Page 12 of Cruel King

Can this day get any worse?

When I bend down to search for it, I can’t find my phone anywhere. It couldn’t have gone far. It fell straight down, so where is it?

I take a few steps to see if it slid away, but my foot hits something hard. I instinctively lift it to see if it’s okay and lose my balance almost immediately, falling into the snowbank along with my phone.

The snow covers my skin, making me colder than I thought possible. I quickly feel around for my phone, but I can’t find it. Then when I try to stand up, my foot hits that same metal object it did before, and I fall headfirst into the snow.

CHAPTERSIX

Matthias

I slam my door,disgusted that practically anyone can just walk in and make themselves comfortable in my house. She has her own goddamned house to sit and watch TV in. Let her go back there. I don’t care if it’s cold. Wear a sweater and a hat. She’ll be fine.

Collapsing onto the bed, I glance over at the Playboy magazine next to me. I’d love to jerk off now. Talk about needing a release. But I’m too pissed after dealing with Ava.

Why can’t she just stay in her world and leave me to mine? I blame Theo for this. He encourages her to come up and hang out all the time. My father’s no better. Always telling her she’s welcome. No, she isn’t. It’s better if she just stays away down in that little carriage house my father lets her family stay in.

I pinch the bridge of my nose to fend off a headache that’s forming right behind my eyes. Fucking Ava Sutton. When I see my brother later, I’m going to tell him he needs to stop bringing her around here. If he wants to hang out with her, let him go somewhere else.

A blood curdling scream pierces the silence, echoing throughout the house. I’d know that sound anywhere. It’s Eleanor. She probably dropped something again. I think my father needs to consider the fact that she’s too old to be doing this job anymore.

Knowing he’ll be up one side of me and down the other if I don’t go at least ask her if she’s okay, I hurry down to the kitchen and hope she isn’t lying dead in the middle of the floor. There’s no way he won’t somehow find a way to blame me for that.

When I run into the room, she’s standing at the door staring out in horror. “Ava! She fell in the snow as she was walking back to her house. We have to get her!”

Instantly, I fling open the door and run out into the fucking blizzard I didn’t realize had dumped a foot of snow in the past few hours. What the hell was she thinking walking out in this?

Every flake that hits my bare arms stings, but I can’t think about that right now. Ava lies on the ground with her head in the snow about twenty feet down the sidewalk, so I hurry over to her and scoop her up into my arms.

“I don’t want to go back into that house,” she complains.

Lowering my head, I can barely see as the snow blinds me. I follow my tracks back to the house where Eleanor waits at the door. I step inside and she throws a blanket over Ava as she searches for any sign she’s still alive.

“Is she okay?”

I nod as Ava looks over at her and smiles. “She’s nearly frozen solid, but she’s okay, I think.”

Eleanor breathes a sigh of relief and kisses her rosy cheek. “I’m going to make you a cup of hot tea and some soup. Let me get that wet coat off you.”

I wait for her to say she’s going to make me something since I just ran out into a blizzard wearing only sweatpants and a T-shirt, but she ignores me and hurries over to the stove. Nice that I don’t matter. I only live here.

“Bring it to my room. That’s where she’ll be,” I say as I begin walking toward the hallway.

A look of surprise crosses Eleanor’s face for a moment before she simply nods and says, “Okay. Would you like me to make you anything, Matthias?”

I shake my head and keep walking. “No. I’m fine.”

Before I make it to the stairs, Ava says, “You can put me down. I can walk.”

Her tone is sharp, like she wants to slap me to punctuate her sentence. I look down and nod my understanding, even though I have no intention of putting her down.

“Obviously not or you wouldn’t have been face down in a snowbank a minute ago.”

As I climb the stairs to the second floor, she rolls her eyes. “I tripped over that metal frog lawn ornament someone should have put away when winter came.”

Just before we get to my room, she begins to squirm in my arms. “I don’t need to be carried like a baby, you know.”

I stop and look down at her glaring up at me. “No, you need to be carried like someone who tripped over a frog and fell face first in the snow.”