KEYS
SLOANE
Islot my key into the lock at the service entrance of 3 In Coach and push the heavy steel door into the shadows of the corridor. When I slip it into my pocket, I keep my hand around the cool metal. Aside from the one to Lark’s apartment, I’ve never had someone else’s key before. Knowing how much the restaurant means to Rowan and his brothers, the ridged metal feels sacred to me. I like to hold it against my palm, to know that I mean something to Rowan too, enough that he wants me to share this place with him.
I know Rowan has been incredibly stressed with everything going on. I’ve felt him close down from time to time, and whenever I questioned him on it, he said he just wanted to leave the problems at work and forget about them for a while. That made sense, and I’ve tried to create the same safe place for him that he’s always made for me. Our own little realm where the outside world disappears for a while. But this morning was the first time I felt the picture shift in a way that had my guts twisting and my heart crawling into my throat. Until now, I’d not asked myself if the burden that weighs him down is me.
I have to keep reminding myself to take him for his word, that he didn’t mean it that way, even though my insecurities keep rattling around in my head like insects pinging against panes of glass. If he said I’m not a burden, then he’s being honest… right? We all say things we don’t mean. It will just take a day or two to shake it, and things will get better once Butcher & Blackbird is fully up and running.
I press the key tighter in my palm. It’s proof. He and I are not temporary. Our circumstances are, and they’ll pass in time.
“Rowan,” I call out as I near the kitchen. “I found this place online that looks pretty cool, with a rooftop patio. Maybe we could…”
My voice trails off as I enter the room.
Rowan is standing with his hands braced against the edge of the stainless steel prep counter, his shoulders tense, his head bent. When his gaze collides with mine, it’s wracked with darkness and defeat.
“What’s wrong…?” I ask as I slow to a stop and take him in. My heart surges with worry. Every spark of intuition tells me everything about this is very wrong. “Did something happen with the restaurant? Are you okay?”
I start to approach him, my hand raised to touch his arm, but he straightens abruptly and backs out of reach. My feet halt instantly. My heart rate doubles.
“Are you okay?” I ask again.
His voice holds no kindness, no warmth, not even familiarity when he says, “No, Sloane. I am not okay.”
My throat collapses around the words I want to say. Heat erupts beneath my skin, burning every inch of me from the inside out. My gaze bounds between the confines of Rowan’s dark, sharp stare, its edges bordering on lethal. “What’s going on?”
“What’s going on is that you need to go home.”
“Okay… I’ll just get an Uber—”
“No. To Raleigh. You need to go back where you belong.”
“I don’t…” a sudden burst of emotion chokes my throat. My nose burns. A sting floods my eyes. “I don’t understand.”
Rowan drags a hand through his hair and breaks his gaze away before he takes another step backward, clearly agitated that I’m lingering here. I’m desperate to take a step closer, to just touch him and make whatever this is stop before it all disintegrates in my hand like a castle of sand swept out to sea.
“Did I do something? If I did something, you need to tell me. We can talk it through.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose as a frustrated sigh empties from his lungs. “You didn’t do anything Sloane, this just isn’t fucking working. And I need you to go.”
“But… I thought you said we would do what normal people do. Talk to one another. Make it work.”
“We’re not ‘normal people’, Sloane. We can’t pretend to be something we’re not. Not anymore. I told you this back in April, on the tenth. I said that I never wanted to be like everybody else.”
I shake my head, trying to claw my way through confusion and into my memories. “I don’t remember—”
“Tenth or the thirteenth. Whatever. It’s just like I told you in the car on the way to the gala. I said even then that the restaurant was the only thing that made sense in my life. But it doesn’t matter. What matters is that there are some things we can never have. I can never have a normal life. Neither can you. We’re monsters in this world.”
I know I’m not a normal person, but I don’t feel like a monster. I feel like a weapon. The final justice on behalf of those who can’t speak, delivering punishment for those who don’t deserve clemency. But maybe Rowan is right. Maybe I’ve just been deluding myself about my reign of vengeance, and I’m every bit the monster as the prey that we hunt.
I’m caught on these questions when Rowan lets out a frustrated sigh, like this is taking up too much of his time. The hurt of it twists and burns in my chest.
“My restaurants are all that really matters,” he says, pointing toward the dining room before pressing his finger to the stainless steel counter. “I need to keep my focus here. Trying to have both these places and a relationship is not feasible for me. So you need to leave. Go home.”
Rowan’s hard stare doesn’t let up. It drills right into the depths of me. It doesn’t waver as the first tear falls from my lashes to carve a hot line down my cheek. He doesn’t even blink when the next ones quickly follow.
“But… I love you, Rowan,” I whisper.
Rowan isn’t warm, or kind, or anything but cold and clinical when he says, “You think you do, but you don’t. Because you can’t.”