The House of the Wicked (The snake and the raven #1)

37. Nora

Nora

he makes me forget

S cratching through my modest supply of clothing, I find a baggy t-shirt, clean underwear, and a hairbrush that comes from God alone knows where. Then I head to the bathroom; after washing my face, changing into fresh clothes, and walking back to the bedroom, stuffing my trunk-worn dress in the hamper.

“Dima?” I call out from the hallway.

“Dining room,” she answers immediately.

The sound of my feet softly slapping against the parquet floors echoes through the house as I make my way to the living room. She’s sitting at the head of the table, her fingers mindlessly tapping the surface as she stares at the two plates in front of her.

“Did you want cheese and tomato or just cheese?” she asks. “August made them.” The pride in her voice makes my heart swell. It’s just grilled cheese, but he made them for us, and that feels special.

Drag ging out the chair next to her, I smile. “Cheese and tomato,” I say, before she pushes one plate toward me. I’m about to thank her when August walks in, phone pressed to his ear, face tight with irritation.

“It’s Stephen,” he mouths before turning the phone to face me. Stephen’s pallid face lights up the screen and I wince. Dima’s hand lands on mine, comforting and reassuring as always. August places the phone down on the table, hitting the speaker button. “You’re on speakerphone,” he snaps abruptly.

“Where are you?” Stephen’s annoying nasal voice fills the dining room and any hunger I previously felt evaporates.

“We moved to a new safe house.” August winks at me as he answers Stephen.

“I heard,” Stephen says. “I wanted to get Nora caught up and prepped for court, but if you’ve just arrived, maybe we should do it tomorrow when she’s more settled.”

“She’s here with me. You can ask her.”

“Nora, dear.” Stephen seems flustered. It’s not unusual for him, but I can’t help but wonder if me being here with August is the cause of it today. “Are you okay?”

“I’m perfect.” I smile at Dima. She rolls her eyes. She’s never liked Stephen.

“Well, you heard what I said. If you prefer, we could do the arraignment tomorrow or the day after?”

“I think that would be best,” I confirm, not because I need to get settled, like Stephen said. Truthfully, the thought of testifying makes me want to walk into the fucking sea. “I’m really distracted today,” I add, hoping it’ll buy me more than a day’s grace for this fucking arraignment.

“I can imagine. Where are you staying?” August shakes his head at me, slowly pressing his index finger against his lips in a shushing motion.

“Oh, well—” I start, but August cuts me off.

“We’re staying somewhere safe.” Is all he offers.

“Boy, you better answer me like you’d answer Ricky.” Stephen hurls the words at August. Despite him not being in the room in person, the condescending reply hits its mark. At least I think it does, but as I open my mouth to defend August, Dima’s small hand squeezes mine. I look at her and then at August. I’m rewarded with a smile, a genuine one that reaches all the way to his eyes. He drops into the seat next to me, lacing his fingers through my free hand, turning my insides to mush.

“Tell him I said we’re somewhere safe.” And with that, August hangs up. I sit there gaping at him.

“Why didn’t you just tell him?” I ask.

“Because two days ago someone tried to kill you at a house that no one should’ve known about. I’m not taking any chances with your or Dima’s safety, Nora.”

“Oh…” I trail off, unsure of what to say next.

“Yeah, oh. Eat your grilled cheese. I need to head to the store. I won’t be long, and it should go without saying—”

“—then don’t say it.”

“—you’re not allowed to leave this house, little raven.” He leans over and drops a kiss on my forehead and then a matching one on Dima’s before he turns and walks toward the kitchen.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” I call after him.

“I made them for you two. I’m fine.”

“Okay,” I mutter, and I’m met with an amused nod. And then he’s gone, rustling around in the kitchen a second before he walks back into the living room and leaves through what I now know is the front door of the house.

Scrambling out of my chair, half of my grilled cheese still clutched between my greasy fingers, my face presses against the front room window as the powerful rumble of a motorcycle fills the room. August speeds away on a matte black Ducati, and oh my shit, I’m so fucked. If the grin stretching painfully across my face isn’t proof enough, then the riot of butterflies currently filling my stomach would surely do the trick.

A dreamy sigh escapes my lips before Dima clears her throat loudly behind me. Shit, I’d briefly forgotten I had company.

“I’ve always thought of you as my family, Nonny, but now with you and August… It feels so much more real. Be careful with your heart. He’s a good boy but…” She sighs. “He has his own demons.” Her words feel like an omen. For what, I’m not sure yet. Still, I turn toward her and smile, grateful for this time alone with her now.

Walking back into the dining room, I grab the second half of my grilled cheese, grinning at Dima.

“You know I have demons of my own.”

“Hmm,” she says. “That’s what worries me.”

I roll my eyes playfully before scanning the room. “Should we move to the sofa?” I ask.

“Help me over,” she says, before pushing the wheelchair away from the table and rolling herself toward the living room.

“The gunshot,” I start, because I need to know. “Did it leave permanent damage?”

She watches me, chewing a mouthful of gooey cheese, before answering, “They say I might not w alk again. Maybe with therapy I could move better with a cane, but for now, I’m stuck in this thing.” She gestures to the chair. My heart cracks.

“I’m so sorry—”

“Nonny, don’t. It wasn't your fault, and you will not waste any time feeling guilty about it. I’m still here. And walking was getting tedious, anyway.”

“What about all your dates?” I ask, smiling sadly as I help her from the chair onto the sofa.

“My dates… yes.” She grins. “They were all with August. It was the only time I had to spend with him.” I let that knowledge sink into every part of me. All those nights I spent thinking she was out, she was with him. Here? I wonder.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask after a few seconds of silence.

“Now that’s a loaded question. Come sit.” She pats the empty space next to her, setting her plate down on the arm of the couch. “Grab that box over there.” I follow the direction of her finger to the shelf beneath the coffee table.

Three decorative storage boxes, perfectly stacked, rest on the shelf. I reach for the box on the top, smiling as my eyes land on August’s name scrawled in bold black cursive on the lid. The confident slashes of the pen are so familiar to me; Dima’s handwriting.

After passing her the box, I glance over at the remaining two boxes still resting on the shelf. They’re about the size of a standard shoebox. Both dark blue and dusty. I take a step closer, fully intending to pick up the second one, but I freeze.

The entire world seems to suck in a breath as the hairs on my arms rise, a prickling sense of awareness rushing through me. My eyes are locked on the second box in the stack. Unlike the one I just passed to Dima, August’s name isn’t scrawled on top. Mine is.

“Pick it up,” Dima says. Turning to face her, I don’t miss the slight smile on her face.

Reaching for the box with deliberate slowness, the dust feels almost sticky beneath the tips of my fingers. It’s heavier than I expected it to be, but truthfully, I wasn’t expecting it at all. Blindly taking one step back, I drop onto the sofa next to Dima. Then, I lift the lid, holding my breath as the contents of the box reveal itself.

Photographs.

Three bundles rest on top of each other, each held together by bright pink elastic bands. Delicately lifting them out of the box, I pull a band away from the first pile as Dima watches me in silence. The photographs spill free. A kaleidoscope of memories dance in my hands, each one distinct and vivid. Me as a baby with my mom, me as a baby with Dima, a few of Dima and my mom.

“They’re all from the year after you were born,” Dima says. And while I can’t remember the captured moments, the feeling of nostalgia racing through me is so familiar. “Your first birthday party.” She taps her finger against the first photo in the second pile. “Beth made you the dress. I had to help after she made a mess of the pattern.” She laughs as I struggle to picture my mother and Dima sewing a dress for me. But there I am, wearing a soft pink and white dress, grinning a gummy little smile in front of a birthday cake with a single candle on top. My first birthday…

The next bundle has me blinking away, the burning well of tears blurring my vision.

“They’re all taken at the lake house,” I say. “God, it’s changed so much between then and now.” My heart hurts as I take in the smiling faces of my parents, a laughing, muc h younger Dima… This is the life that was ripped away from me.

Desperately swiping away the tears streaming down my face, I set the bundle aside. My life started with so much promise, but slowly it’s become an essay on loss and grief and agony and the absence of promise. Sitting on the couch next to Dima, my heartache festers and swells as my head drops to her shoulder, watching as she picks through the rest of the pictures.

“This is Ellie—Elanor—August’s mother.” Dima offers me the photograph; I stare at the woman and the little boy. She’s unnervingly familiar, which is off because I don’t recognize her at all. But something in the way she stands, her smile… I can’t place it.

“She’s so beautiful.” I hand the picture back to Dima, smiling. She loved her son deeply. It’s so evident in all the pictures of them. From the soft way she nuzzles his head in the photographs, the smile that dances in her eyes in the candids that caught her watching him play. Despite growing up in poverty, August had more than I ever did. “There’re no pictures of August’s dad?” I ask. It’s not strange; I remember him saying his father didn’t live with them.

“Just one in here, I think,” Dima says as she scratches through the box of August’s photographs before pulling one out and handing it to me.

I’m about to take it from her when the sound of a key scratching in the lock of the front door has us both turning around. A second later, August walks in. He has a black backpack in one hand and a motorcycle helmet in the other.

“Baby pictures already, Mimi?” He grins, his eyes jumping humorously between us .

After placing the helmet on a nearby chair, he prowls toward me. His eyes still sparkle with humor, but there’s a hint of something more predatory lurking there. He drops into the seat opposite Dima and me, setting the backpack down at his feet.

“What’s in the bag?” I look down at it before meeting his gaze.

“Guns, bullets, and candy,” he answers simply.

Dima clicks her tongue while I bite down on a smile. “I thought you went to the store?” she asks.

“It was like a store, Mimi. I gave them money, they gave me guns.”

“And the candy?” I ask, grinning.

“That I got at the gas station.” He winks at me before looking down at the box resting in Dima’s lap.

“The Nora shrine,” he says, like he's seen it often before. I suppose he has. “Part of the reason I didn’t recognize you that first night at the gallery was because these pictures stopped around your seventh birthday.”

“When she moved out of Ricky’s apartment and into that house,” Dima confirms. “Auggie, help me to bed. I need a nap.” She smiles at me before patting my leg. I watch as August gently lifts her from the sofa and into the chair before pushing her out of the living room.

I hear their hushed conversation before the house goes quiet. August’s footsteps echo down the hallway as he makes his way back to me.

A minute later, he drops into the seat Dima just vacated. He drapes his arm over my shoulders and picks up the picture of his mother Dima left on the coffee table. Heat whispers through my body as he pulls me closer. Like this, lost in the safety of his arms, I can’t think clearly. I relax into it, into him, and lower my head until it rests on his chest. I breathe in the smell of him.

“August?” I whisper his name like a secret plea.

He looks down at me and smiles. “Little raven?”

“Tell me everything will be okay.”

Our eyes lock and while I’m not sure what he sees when he looks at me, emotion swims in his eyes. It lances into my heart—hope, or something like it.

He never says the words, doesn’t tell me it’ll all be okay, but as his thumb brushes against the swell of my bottom lip, as his mouth slowly descends over mine, I realize I don’t need to hear them. Not truly, because my heart whispers that he’ll do everything to ensure I’m okay, even if it means burning everything around us to dust.

With his hand curled around my shoulder, his fingers trace a slow, lazy trail along my throat as his lips slant over mine. The kiss is light and easy until it isn’t. Turning into him, drawing him closer, I silently beg for more. My lips part, moaning softly as his tongue sweeps confidently into my mouth. His purposeful strokes rush against the desperate, needy slide of my own. There’s no rational way to explain the hunger my body feels for August’s, but every time we end up like this, I know it’s a hunger I’ll never truly satisfy.

Shifting to throw my leg over his lap and move from the seat next to him to straddle his lap. With my arms wrapped around his neck, the pictures that feel like claws anchoring us to the past disappear. There’s only this moment, us, this kiss, the hard ridge of his cock as I drag my core against him… It blurs the edges of my world until everything but this disappears.

He makes me forget.

Ther e’s so much bad in my life, August makes me forget it all.

But who am I without the bad? There’s nothing left of me if I forget the bad. He’s like the pool. A different kind of numbness, but a numbness all the same.

Grinding my hips against his, I sigh against his lips as he deepens our kiss, pushing his hips up against the soaked seam of my leggings. There’s nothing wrong with feeling numb. Right now, losing myself in a haze of lust, losing myself in endless, brain-melting kisses and the steely cocoon of August’s arms, is infinitely safer than the constant partial drowning I enjoy in my pool.

He moves then, pulling me closer to his chest, dragging his hand down my spine, stopping only when he arrives at my ass. With an almost painful grip, he holds me, anchoring my hips against his erection as he rocks into me. The tips of my fingers dance along the soft skin at the base of his neck and—

We both freeze. With my lips perfectly still over August’s, we listen as the rumbling sound of the garage door opening upstairs drifts toward us. He pulls back slightly, rolling his eyes up to the ceiling. I shift, trying to climb off his lap, but his fingers dig further into my hips.

“Let’s get out of here,” he murmurs, settling his lips over mine again. The kiss is filthy and deep and fast and if it wasn’t for the sound of familiar footsteps on the stairwell, I would’ve taken a million more seconds in his arms. With a final, gentle press of his fingers against my body, August effortlessly lifts me off his lap, setting me down on the seat next to him as he stands, his fingers wrapped around mine. “Come on.” He tugs me up as the person I am 99% sure is Gracious thunders down the staircase.

“Shouldn't we wait?” I glance at the door that separates the staircase leading to the garage from the house.

“N ow or never, little raven.” He holds the motorcycle helmet out to me and I reach for it at the same moment he reaches for me. Together, we race toward the front door, and then out of the house.

I’m on the back of his bike, racing down a steep cobbled street before I’ve fully registered what just happened.