Chapter 10 Rhett
When Isolde Greenwood’s chair sits empty after I explicitly told her to be in class today, I don’t bother with the rest of the lecture.
The numbers on the whiteboard blur into background noise.
Even the professor’s droning seems distant, as if I’ve already pressed a pillow over his face.
I keep my hands folded, eyes on the place where she should be, and let the anger work its way through my veins.
The moment class ends, I leave. No lingering, no networking with the ambitious leeches that haunt the edges of every major.
I take the north exit, cross the quad, and head straight for Archer House.
The wind is sharp, mean, loaded with rain that won’t fall.
The stones are slick, but I know every patch of friction and black ice by heart.
I move at a pace just short of a jog, fists jammed in my coat pockets.
I palm my master key, insert twist, and the door gives. No one’s home, or if they are, they’re quiet as fucking mice. I can smell the neglect—someone burned microwave popcorn recently, and the residue mixes with mildew and perfume to create a scent that makes me want to hurl.
I take the stairs two at a time. The second-floor landing is empty. The only noise is the thump of my shoes and the distant whine of plumbing.
Her room is in front of me in a second. I knock once, hard. No answer. I try again, softer, listening for any sign of movement. Nothing.
I fish in my pocket for the key to her door, almost drop it before putting it in the keyhole and turning. The knob gives with a reluctant groan.
I push the door open and look around. An absolute mess. Heading down the hall and pushing open her bedroom door, I almost gag.
She’s in bed, covers pulled up to her chin, one arm thrown over her face.
The blinds are half-closed, casting the room in alternating bands of weak sunlight and deep blue shadow.
A half filled puke bowl sits on the floor.
It smells like sweat and sickness. There are two mugs on the desk, both untouched, and a half-empty bottle of water on the floor.
Her laptop sits open, but the screen is black.
Isolde isn’t asleep. She’s humming to herself, a thin, nasal tune that winds up and down in a way that’s almost childish. I recognize the melody—it’s the old nursery rhyme about babies and cradles falling down.
She stops humming when she senses me. But she doesn’t open her eyes.
I close the door behind me and step closer, boots silent on the old wood floor.
“You planning on sleeping through the rest of term, or just today?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer. Her breathing is too rapid for someone lying in bed all day; her lips are dry and cracked, voice croaking as she speaks. “Go away, Rhett.”
I move closer, close enough to see the sheen of sweat on her brow and the red splotches high on her cheekbones. A fever has her hard… her hair is pasted to her neck, and her skin glows with an unhealthy, almost glow-in-the-dark pallor.
I reach out and push the hair from her face. She flinches, but doesn’t fight it.
“You’re burning up,” I say, and it comes out more gentle than I intend.
She snorts, a sound closer to a cough. “Go take your concern and shove it up your ass.”
I sit on the edge of her bed, hands braced on my knees. “If you wanted to die, you’d pick a more dramatic way to go. So why the isolation?”
She turns her head, eyes fluttering open. The blue of her irises is shot through with red, the whites webbed with fatigue. “Don’t flatter yourself. The last thing I want is you watching me rot.”
I let her have the barb, but don’t move. “Isolde, you need—”
“I need you to leave,” she snaps. “Or is this part of your kink? You watch girls fall apart and then what, write a dissertation on their bones?”
“Not quite,” I sigh. She’s angry. She has a right to be.
She laughs, a wrecked, bitter sound that turns into a coughing fit.
When it passes, she glares at me with what little strength she can muster.
“I had a full medical inspection, courtesy of your Board friends. They drew enough blood to fill a kiddie pool and oh, get this, forced me into a reproductive inspection. Yep, speculum and everything. Next time, maybe let me know when your sick little cult wants to probe my uterus for future heirs.”
The words are so sharp they should hurt, but I feel nothing but a cold, leaden rage. Not at her. At the Board. At Abelard and Valence and every fucker who ever thought tradition meant permission.
“I didn’t know,” I say. And it’s the truth. I never lie when it matters.
She stares at me, incredulous. “Bullshit.”
“I swear. They don’t tell me beyond what I need to know.”
She covers her face with both hands and shivers. “Of course you didn’t. That would mean you actually cared what happened.”
“I do care,” I say, and it slips out unedited, raw enough to surprise even me.
She peeks at me through her fingers. “Prove it. Go die.”
I almost laugh, but I don’t. Instead, I reach for her wrist and wrap my hand around it. Her skin is hot to the touch, pulse hammering. I lift her hand away from her face and hold it in mine.
“I didn’t know,” I repeat, this time quieter. “And if I had, I would have stopped it.”
She goes still, eyes wide, the fever-bright blue fixed on my face.
For the first time in months, maybe years, I let the mask slip. I let her see the exhaustion, the guilt, the way it eats me from the inside.
She breaks first, turning her face into the pillow. Her shoulders shake, but she doesn’t cry.
I sit with her, hand on her wrist, watching the sunlight creep in slow motion across the cheap linoleum.
After a minute, she stops trembling.
“You’re a liar, a cheat, a motherfucking asshole,” she whispers, but there’s no heat behind it.
I squeeze her hand, gentle, like I’m afraid she’ll break.
And maybe I am.
It’s one thing to break a girl, another to see her already broken.
I watch Isolde for a long time, memorizing the angles of her face and the way her jaw clenches in pain even after she drifts into sleep. There’s nothing delicate about her. She’s all hard edges and sharp bone.
Her fever spikes, sweat beading at her temples and soaking the pillow. She moans in her sleep, the sound rough and low, like a plea for mercy she doesn’t know how to voice.
I stand, cross to her desk, and find her phone. It’s dead, the battery at zero. I plug it in and rummage through her drawers until I find what I need: Tylenol, leftover antibiotics, a crumpled box of electrolyte mix.
I fill a glass with water from her bathroom sink pour in a packet of electrolytes, stir, wipe the rim with my sleeve, and set it next to her bed.
I pull out two white pills and place them on her tongue, hand at the back of her head to force her to swallow.
She coughs, almost spits them out, but I tip the water to her lips and she gags it down.
She mutters something, but her eyes never open.
The shame hits me in waves. I broke her and the Board just pushed the last nail in her coffin. She has every right to hate me, I hate my fucking self, but I can’t leave her like this. Every minute I spend here is another brick in the wall of my own damnation, but I don’t leave.
Instead, I strip her damp pants off, then her shirt, careful not to jostle her too much.
The skin of her arms is clammy and shudders under my touch.
I wipe her down with a clean towel, dabbing at the sweat that collects at her neck, her armpits, before turning her gently and wiping the hollow at the base of her spine.
Her body twitches at the cold, but she doesn’t resist.
Finding a pair of pjs, I dress her, pulling the covers up to her shoulders. Her hands are small and strong, callused in the way of someone who’s never been afraid to use them. They look wrong when limp, like the claws of an animal sedated in a trap.
She’s gonna need food. I unlock my phone and place a call to the one restaurant that still delivers this late: a hole-in-the-wall Korean place that doesn’t ask questions and never skimps on salt. I order two soups, hang up after barking out the address.
Then I wait.
The minutes crawl. I alternate between pacing her room and standing at the window, watching the lights flicker on the quad.
Every time I check on her, she’s more feverish, cheeks burning so red, I’m concerned she’s going to need the hospital.
She talks in her sleep, broken fragments of memory and threat and apology all mixed together.
At one point she jerks awake, tries to sit up, and nearly pukes on the sheets.
“Bathroom,” she slurs.
I haul her to the edge of the bed and walk her to the toilet, one arm braced around her waist. She collapses to her knees and vomits until it’s straight bile. I hold her hair back, fingers threading through the tangled auburn mass, and let her ride it out.
When she’s done, she sinks against the wall, eyes closed, breath shallow.
“Don’t touch me,” she mutters,.
I crouch next to her, hands raised in surrender. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
She laughs, weak. “That’s new.”
“People aren’t always what they seem, Isolde.”
She cracks one eye open. “You are.”
The smile I give her is real, and I hate myself for it. “Why can’t I be both man and monster?”
I help her to her feet and half-carry her back to bed. It feels like she’s lost weight, like she’s brittle. I could snap her in half if I wanted to, but I move slow and gentle, as if handling a baby. I tuck her in, pat down the comforter, and brush the hair from her forehead.
There’s a knock at the door. I answer it without hesitation, blocking the entry with my body.
The delivery kid is shorter than me, face mostly hidden by a beanie. He thrusts the plastic bag at me and takes two steps back, like I might rob him. I give him a twenty and close the door in his face, grabbing a bowl on my way back to the room.