Chapter One #2
Curiosity is a poison and Evander is furious at himself for being unable to resist. But he doesn’t stop until he’s in the wide archway.
This parlor is an extravagant room, crammed with chaise lounges and bookshelves and potted plants, the heavy drapes and tasseled lampshades giving it a dim, boxed-in feeling.
And there is the person he should hate most in the world.
Evander stares.
The boy sprawls across an antique chaise with the languid disregard of a spoiled heir, unbothered and casual as if he’s never been denied a thing in his life.
His hair is a rumpled riot of insufferable gold, his white shirt open at the collar to reveal the arch of an aristocratic throat.
Only a brace on his left wrist interrupts his indolent perfection.
Seeing him this close after so many years gives Evander a discordant rush of vertigo.
He only just manages to pull himself back into the shadowed hallway as the old butler bustles out of the room with a tray of dirty dishes.
Carrington still wears black suits and white piqué vests as if he’s a butler cut out of a twentieth-century novel.
His dislike of Evander is never hidden, but he still tends to him with rigorous dedication. It’s his job.
He doesn’t notice Evander flattened against the wall as he hurries off to the kitchen.
Evander waits until his rabbiting pulse smooths before he pushes back into the mouth of the parlor. Leave. Now. But he can’t.
He has to see Laurie again.
His fingers grip the archway, his knuckles gone white.
It takes only a second for Laurie to notice him, and he freezes.
Somehow Evander hadn’t been prepared for this, for the way Laurie has grown up while Evander still feels caught in the past. He must look a mess: his hair dark and lank, curling past his jawline and long overdue for a cut, sweater grubby and plaid pajama pants clinging to bony hips, his limbs too fluid and elastic, as if at any moment they could bend the wrong way.
He is shaking, ever so slightly, though from fear or rage he doesn’t know.
He isn’t supposed to get angry. It isn’t good for his health.
Laurie sits up with a mocking smile tucked into one corner of his mouth. “Almost forgot you were real.”
Heat eats at Evander’s cheeks. “You can’t be here.” It’s somehow shocking to hear his own voice, but his teeth clench and he keeps going. “You aren’t allowed.”
Laurie flops backward onto the chaise, one eyebrow raised. “I think you’ll find this is actually my house. You’re the transplant.” He pulls out his phone as if this whole situation is uninteresting, though he seems to be breathing a little quickly.
As if maybe this is a shock to him too.
Laurie doesn’t think about him, Evander realizes. He travels the country and attends elite boarding schools and does whatever he pleases beyond the walls of Hazelthorn, and he doesn’t think of Evander or what he did to him at all.
While Evander has to think of Laurie every day.
He shouldn’t. He tries not to. But he still thinks of this boy until his lungs seize and his mouth fills with rust from a bitten tongue.
“If he finds you’ve come back while he isn’t here—” Each word trembles with a rage he didn’t think possible.
“He knows.” Laurie’s eyes are half-lidded with boredom. “He’s in the conservatory right now, messing with his stupid plants. I’ve been on summer break for a week already and he’s been here the whole time.”
Evander’s fingers curl into fists and there is a high-pitched buzzing in his ears. He’s trying to remember if it was like this before between them: Laurie dismissive and apathetic, Evander eaten through with jittery nerves.
“You can come sit down if you want.” Laurie tosses the words like a bone to a dog. “You look pale.”
Evander can feel himself winding up, his jaw clenched tight enough to crack. “This is just how I look.”
Because I’m always ill, he wants to scream. And it’s all your goddamn fault.
Though maybe he does need to sit down, because his vision has turned spacey and his stomach won’t stop doing loops. But he doesn’t understand. Mr. Lennox-Hall being back in Hazelthorn for days without bothering to visit Evander is unthinkable.
But then, who is he anyway except a charity case roped to them by guilt?
“I’ll find your grandfather and talk to him. There must be some mistake.” Evander sounds raw, but Laurie’s eyes track him with a sudden interest.
“Don’t,” he says. “He doesn’t like to be interrupted. Stay here with me.”
His gaze could pin Evander to the wall.
No.
That can never happen.
Suddenly Evander is in the garden again, caught against holly leaves and rose thorns, and he steps backward once, twice, before he turns and flees into the depths of the mansion.
His hate for Laurie is unmanageable, wild and bitter as wormwood on his tongue, and he should have lost all interest in him by now. He shouldn’t watch for him through his window. Or crave snippets of his voice. Or think about his cornflower-blue eyes and the beautiful shape of his wretched mouth.
Evander can still taste blood and earth and rotten petals and a death that almost spilled like indigo ink.
Seven years ago, Laurence Lennox-Hall tried to kill him in the garden, down amongst the roses. But somehow, Evander is still obsessed with him.