Rogue Betrayal Read online

  She grunted. “You know I know you’re avoiding the question on purpose, right? You’ve already proved my point. But fine, Lara. It’s the same as it always is. Every now and then, I think I’ll get through to him, and then he pulls back, kicks me out, insults me, all those good things.”

  I could imagine her flicking her wrist, rolling her eyes. I didn’t understand how she wasn’t phased by his utter dismissal of her and what the academy tried to mandate. How was it possible that he didn’t have to follow those rules?

  But that wasn’t my issue. She had to handle it the way she wanted to. I couldn’t tell her what to do.

  “...that’s not why you’re asking about Robert, though, is it?”

  I blinked, shaking my head. I hadn’t realized Charley was still talking.

  “Hello?” Charley prodded. “Why do you want to know about Riella?”

  I loosed a breath. I couldn’t tell her about the traitor or the fact that Riella was a goddess and Robert knew she was a goddess and how something happened between them that could have caused the Tragedy to happen in the first place - at least from what Eddie Ronin said.

  And Eddie Ronin knew Robert. They worked together. At least, they had formed some team together or something in order to vanquish the gods that day. I knew where they stood now, but back then? I imagined they were closer…but maybe I was just projecting.

  “I kind of have a crush on him and I guess I’m looking at his exes because I wanted to compare myself and see if there was even a chance the two of us could be together.”

  The weird part about that statement was I didn’t have to think about it. It came out naturally, like it had been waiting to do for the entire time I had known Robert. But this was the only thing I could say that was believable. My chest squeezed and I clenched my teeth from saying anything more. I couldn’t tell her the truth, but I absolutely detested lying to her. I wished I could find some kind of compromise.

  Charley squealed over the phone. It was so high-pitched, I had to pull it away from my ear and hold it away from me so I wouldn’t go deaf because of it. By the time I deemed it was safe for me to hold it again, she was already in the middle of a sentence.

  “...of course, because you’re so damn smart, and Robert - did you know he graduated from MIT with two different degrees? I mean, that’s difficult. Apparently, Dr. Dickbag has three, but I don’t give a shit about Dickbag for obvious reasons. Anyway, so that’s why you’re interested in Riella? Because you have a crush?”

  I cleared my throat. “Um, yeah, well, you know me.” I tucked hair behind my ear and began to fiddle with the hem of my pajama shirt. “Like, what happened to her? She just kind of fell off the face of the planet without a word. She’s supposed to be a supermodel, isn’t she? I don’t remember seeing her in anything.”

  “Well, I mean, maybe Robert has this reputation, you know? Don’t mess with him or else you’ll never work in this town again.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “Robert’s not like that,” I said firmly. I might not know much about what was going on, but I knew that about Robert.

  “Yeah, I didn’t think so,” she agreed. “Honestly, I don’t know. Maybe you should talk to Robert about this yourself?”

  “What?” I practically yelped. “No. No way.”

  “Why not?” A beat. “If anyone knows the answers to your questions, it’s Robert himself. Might as well go directly to the source instead of leaving it up to assumption, you know?”

  “Because I don’t want to ask him about his love life,” I said. “Then he’ll think I have a thing for him -”

  “Which you do,” she interrupted flatly.

  “Which I do not want him to know,” I snapped back. “Might as well pass him a note like back in middle school, asking if he likes me and giving him checkboxes to answer.”

  “Touchy!” She teases me knowingly. “Look, all I’m saying is that Robert might surprise you. I wouldn’t be surprised if he has a thing for you too.”

  I glanced over at the wall, like Charley was right there and we were having a conversation face to face. I didn’t want to dive deeper into this rabbit hole. I doubted it wouldn’t have its curves and knots and complications. And yet…

  “How do you know?” I breathed out. It was like I had been holding my breath the entire conversation, and now that Charley told me her thoughts, I could finally release my anxiety about it.

  Or maybe that was what I wanted to tell myself. Maybe that was a way to assuage the guilt that began to creep into my bones because I was lying again.

  “It’s obvious, Lara,” she said. “It’s in the way he looks at you.”

  “And how does he look at me?” I asked.

  “Like you’re the center of his universe,” she replied. “Talk to Robert, okay? And let me know how it goes.”

  Before I could ask her anything else, she hung up.

  It was probably a good thing too because I was on the verge of throwing up the truth, and I didn’t want her to know any of it.

  Chapter Three

  That night, at the laboratory, it was difficult for me to look at Robert. Abby was heading out, flashing me a bright smile, while I made my way to the locker room so I could change. She might be a good person to talk to about Robert. The only caveat was I couldn’t tell her how I felt about Robert. Part of me was still processing it out myself while another part didn’t think it was any of her business. Granted, she probably knew Robert better than anyone else, considering she had been with Robert for a while.

  Would she even talk to me though?

  I shook my head and turned my focus to the Crawler 1 once I emerged from the locker rooms, changed into baggy jeans and a dirty plain-grey t-shirt. Instead of seeing a pair of white socks with little holes poking through from underneath the carriage of the vehicle, Robert was wiping down the driver’s door. He stopped when he heard me come in and turned to look at me.

  I wasn’t expecting him to be so abrupt. Which was a stupid feeling, since it wasn’t as though Robert never looked at me before. But something was different here. He wore a black muscle shirt that fit him in all the right places, smoothing his hard-cut plains of his abdomen. His black slacks slid under his feet, slightly too long for his body, which made him look more adorable than I wanted to credit him for looking. His hair was mussed, oil and grime on his cheeks, on the tip of his nose.

  “Well?” he asked. “You ready to test it out?”

  My eyebrows shot straight up to my hairline, and I forgot there was this weird, unnamable tension between us. I stepped closer to him, to the Crawler 1, and reached out to touch the hood of the car before I stopped myself. I looked at him, waiting.

  He smiled, the one that did weird things to my heart, the one that brought out his laugh lines and made the breath in my lungs evaporate.

  “Go ahead,” he said, as though he knew exactly what I was asking.

  I grinned, placing my hand on the hood.

  “How?” I asked, looking back at him.

  “Well,” he said, sliding the rag in the back pocket of his pants. “Someone told me I needed to get out of my own way and finally do something about this.”

  The corners of my lips curled up as I ran my palm along the smooth base of the vehicle. It felt perfect. My fingers tingled with possibility, with accomplishment. Not because I thought I had any right to take credit for this, but because Robert actually listened. Because he started to have faith in himself.

  “She sounds smart,” I said, dropping my hand back to my side. “You should listen to her more.”

  “I agree.” He grabbed something from the workbench and made his way back to the Crawler 1. “Hey, can we talk about something?”

  “Sure.” My heart started to skip, but not because of anything good. Did Robert know about Eddie Ronin? How? There was no way. Not even Charley knew who that guy was, and I was positive she wouldn’t mention anything to Robert. Especially not about the crush I admitted to having.

  Which, okay, everyone ha
d a crush on Robert. He was Robert Lannister, cinnamon roll.

  “I just wanted to apologize for my behavior the past few weeks,” he said, crossing his arms loosely over his chest. “This whole thing with Rogers really put some things into perspective, and I didn’t handle it the right way. I have no idea who did this. I don’t know if it’s human or not or something else entirely. But…I just, it bothers me. It was right here, behind the building. My building. And it could have been anyone in that dumpster. It could have been you.”

  I tilted my head to the side. “You think the attack was random?” I asked.

  “I think it was personal,” he said. “It was my building. My dumpster. Rogers was nowhere near here that night. He had meetings -”

  “Unless he was the traitor,” I said before I could stop myself.

  Robert frowned, dropping his arms and then taking a seat on the table. His feet rested on the bench. “Why would you think that?” he asked.

  I shrugged, staring at an oil spot on the ground. “It was just something I had been thinking about,” I said. “A theory.” I explained that maybe his handler - if he was the traitor - got tired of him or had all the information they needed and decided he was a liability and then killed him.

  “And putting him in my dumpster?” he asked. “Not to be a narcissist, but I think there could be some kind of connection there, don’t you think?”

  At least he hadn’t rejected my theory outright.

  “I…” I looked away, dragging my feet and moving away from him. I didn’t want his gaze to linger. I didn’t want there to be a chance he could read me and know that I knew. “I mean, maybe you did business with the gods. Maybe you didn’t even know they were gods but you, like, pissed them off. Maybe this was retaliation or something.”

  Robert gave me a long look. I ignored it, shoving my hands in my pockets and focusing my attention on the floor. He could probably read my discomfort. Hell, he might know there was more going on here. But I had to do my best to keep it to myself.

  “I don’t think so, Freckles,” he said. “That’s not a bad idea, but I would know if I was dealing with a god.”

  “How?” I hadn’t meant to snap, hadn’t meant to stop what I was doing to whirl around and look at him again. This had been bubbling up since last night. It felt like everything had been bubbling up - the secrets I was keeping from Charley, my mother, and now Robert. “How do you know for sure?”

  “It’s a gift.” He grinned at me, a boyish grin, with soft, dark eyes.

  I hated how my heart screamed for him. My first instinct in me was to touch him, to feel his skin underneath mine, but I rooted my feet to the ground.

  “Oh…kay,” I forced myself to say through gritted teeth. I blew out a breath and turned, pacing in the other direction. “Well, have you interacted with a god before?”

  Dangerous territory. I sucked in a breath, hoping it was subtle enough where Robert wouldn’t notice. My face was taut, shoulders practically up to my ear. I did a good job of projecting the obviousness of the question myself.

  “No.”

  I blinked, angling myself towards him. I must not have heard him right.

  “What?”

  He leaned back on the workbench, palms flat behind him, fingers pointing backwards. The broadness of his shoulders, the muscles of his arms, were emphasized by one simple posture and I forced myself not to notice it at all.

  “No,” he repeated. “I’ve never known any gods until the Tragedy.”

  I furrowed my brows. I needed to get a grip on myself because I was losing it. My face was going to one of those eyesight charts at a doctor’s office because of how obvious I was being, but I couldn’t help it.

  I couldn’t help it because I didn’t like the idea of Robert lying to me.

  Which was hilarious. I couldn’t really cast a stone, could I? I was doing the same damn thing to him.

  “Is it possible that you did, maybe?” I asked. My voice cracked at some point and I whistled around, looking for one of the many water bottles Robert kept in various places in the lab so he didn’t have to search for more. I needed something to moisten my mouth, to help me speak clearly, because this wasn’t working. “Maybe you didn’t know, but -“

  “Lara.” My name on his lips stopped me in my tracks. I didn’t turn to look at him, couldn’t. I didn’t want him to see me. I didn’t want him to know I knew, and yet, I sucked at keeping everything to myself. “What’s gotten into you? What are you trying to say here?”

  This isn’t just about you, Lara. What about Dalton? What about Dean Rogers? And, if Eddie is right, what about everyone involved in the Tragedy of South Haven…including your father?

  I rolled my shoulders back, picked up my chin. Slowly, I turned and looked him in the eye. The blood slowed as it traveled through my body. My veins lining my arms tightened as the flow trimmed unexpectedly.

  “What about Riella?”

  He didn’t even blink. “What?”

  “Oh, come on, Robert,” I said. I almost stomped my foot, but I didn’t think that was going to help my case. “You’re a celebrity. You think I don’t know about your previous dating history?”

  “I didn’t think you’d care,” he said, an edge to his tone. But there was more to it than that. Not just an edge. Disappointment.

  I looked away. “I don’t,” I said. “But people talk. I’ve seen pictures of her, Robert. She’s -“

  “A piece of work.” He hopped off the workbench and brushed past me. I knew immediately he was trying to leave, he was trying to run from this conversation. “That’s what she was. We were together for maybe three months and -“

  “And in your world, that’s three years,” I said, grabbing onto his wrist and stopping him from leaving.

  “What are you talking about?” His face compressed into a look of confusion as he turned to look at me. He didn’t pull his arm away from my fingers and I didn’t release my hold on him, afraid he might try to duck out before we finished this conversation. “I’m sorry, we’ve known each other for, what, a few months? As long as my relationship with her? I can say, without certainty, I am much more comfortable with you than I ever was with her. And she…” He let his voice trail off, his dark eyes turning obsidian. “You don’t know me. You don’t get to say that about me. I expect it from assholes who have a job to do. I expect it from idiots on the streets who don’t know any better. But not you. Never you.”

  I ignored the pain that flared deep in my chest and dropped down like blood to my stomach.

  “She was a goddess,” I whispered.

  He swallowed. “How do you even know that?” he asked. “How?” When I still didn’t answer, he ripped his arm from my grasp, turned, and punched a hole in the wall behind him.

  I jumped, my hands going to my mouth, tears I hadn't even noticed tracking my cheeks. I knew he wasn’t going to hurt me. I knew this anger had nothing to do with me.

  But I didn’t like that he had lost control of himself in this way.

  “Get out,” he said in a low, dangerous voice.

  I swallowed. “Your hand,” I said, taking a tentative step towards him.

  “I said get out!” he barked, baring his teeth like a wild animal.

  So, I did.

  I pulled away from him and ran. And I didn’t look back.

  Chapter Four

  I stopped going to Robert’s class. He didn’t call me. I didn’t text him. We were in this weird phase of avoiding each other at all costs.

  Except, I didn’t think it was a phase.

  I thought this was it.

  Friday came quicker than I anticipated. I met Charley for a coffee at the on-campus cafe, where she handed me copies of notes and mentioned Robert’s hand, something I didn’t want to talk about. She seemed to go with it, and I ignored the guilt I felt about holding back from her when all I wanted to do was talk to her.

  After coffee, Charley had to go while I lingered. I stretched my feet, trying to patch myself up for t
raining. I contemplated dropping out of the school completely. What was the point anymore? I came here to help, and I wasn’t doing that. I was hurting Robert and hurting him was…

  I hated it.

  But how could I apologize when he was hurting me too? Why couldn’t he trust me with Riella?

  Why can’t you trust him with Eddie?

  “I don’t know,” I muttered to myself, fathering my books and shoving them in my bag. “Maybe because he explicitly told me not to go to Eddie.”

  I left the cafe, biting my tongue. I had already made myself look like an asshole. I didn’t need to make myself look crazy on top of it.

  For some reason, my feet led me back to the lab. Except, I didn’t make it down there. Not when I saw Robert and Charley standing in the center of the room, just in front of the elevators, heads ducked together. They were talking in low voices but I was too far away to hear them. Whatever it was, it must have been involved because they didn’t even look up at the whoosh of the doors when they opened up for me.

  She looked at his hand, and my face flared up. I watched him punch the wall again and again and again. I flinched every damn time I remembered it too, but I wasn’t sure why that was. Did I have any right to when I was the one who caused it? But was I responsible for his feelings? Or was he? If I poked a bear, could I be mad if he growled? If he attacked?

  My heart squeezed, like the gods themselves slammed their hand through my chest and wrapped long fingers around my beating heart and squeezed it until blood burst through the pathetic organ. I didn’t know why I was in so much pain. I didn’t know why something like this hurt.

  Charley was a med student. It made sense that she was looking over his hand. I didn’t understand why -

  You like him. And this…this is intimate.

  I blew out a breath.