out of my control, this was the one thing I owned. And something I needed to keep breathing. I had to be careful that I never used it along with the curse, but that wasn’t a problem for me since I despised the curse more than anything. More than even Nix.

“Is this where you guys practice?” I teased when I felt Ryder behind me. I stood just inside the doorway to the closet; the space was big but cramped with the drum set taking up so much room. Ryder’s heat was on my back, his breath floated over the nape of my neck.

“Just Phoenix,” Ryder answered softly.

I ran my forefinger over the cold, sharp metal of the high hat. I stepped forward a little to separate myself from Ryder and then tapped my fingers on the underside of the instrument so that the dull tinkling sound of the cymbals made that brassy sound I kind of loved.

I felt Ryder completely still behind me, as if he were coming to some kind of incredible revelation. He suddenly reached forward and grabbed my forearm, spinning me around to face him. Crippling fear and anxious hope sprung up inside me simultaneously and I lifted my gaze slowly to his, hoping… well, I didn’t know what I was hoping for.

His eyes weren’t on my face though. They were staring down at my upturned wrist. With the hand that held me in place, his thumb moved back and forth across the inside of my wrist, rubbing gently at the skin. His expression was so fiercely intimate, so intensely determined that even though I knew what he was doing, what he was trying to see I couldn’t stop him.

I needed to stop him, and now. But I couldn’t make myself move away from him, I couldn’t make myself hide the dangerous truth that would ruin everything for me if Nix found out. And out of all the dangerous reasons to snatch my hand out of his grasp, I was also partly stunned. After being so very careful to conceal the hidden word, I couldn’t even fathom how Ryder saw through the thick concealer or how I missed even the smallest piece to cover.

Just under the base of my thumb, the black ink had been left exposed. How Ryder knew there would be more, I had no idea. The revealed marking could just have easily been a pen scratch or dirt smudge. Maybe it was the delicate scrawl or the greenish tint that gave the tattoo away, but either way it reinforced the idea that if you wanted to keep a tattoo hidden, the wrist was a really stupid place to put it.

The pressure of his thumb increased as he worked to rub away the cover up. Slowly the thick cream distorted so more of the full piece revealed itself. Ryder paused for a moment, transferring my hand to his other while he wiped his thumb against the collar of his black t-shirt. The cover up left a pale smudge where his collarbone was hidden under the fabric of his shirt and a shot of lust pushed through me. His eyes met mine as he transferred my hand back and continued to rub at the tattoo, exposing pieces of it with every swipe of his thumb.

His eyes were liquid silver, depthless and raw with perception. He was seeing a part of me no one had seen before, save for the poor tattoo artist I manipulated into marking a minor. Ryder discovered a piece of me that was intended only for me, a piece I never planned on sharing with anyone.

Finally, Ryder released me from his stare and his gaze traveled slowly, so slowly, from mine to my wrist. “Blackheart,” he mumbled the word like a curse. Or a caress.

The word hung in the charged air between us. The small, fancy script looped around itself and created a pretty effect to the terribly ugly word.

“Blackheart,” I concurred quietly.

“What are you, a pirate?” he tried to joke, but even he couldn’t crack a smile. His voice strained over his words, his expression tight with some knowledgeable instinct that should have terrified me.

“Something like that,” I answered without meaning.

“What else do you have?” he took a step closer to me. My breathing hitched in my lungs until it stopped completely and I instinctively took a step back until my back was balanced on the corner of the door frame.

“Why do you think I have anything else?” I gasped.

“You didn’t want anyone to see this,” He reached down without looking and took my wrist back in his strong grasp. His entire hand circled around the bone there and his fingers easily overlapped each other. I felt fragile and small with his hand so possessively on me, covering the hideous word now that it was exposed. “And it means something, even if you’re not going to tell me what it is. Instinct tells me this is not your only secret, Ivy.”

His words were like pin pricks in my carefully armored skin and I felt myself pull my wrist from his grasp, even reluctantly. I could have used my other, free hand, but the severity of the moment demanded I use this hand, some symbol of confession I didn’t even fully understand myself.

I gripped at the hem of my shirt as if it weighed a thousand pounds instead of the delicate silk it actually was. Ryder’s gaze fell immediately to the action and slowly, ever so slowly, arguing with myself the entire time, I pulled my shirt to just below the underwire of my bra. My stomach was completely exposed to Ryder’s full stare, but, even though I was still trying to talk myself out of it, I trusted him. I trusted him to see this.

I trusted him to see more of me than anyone ever had, both physically and figuratively.

I looked down at my exposed stomach and quickly licked three of my fingers and rubbed at the second tattoo that ran across the ribs on my left side. I had to wet my fingers several more times to remove the concealer completely but eventually the words were revealed.

Ryder’s own hand came up deliberately as if he were afraid to frighten me, as if I were a wounded animal he was trying to sooth. He brushed his fingers across the identical cursive script almost reverently. His brow furrowed deeply and I wondered what emotion was playing out in his head. Confusion? Pity? Lust?

Only it wasn’t lust. Not by a long shot.

“My soul is free,” he whispered into the silence with the reverence the phrase was meant to hold. “My soul is free.”

He repeated the words and my heart expanded at the incantation. The words I had chosen so carefully held the deepest meaning of my existence. I loved the way they sounded out loud, how they fell out of his lips and off his tongue with care.

“What do they mean Ivy?” he asked while his hand fell back to my wrist and his thumb rubbed once more along the word that was inked there.

“Nothing really,” I lied so obviously I was shocked when he simply waited for me to say more without calling me on my bullshit. “They’re just reminders. Things I need to remember.”

Ryder looked back down at the words on my stomach and wrist and when his eyes met mine the silver had been turned to gray granite, intense with anger and frustration and something that looked like…. concern. “And why do you need to remind yourself that your soul is free?” He bit out the words making them sound like he was dragging them across rough gravel. The reverence fell away and left only hatred for words he didn’t even understand.

I mashed my lips together, afraid to answer him, afraid the truth would come pouring out of me eager to divulge every last sordid detail of my f-ed up life. The thought was so ridiculous, the action so close to completing itself that I burst out into laughter before I could burst into tears instead.

“Ryder, seriously, they’re just words. Just little sayings I thought were…. whatever. I don’t really have a cool story or anything. I was drunk one night in Arizona and bored and I convinced this guy to ink me. It’s no big deal. Honestly, I kind of regret it,” I rambled. I took a step away from Ryder and began straightening Phoenix’s hanging shirts and jeans nervously.

“You were drunk during rehab?” Ryder pressed skeptically.

My mouth snapped shut when I realized I said Arizona out loud and that Ryder had correctly associated the time with my “rehab.”

“And I don’t believe you regret it,” he accused, reaching for my hand again but I stepped out of his range, putting the drums between us.

My shirt fell back down to cover my stomach and a surge of panic zipped through me with my tattoos exposed. My mind spun with all the ways Nix could find out about them. Why was my generation constantly documenting their lives for the world to see? If I was tagged in some candid shot online, my life would be ruined in a strangled heartbeat and the random Facebook friend would have no idea how they sent me to my death.

Not that I had that many Facebook friends to brag about….

But still.

“You don’t regret it,” Ryder pushed, his expression flashing with determination. “Otherwise you wouldn’t cover them up so carefully. Why do you need to cover a tattoo that your shirt already covers, Ivy?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” I bit out. I could explain this. Or I could brush it off like it was nothing. Or I could just walk away; remove myself entirely from this situation. Which is what I wanted to do…. but what was exactly not happening.

“What does the word ‘blackheart’ mean?” he changed his tactic, his voice softly begged with me to open up. He reached out his hand to me, stretching it across the void between us.

I melted, I couldn’t help it. Nobody had ever cared enough to interrogate me like this, to get to the bottom of something I could possibly be feeling. “What do you think it means?” I tested a bit desperately.

“Because of all the guys?” he guessed accurately.

“How would you know?” I countered, trying to put him on the defensive, still not ready to make myself so vulnerable. Although, I was fighting a losing battle. If Ryder kept trying, kept putting all of him into these questions like this, like he wanted to know every single intimate detail about me, I was bound to give in. I felt raw from his investigation, completely rubbed down to the bone. Exposed.

“People talk, Ivy. Especially about you. All I have to do is listen,” he explained gently. I winced at the compassion in his tone, at the pleading in his eyes for me to trust him. “Is that about Sam? Do you think you have a black heart because of Sam?”

I physically shuddered at his interrogation. How dare he! How dare he bring up Sam and assume that’s where all my messed up issues came from. Sam was just the frosting on a screwed up, pathetic, life-ending cake. “Don’t talk about Sam. You don’t know anything about him,” I ground out through clenched teeth. I wrapped my arms around waist tightly, holding myself together, trying to protect everything hurt and broken inside…. trying to protect Sam. Or at least his memory.

“I know he was the one driving that night, Ivy. I know he was the one drinking, not you. I know you can’t blame yourself because he wrapped his car around a light post and sent himself to the hospital,” he paused to let his words settle in. My chin started quivering before I registered that I was on the verge of crying and I looked up desperately at him, silently begging him to stop. “You do not have a black heart because some seventeen year old kid was stupid enough to drive intoxicated and recklessly ruin his life.”

There was a full minute of silence between us as I tried to digest those words…. listen to them…. really hear them. But I already knew the truth. Knew it. There was no lying to myself. I had been over this same argument a million and thirteen times before, always trying to convince myself of the same thing.

“I know all that,” I said so softly Ryder took a step forward to hear me better. “But here I am today. Walking. Going to school. Going to more parties. With Chase. And there will be more boys. After Chase. And after the guy after that. And I get to graduate high school. And live my life. And I won’t look back at him, not ever. Not Sam, not Chase, not the dozen guys before them, or after them. I have to get out of here…. I have to.” I paused for breath, to get something into my lungs, anything to keep from passing out. And then I announced with a tiny gesture toward myself, “Blackheart.”

“Ivy, that-“

Whatever Ryder was going to say was cut off abruptly when Chase, Phoenix and Kenna walked into the room noisily. They called out our names and were laughing about something that happened downstairs.

Ryder held my gaze though, not turning, not even acknowledging them. Quietly, so only I would hear he said, “That’s only true if you believe it, Ivy.”

I nodded like his words had some deep impact on me, but the truth was I did believe it. All of it. Because it was true. His psychobabble was completely lost on me. But I didn’t want to invite any more conversation with Ryder about it, so I turned my expression thoughtfully sad and just nodded.

Ryder let out a frustrated sigh, apparently my act wasn’t Oscar worthy by a long shot.

“Ryder-“

He cut me off, turning his back on me. “I’m not going to tell anyone, Ivy.”

He was disappointed in me.

But at least he knew the truth. At least his eyes were completely opened to the vapid, black hole of emotional trauma that I really was. Still the strong wave of his angry disillusionment punched me painfully in the stomach.

Ugh. Ryder. Why did I care so much?

“I was showing Ivy your drums,” I heard Ryder announce after he left me alone in the closet.

I stood there battling with myself whether I could leave the closet and face the others or if I would need to pretend sickness so I could get Chase to take me home. I wanted to believe I was brave enough to face everyone, but I wasn’t. I was weak, and selfish and….

“Hey, you Ok?” Chase asked from the doorway. His happy, all-American face was pinched with concern. He glanced quickly over his shoulder as if gauging if he should confront Ryder or not.

“Actually, I’m kind of hiding,” I admitted, realizing my decision as I said it out loud. “I’m sorry, this party is a little more than I can handle.” I looked up at Chase from under my lashes and prayed for undeserved compassion.

“Do you want to go home?” he asked, chivalrous as ever.

“Do you mind taking me?”

“Not at all,” he offered me a comforting smile. “Maybe you need to talk about it?”

“Maybe,” I relented. “Maybe in the car.”

He smiled down at me and I stepped into him, forcing him into a hug. I knew I wouldn’t talk about this and I knew this was the best I could give him. His comforting arms helped ease the raw pain Ryder had ripped open and I relished in the easiness that came with Chase. I wasn’t getting attached to Chase and that thought made it easier to inhale. I would be able to break up with him, even if the idea felt very similar to giving my favorite pet away. And though it would be difficult, it was doable. And that thought made it easier to exhale.

See? Blackheart.

I was right all along.