Chapter 26
Chapter
Twenty-Six
After the hospital releases me, I spend two days in my dorm room, recovering. Gretchen wants to stick me in a hotel room, but I don’t need round the clock care, just rest. Aleo takes one look at me and goes pale. He checks in on me every few hours, relieved when I don’t need anything.
Maybe I should’ve let Gretchen take care of me. I’d feel guilty about my lapse of judgment if I could keep my eyes open.
I spend two days mostly sleeping, waking only to change out my bandages and answer the occasional text on my new-old phone (it was Nora’s until a couple of months ago, and the screen is cracked, but it works and I’m grateful).
Jane stops by to see me, but I’m wiped out from meds, so our discussion is brief.
I swear up and down I’ll tell her what the fuck happened when I’m feeling a little better.
She leaves with red eyes and a trembling lip.
I hate making everyone cry. I know I look like shit and I’m not helping my case by being completely exhausted. It’s like I just can’t stop sleeping.
And then, against my better judgment, I drag myself out of bed on the third afternoon and meander to Duncan’s room.
Every step is exhausting. I realize pretty quickly that I’ve made a terrible decision, but I won’t suffer the humiliation of asking a total stranger to escort me back to my room, so I force myself to keep moving.
Eyes follow me across campus, taking in the massive bruise across my face, the marks on my neck.
Gretchen bought me turtlenecks before she left, and I’m wearing one now, but it doesn’t conceal all the bruises along my jaw, the popped blood vessels in my eyes.
People know I got strangled, that Jordan and his brother beat the shit out of me. The story has spread like wildfire. Whispers surround me everywhere I go.
What did he do? How the fuck did this happen? Did he deserve it?
I ignore them.
By the time I make it to Dragoncrest Tower, I am sweaty, exhausted, sore. The stairs loom before me, an impossible task, but I ascend them anyway one step at a time, my breathing shallow.
When I finally reach the fourth floor, I use the brass knocker. The fish’s huge, bulbous eyes stare at me like they’re also horrified by my bruises. I’m in so much pain that my vision slides out of focus.
The door doesn’t open.
I should call Duncan. I will call him, I tell myself. In just a minute. After I’ve rested.
I sit on the floor, my back pressed against the heavy, lacquered oak door and close my eyes, breathing heavily like I just ran twenty miles without stopping.
I fall asleep like that, and startle awake to the sound of a creaking hinge. “Oh, shit.” Felix Cervantes stands in his doorway, concern written across his face. “Dominic, hey. Are you OK?”
Obviously not, I think, annoyed, but I nod. “I was looking for Duncan. And also,” I struggle to my feet, begrudgingly taking the hand Felix offers me. “I wanted to thank you. I-I’m sorry.”
His expression is somber. Not for the first time, I wonder what I told him in the halls. I know I babbled and cried a lot, that Duncan had to constantly reassure me. “You don’t need to be sorry,” he says. “I’m gonna call Duncan.”
“Thanks,” I mumble. The wooden doorframe scrapes against a bruise on my shoulder when I lean into it. The sting is strangely grounding. “I’m still—”
“I don’t want to talk about that right now,” says Felix firmly.
“I’m not mad at you. Nobody is mad at you.
But this isn’t the place.” He presses his phone to his ear.
A few beats pass, then he says, “Duncan, hey. I thought you should know Dominic is looking for you.” He frowns.
“Yeah, he’s at the door.” A pause. “Yeah, I’ll let him know.
See you soon.” Lowering the phone, he says, “He’s on the way. ”
“Thank you,” I groan. I’m struggling to keep my eyes open, but I can’t pass out here. Can’t be a burden when Felix has already helped me so much.
We have a short conversation, mostly about how I’m feeling, if I’ve remembered anything new. I shake my head at that and regret it. This conversation is all for show. Even if I happened to recall anything, I wouldn’t share it in the hallway.
Not when we share the same secret.
I don’t think about Jordan. As far as I’m concerned, he tried to kill me several times over. One of us had to die. If it had been me, he wouldn’t feel remorse.
Then again, I’m not the one who killed him.
It’s a relief to hear footsteps racing up the stairs. When Duncan appears, he’s wearing gym clothes and his hair is slick with sweat.
For some reason, this soothes the part of me that had been worried. Felix told Duncan I was here and he didn’t even bother to shower before hurrying over. Mate, he called me and I’m starting to wonder if that might be true.
“Dominic,” he chokes, eyes glazing right over Felix, like he isn’t even here in the hallway with us. “Are you—Should you be out of bed?”
Duncan looks panicked, wide-eyed and out of breath. He reaches toward me, then stops himself, like thinks I might push him away. There’s no way I’m going to do that, but maybe he doesn’t know.
“Probably not,” I admit. “But I’m here. Can we talk?”
It occurs to me then that I don’t know what I’m going to do if the answer is no.
Stumble home? Take a nap on the stairs? The only thing I know for sure is that I would definitely cry.
I’m honestly not sure if I’m capable of walking back to my dorm right now, not when it felt like running a marathon just getting here.
“Yeah,” says Duncan, running a hand through his sweaty hair. “Yeah, come inside.”
I want to make a joke about that, but I’m about to collapse. Breathing hurts. I’m pretty sure I forgot to take my pain meds. I shouldn’t be here. Gretchen is going to be pissed when she finds out I disobeyed all medical advice and left my dorm.
“See you later,” says Felix, touching me gently on my shoulder. Then he’s gone, down the spiral staircase, sconces flaring to life around him in a ghostly glow.
Unsteady, I follow Duncan into his room. The palm of his hand hovers at my side, like he thinks I might fall over. I hate to admit it, but he’s right to be concerned.
His room is the messiest I’ve ever seen it. The bed is unmade, the desk is piled with papers and textbooks. Clothes are strewn across the floor, on the back of the chair, at the foot of the bed, even hanging from the door.
He’s quick to say, “What do you need?”
The noise that escapes me is involuntary.
Without hesitation, he helps me over to the bed, props me up on a pile of hastily gathered pillows and laundry.
Maybe I should be offended that he couldn’t be bothered to find a set of clean sheets or something to bunch up behind me, but I think it’s kind of sweet that he recognized the urgency and used whatever he had on hand, regardless of how it looks.
“Thanks.”
He gets me a glass of water, insists on plugging in my new-old phone even though it’s at fifty percent, and then stands in the middle of the room staring at me.
He looks like he’s about to combust. Like he thinks there’s more he should be doing, but he can’t quite decide what that is, so he’s just going to panic instead.
“You’re making me dizzy. Sit down,” I say, and he grabs the chair from the desk and scoots it across from the bed. Then he straddles it backwards and scrutinizes me.
I close my eyes so that I won’t see the pity, the anger, the regret, and whatever else might be there. “I missed you,” I say, and I don’t dare look at him. “I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.”
“Dominic,” he says, and his voice is so, so warm. I could drift into it. “You have nothing to be sorry for. None of this is your fault.”
“But I went with him,” I protest, finally opening my eyes. Grief, anger, disbelief, self-hatred all mix into a terrible stew in my gut, and I can’t handle it anymore. “I was drunk and he scared me so bad, I didn’t know what to do—”
“He lied to you.” Duncan shakes his head. “He lied to you and then he attacked you. That isn’t your fault.”
“I was so stupid,” I say. Hot tears spill down my face. My voice is thick. “I just completely freaked out—”
“You’re not stupid,” he argues. “It’s not your fault—”
“He said he wanted one scale and that if I did anything he was gonna kill you instead and I was too scared to call the cops because he said he’d make it so much worse—”
“Dominic—”
“—and I just didn’t know what to do so I called you and I was gonna call Jane and then—”
“Dominic—”
“And then everything went completely wrong—”
“Dominic!” Duncan shouts. That shuts me up, leaves me stunned and staring, afraid to move.
“It’s OK,” he says, and he looks like he’s scared, too.
When I look closer, I realize he’s got tears in his eyes.
His knuckles are white where he grips the back of the chair.
“It’s OK. I’m never, ever going to be angry with you about this, OK?
I-I want to know more about what happened, but I’m not angry. ”
“He didn’t force me outside—”
“He lied and manipulated you to make sure you were alone and vulnerable. Stop beating yourself up. I could never, ever be angry with you for that.” He wipes at his eyes, then meets my gaze. “I promise.”
“I put you in danger—”
“I haven’t even begun to process what the fuck happened,” Duncan says.
He tips his head back as he pinches the bridge of his nose, baring his throat to me.
Then he looks at me. “But I’m so, so glad you’re alright.
I thought—I thought it was too late.” Now he really sounds like he’s about to cry as he presses his forehead against the back of the chair and inhales sharply. “I thought I was gonna lose you.”
“I’m so stupid,” I tell him.
He shakes his head. “You didn’t do anything wrong. I should’ve picked up my phone. I was trying to sleep, and I turned off my ringer because I was so fucking stressed about that argument—”
I wince.