The May Queen Murders (20 page)

their hooves, the points of their ears, and even the spray from their

noses as they huffed.

“Let’s go riding, Ivy.”

“It ain’t safe,” I said. “I’ll be in trouble if my parents find out.”

“You won’t be alone. I’ll be with you.”

He had a point. Veil nickered at me, eager to nuzzle my hair and

skirt no matter how Rook shooed him, as we pulled out our reins

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from the tack room. I clipped Whimsy’s reins to her halter. Her head

bowed. She knew things were different. Not just with Journey. With

me. That I missed a piece of me. A tide of sadness swept inward on

me, and I propped myself up against my horse, my hands on her

withers, my face in my forearms. She was strong and wouldn’t let me

sink no matter how great the weight.

“The first time I rode Veil, it was almost impossible to make my-

self get on,” Rook said. “I kept thinkin’ ’bout Journey and how you

and I rode off together that last time. I’d convinced myself the same

thing would happen to any horse I rode, but it hasn’t happened yet. I

tell myself it won’t happen again.”

I needed to hear that.

We rode through the fields. Clouds rolled in from the southwest,

and Rook tipped his head back as if expecting rain. There’d be none.

The leaves didn’t flip over.

I knew what Rook wanted to do. He was taking me riding because

he knew how much I loved being out with Whimsy, and I hadn’t rid-

den her in far too long. Sitting on my horse’s back, feeling her move

beneath me, her body and mine as one, I needed that freedom, that

forgetting.

Rook sped up Veil’s pace to match Whimsy’s until we rode be-

side each other. He was so at ease with his horse. It was the simple

things — the flex of his thighs, the tightness of his stomach, things I

couldn’t see in myself — that I enjoyed watching in him.

He halted Veil and watched Whimsy and me trot, every part of me

bouncing. “View’s nice here, Ivy.”

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“Oh, shut up.”

“You’re doin’ it on purpose,” he said, and kicked Veil to catch up

with Whimsy. We both laughed. Riding with him felt good, and —

Heather was gone.

How dare I feel good and enjoy that moment when I had no idea

where she was?

“Ivy,” Rook called. “Hey! Did you hear me?”

I saw him again. “I’m sorry. What?”

“We should water the horses,” he said. “Denial Mil ’s up ahead. We

can stop there.”

We guided the horses to the water. The mill groaned as the wheel

turned, a constant whirring against the liquid babble spilling over

rocks. The river was shallow, the lack of rain during April and a dry

winter speeding the shores dry. Only the middle had any depth.

Shoals submerged in rainier seasons formed a rocky bridge across

the banks. I unclipped Whimsy’s reins before she lowered her head

to drink while I stooped to admire a tan snail shell in the dirt. Lav-

ender wisps and a hint of green spun over the shel .

Rook had Veil’s reins in his hands when he joined me. “You’re not

real y here, are you?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Most of the time, you seem far away. I don’t know if it’s ’cause you

always watch people or you’re thinkin’. Sometimes it’s like watching

a ghost haunt the same place the same way day after day. You hold

back, and it makes me wonder if you’re ever real y in the moment.”

I lived a guarded life. There was trust in the shadows.

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“I don’t know how to be me right now,” I admitted. “Heather al-

ways pushes me when I pull back.”

Rook’s hand rested on the sway in my back. I pressed my body

against his — legs to legs, his front to mine, arms wrapping around

me. His forehead rested on mine, and his glasses slipped down his

nose so my eyelashes blinked against the lenses. “Sometimes when

you hold back, what you hang on to winds up hurting you.”

I closed my eyes, shivered while Rook’s fingers traveled to my

hips. I didn’t want to hold back with him. I wanted to know what it

was to sweep away all fetters restraining me. The scruff on his chin

scratched my forehead. Warm air swirled above us while cool water

misted my ankles and, higher up, beneath my skirt.

All of it was real. Right then. That second.

I circled my arms around him hard, because the harder I hugged,

the looser the knot in my throat grew. How could I like how he held

me when half of me was hollow?

“Rook?” I choked on his name.

“What?”

“I don’t want this to stop. This moment.”

He scrunched my skirt at my hips. The urge to cry out — in sor-

row, in confusion, in craving him — ballooned in my chest. It came

out instead as a gasp when he lowered his face into the curve of my

neck. As if awaiting my cue, he didn’t kiss me, and I didn’t know if I

wanted him to or if I wanted something else.

I missed Heather.

I missed the way things were before.

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Don’t stop.

I listened to Rook’s breathing, the trickle of water washing the

river stones. I listened to the creak of the mil ’s wheel as it turned and

the course of blood sloshing through my veins.

Down in the river’s valley, we became entangled and rested on a

piece of limestone. I brought my mouth to his. His tongue flicked

mine, his hands on my back and then lower. I traced along his shoul-

ders, the muscles from working fields, and yet there was softness to

him. That softness didn’t stay the longer we kissed. He pulled back

and looked around.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Making sure we’re alone,” he said.

“And what would you do if someone saw us?”

He smiled. “Pretend I was saving you from drowning.”

“I’d like it if you gave me mouth-to-mouth.”

His laugh was hushed but cut short because I seized him, knock-

ing his glasses askew as I kissed him. I took his face in my hands and

opened my mouth to him. I didn’t care how wet or messy it became.

I didn’t care if our teeth knocked together. I wanted him to take ev-

erything that hurt, to lick it from me, and replace it with
something

else. My fingers traced the buttons of his gray shirt, popping each

one open, one by one, until I came to the lowest button. He inhaled

and reached for my hand.

“If you don’t want to do this, it’s okay.”

But I did. My intention held firm. “I want this, Rook.”

He lost the shirt I’d unbuttoned and spread it out on the rock as a

makeshift blanket. I lay back and invited him to climb on top of me.

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My fingers ran along his arms to his shoulders damp with sweat, and

his mouth wandered from my lips to my neck. His trousers hardened

against my skirt, enough to take away my breath. It brought out a

curiosity in me, and when I reached down to unbutton his pants and

touch him there, he moved against my hand for more.

I wanted him. He wanted me.

That way.

His lips dressed my neck with gentle kisses until he came to the

col ar of my dress, and it was a new kind of thrill as his fingers eased

the top off my shoulder to kiss me there, too. I could lie under the

sun for hours with him kissing me like that, just enough pressure,

lips so warm that I shivered when the air cooled where he’d been.

I understood why Heather wouldn’t tell me who she was with in

the stable.

Sharing it ruined the delicacy of the two of you.

Rook’s fingers slid up the inside of my thigh, higher yet. I held my

breath, shuddering because he scared me. And amazed me. How I’d

known him my entire life but never in this way. I could never go back

to knowing him before this.

I slipped down the top of my dress so it rested at my waist, pulling

back my hair for him to see everything. Though I liked my shape, I

wondered what he thought of it. I also liked his smile, his dimpled

cheeks, especial y as he looked at my body. Heather’s necklace of

found things slid between my breasts. His hands moved across the

soft part of my abdomen before inching higher.

I studied him kissing my tummy. It’d make a good drawing, him

pushing up my skirt, his lips treading along my thighs. I tipped back

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my head, feeling all the ways he kissed me, listening. So much sound,

so much shifting around inside me. His mouth stayed gentle as I

rested my head with white sunlight in my eyes, and I rode higher

with each kiss.

Every breath came out shuddered, yet the elation cracked my

heart.

I smothered the sobs, covering my grimaced mouth. I had to hide

it from him, not because I didn’t like what he did — I did, I wanted it

— but rather the void in me ripped open, fresh and endless.

I reached down to touch his hair, my voice crackling to whisper,

“Stop.”

Rook raised up from my skirt. He stared at me with spooked eyes,

pants hanging open. “Ivy? Are you okay?”

He hoisted me up to sitting and lifted my dress’s top to cover me

again. Then I must’ve seemed too prickly to touch. Nothing would

help me except to cry, and Rook gave me that. He buttoned up his

pants, slid into his shirt, and focused on the water spinning past us.

After a bit, he said, “Anytime you say no, I’ll listen. If it’s too fast,

I’ll back off. I’m . . . sorry.”

My eyes stung, hot, grainy, and liquid.

“It’s n-n-not you,” I croaked. “Why? Why right now? Why does

everything lead me b-back to feeling so lost and ruined?”

Worry, sadness, anger, everything wailed from my throat. My face

was hot, my hair tangled, and I hated how the wind dried the tears

pooling beneath my eyes.

Rook’s thumb brushed my cheek. “Let’s get you outta here.”

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Too tired to move, I shut my eyes, but that only made all the

sounds louder.

Pulse pounding. Rook shushing me. A crow squawked three

times.

I breathed. More noise. The rustle of my skirt falling back over my

legs. Water traveling over pebbles. Tree frogs peeping in the woods.

The mill was silent.

“It’s not turning,” I said.

“The mill?” Rook asked. “Maybe the water’s too low.”

“No, I heard it when we came here.”

I wiped my face and shook off everything surging out of me,

locked it back in my cel s. The wooden wheel had halted, or had it?

The bottom of the wheel pitched back and forth as if trying to turn,

but caught.

I hopped from one rock on the shoal to next, lifting my skirt out of

the water, and Rook jumped behind me until we reached the opposite

shore. Together, we trekked along the bank where the absent water

left a scooped-out hollow plagued by roots and algae-covered rocks.

Too dark with shadow and thick with mud, something had wedged

itself beneath the wheel. I remained on the shore as he wound his

long legs around the wheel’s scaffolding, slopping through the water

until he was higher than knee-deep.

“You see anything?” I asked.

He bent over, shielding his glasses from the sun. “I’m not sure.

There’s something stuck in the mud, I think.”

I glanced back to the horses, still drinking and oblivious. My

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tongue slicked over my lips before I gave up and followed Rook out

into the water. Cold welled around my legs, and my skirt became

heavier before billowing around me like a giant lily pad. I pushed it

behind me to stop it from becoming hooked on the wheel.

“Be careful,” I reminded Rook. “If the wheel spins while you’re

messing with it, you’ll get crushed.”

With a nod, he hung on to the scaffold, and I could see now where

he poked at a mass bobbing beneath the wheel with the driftwood.

He slipped his glasses into his pocket and with a splash, disappeared

into the water. I glanced up at the riverbank, the steep cove, and

counted.
One, two, three, four
. . .

My arms wrapped around my chest. My teeth chattered. Veil

neighed, the worried bellow horses give when something unsettles

them. A leaf swam by on the river’s surface.

If he became snagged on something. If his lungs ran out of air. If

he was swept downstream by the current.

If, if, if.

I slapped at the water, whipping around, looking for any sign of

him. He’d been underwater for too long.

“Rook?”

All was hushed. I was wading closer to the wheel when hands

grasped my wrists.

I yelped at the same time Rook broke through the river’s surface.

His breath was a sputtered mess of water and choking.

“There you are!” I cried. “What happened?”

He spun me away from Denial Mil , holding the sides of my head

so I couldn’t peek. Rivulets of water streamed down from my tem-

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ples to my cheeks where he held me. Each breath was ragged, a fight

not to scream.

“Don’t look. Ivy, whatever you do, don’t look!”

“What’s wrong?” I demanded. He coughed up more water and

tried rushing me to the shore, but I dug my heels into the silty river

bottom. “Rook, c’mon! What is it?”

“Go!” he final y managed. “Take Whimsy, and get my pops! Go

now!”

“W-what’d you see? You’re scarin’ me!”