Shiver

Chapter Three: Home

AN
I know, it's been too long- and for that I am sorry. I've been busy and neglecting Wattpad in a way I have never done before- please forgive me.
This chapter is a bit mediocre, but I hope y'all enjoy it! :)
Picture of Rory- young Jared Padalecki- up top, bc he's adorable.
Half Moon Run "Full Circle" is practically this book's theme song.

THE MAVERICKS' HOUSEHOLD consists of too much room- for three people, it was easy to lose one another in the long corridors and dozen of empty rooms. Rory had learned to disappear at a young age, slipping out of his mother's and sister's gaze to sew himself into peeling wallpapers and create makeshift beds out of ancient, dusty rugs.

Overtime, he grew. Rory towered over his mother, and his presence became something more than the shadow he would've preferred. He didn't need to stick to the walls to become a fixture in the room, as a child, Rory had been compact enough to fold himself in half and watch from hiding places.

Now, he passed the window and its velvet curtains, a refuge that had carried Rory to sanity through his tween years. His sister is beside him, ahead of him- actually. One of her hands is lined to his chest; every few seconds, the pressure of her palms become heavier, clearly telling Rory to slow down, speed up, speak lower.

There's a lacrosse stick in Rory's hand- from a time when Rowan had begged Rowena to buy two from a sporting goods two hours away. Rowan's is broken, a mile deep in their burn pile in the back of the house. But, Rory has his vise tight in his grasp- it seemed sturdier than the bat.

His sister had the cleaver. She wasn't shaking. At least, it didn't seems as if she was. Rory was plunged in envy, considering the only way his teeth weren't chattering out of fear was simply because he was practically paralyzed with fear.

Rowan was silent, letting her damp socks lead a trail on the wood floor that Rory happily followed. In the back of his mind, he thought he should've pushed forward, demanded to be the manly man- but Rory's flight or fight response was strictly flight.

He knew which bedroom she was leading them to.

Downstairs, they had silently slipped past the closed spare room where Dimitri- whatever he or his intentions may be- laid in. The siblings had practically knocked heads from how close they had been standing, back to chest, Rory's forehead to the back of Rowan's downy mane of dark hair.

Now, they were both breathing hard outside their mother's room.

One of few doors in the house that actually had a lock worth more than a few aggravated jerks to the knob happened to be their mother's. With a knob and chain lock, it was more than accommodating to the twins- and with a hurried hand, Rowan creaked the door open on its hinges with a slow twist of her wrist. She was obviously trying to soothe the angry squeal that always escaped whenever it was opened.

Not even their footfalls could be detected. Rowan used her cleaver as a signal to move, to huddle into the bedroom and cuddle up with safety and makeshift weapons until their mother could find a way to break their mockery of safe and solve this entire mess.

Rory smiled, giving his sister a luxury of hope that they didn't have the right to own. He swung his lacrosse stick over his shoulder in a gesture of ease, and she followed the move. Her cleaver still stuck to her fingers like dried lead had forced it there, but her shoulders relaxed, her jaw unclenched and the furrow between her brows unknitted itself.

"Get into the bathroom, Ro, I'll scope for mom's Glock," Rowan told her brother. In the dark of the room, she could make out the lines of Rory's silhouette nodding his head.