Die In California

49

Rook's POV:

The following morning I woke up feeling a little worse for wear, most likely after our late night activities - if you get me. I didn't usually get all that groggy after smoking, since I did it so often with the boys, I'd gotten used to it. But maybe I hadn't been hitting as many blunts as I thought I had in the past few months. Thinking about it, I never really did any of the old 'rockstar' shit that I used to. Fuck, I've changed.

I let out a quiet groan as I ran a hand over my face and rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, before looking down to see Devyn curled up on her side beside me, her back turned towards me. About right. Her honey brown hair was sprawled out behind her, golden strands catching in the stream of sunlight peeking through the gap in my curtains. One hand was flopped over the edge of the bed, and one leg was curled over the covers. The usual Devyn position.

Seeing her in such a state - as beautiful as ever - never failed to make me chuckle, and I found myself quietly laughing with a shake of my head as I reached for the painkillers and water on my bedside table. Thank fuck for high me thinking ahead last night!

The house was eerily quiet that morning; Pops wasn't shouting some shit at the tv, Andrea wasn't singing along to her unnecessarily loud radio playing some pop girl band shit, and Cole wasn't yelling at his games console. Luna and Chapo weren't at the foot of the bed either, or smothering us in kisses to wake us up. This shit was weird.

As I glanced at my phone to find a flood of text messages, Devyn was slowly stirring beside me, a hand already reaching out to grab the glass of water from me. "Fuckin' gremlin." I teased, making her groan louder at me as she flipped me off. She looked a state as she sat up, with her hair all knotted, her brows pulled together to form wrinkles on her forehead, her eyes squinted tightly together.

"How the fuck did I fall in love with you, eh?" I laughed and tapped under her chin with my index finger, watching her scowl harder at me - if that's even possible. While Devyn came round, I turned to face the chain of text messages that were filling my phone's notifications. Apparently Pops, Andrea and Cole had taken the dogs on a walk to meet my cousins. And it would seem that I'd forgotten to update the boys of my whereabouts... I'd get round to doing that at some point.

Once Devyn had woken up a little more, and finished downing the rest of the water with her painkillers, it seemed as though an awkward silence filled my room. We were both trying to avoid the elephant in the room. I was sitting on the edge of my bed with my feet on the floor, the covers over my lap to hide my dick. It wasn't exactly going to be a fun conversation anyway, and having my dick hanging out wasn't going to help any.

"What are we gonna do?" I quietly asked after a few painful moments of silence. I didn't want to disrupt the peace we had; who knew what would happen after we addressed this? We needed to sort something out sooner rather than later, so I thought it would be good to take advantage of the empty house. But who knew such a harmless question would cause such damage?

"Yeah, that's a good question which- I don't have the answer to." Devyn dryly laughed with a shrug of her shoulders, before she ran a hand through her knotted hair, trying her best to tame the bird's nest. "For starters, how long do we have before you're movin'?"

I knew that this would probably make things worse, but she couldn't be kept in the dark forever. And we definitely couldn't kidnap her and force her to come to LA with us - even if it did cross my mind last night. I knew that the longer we dragged this out, the worse that it would become, and the worse the consequences would be. It was better to rip the band-aid off, right?

"We- uh, we've got five days now until we can get the keys an' move in." I quietly spoke, staring down at my feet as I lightly swung them, the soles of my feet skimming the wooden flooring of my bedroom. "We don' have to move in right away, but I think Kells wants to go down as soon as we can, though, an' get everythin' set up. We'd love for you to come."