Chapter 16 #2
It wasn’t like he was running a fucking jail.
Anyone could come and go if they really wanted to.
The only reason I’d gone through such great lengths not to be found out was because I didn’t want any of the staff to have to call Blake up for approval.
I was still salty about Friday. Getting him to give me the thumbs up or down was the last thing I wanted.
“Why?” he asked.
“Why not?” I challenged.
My skin buzzed being so close to him after being in withdrawal all weekend. I really wasn’t prepared to see him so soon after our run-in earlier and for him to seek me out himself... didn’t that mean something?
Get over it.
“No one called me. So, I’m guessing you didn’t tell anyone because you thought I’d say no or something.”
Partially true.
Blake wasn’t a warden. He wasn’t the type to hold anyone hostage on account of some power trip or ego boost he got from lording over a bunch of adventuring adults.
If anything, he probably would’ve sent someone with me to make sure I got to and from camp okay and didn’t get lost on my journey coming back.
He was the caretaker type, after all.
So why didn’t I involve him?
The reason was simply this: I wasn’t ready to face him or hear his voice so soon after being rejected.
There, that was the full and god’s honest truth.
The jailbreak had been my little form of rebellion. Even if it was stupid in the end and meant nothing.
“Maybe you would’ve.” The words came spilling out of my mouth before I could stop them.
I didn’t actually believe that. Not in the slightest. My pettiness wasn’t letting me say the things I wanted to and was filling in the blanks for me with nonsense.
He only sighed in response.
My heart felt heavy when he pulled away, leaving me feeling ever more raw and exposed than on the docks.
What was wrong with me?
This man was trying to be nice and figure out what my problem was and here I came barreling in with insults and snippy words.
No wonder he was so quick to leave with his grandfather earlier.
Speaking of which. “Where’s your pops?”
I lifted my head up from the table, cupping the back of my neck to keep the ice pack suctioned there while I turned toward him.
He had one foot kicked up on the seat in front of him, the other dangling down by me.
He wore a frown that twisted my inside up—an expression that looked way too foreign on his face for it to be a common thing.
I was used to Blake’s cheerful expressions. Even his neutral faces had a lightness to them.
This one was downright upset.
“He got pulled away for a bit. I didn’t have the heart to tell him no when he loves this place so much. I figured in the meantime, I could send over something to help with your head. Unfortunately, everyone else seemed to be tied up with something, so you got to deal with me delivering it.”
‘Got to deal with’. Like that was an actual bad thing when in reality it was the best case scenario. My hand itched to reach over and grab his thigh. Squeeze it until I had him squirming.
Then again, he’d probably shove me away at this point.
“I’m surprised he retired if he loved being here so much.”
Blake shrugged. “He didn’t want to. But he’s getting older and isn’t able to keep up with the demands of this place anymore. It was better to let it go when he still had some health left in him versus having to pry it out of his cold dead hands.”
“Quite the imagery,” I joked.
He shrugged again. “It’s the truth.”
Ugh.
What the fuck was I supposed to do with that?
We were literally two feet apart, physically. Emotionally, there might as well have been a giant chasm opened up, swallowing us both in the process.
I wanted the old Blake back. The one that poked and jabbed at me just as much as I did him. Messing around with him couldn’t have messed things up this badly with him. I refused to accept that answer.
Not when it was so, so good.
His eyes darted away from mine, catching sight of one of the cooks leaving the back in order to start setting up the buffet for dinner. At that, he slid off of the table.
“Hope your head feels better.”
Fuck, I couldn’t handle this.
I grabbed his arm right before he could skirt past me and head out of the mess hall. He froze the second I touched him, his eyes going wide and then snapping over to meet mine. That frown was quickly replaced by surprise.
“Blake... listen.”
He rubbed his free hand over his face, brushing at it roughly. “I gotta go, Marlow.”
No.
How many cool-guy points would I lose if I refused to let go of him and instead forced him to sit back down and talk to me? 10? 20? 50?
Prying my fingers apart in order to let him go was a new type of agony I’d never experienced before. It felt like ripping my chest open and grabbing at my own beating heart to suffocate with my bare hands.
He stared at me for a long moment, his lips parting as if to say something but quickly clamping shut a second later. With one final headshake, he slipped away from me and headed out of the mess hall, leaving me to wallow once more.
The thing about self-pitying, at least for me, was that eventually, it turned into righteous anger.
All of this was unfamiliar territory. One I’d never waded through, let alone figured out how the fuck I was going to get out of this funk now that I was knee-deep in the shit storm of it all.
With no one to blame by myself for fucking this up royally with my own emotions, I was beginning to see why Avery had been so fucking bent out of shape about Brandon.
Here were some simple truths I was starting to discover on this own journey of mine.
One: getting ditched was actually starting to grate on my nerves, to the point where I was close to throwing a tantrum the next time my time was cut short with the one person I’d been promised to be sharing it with.
Two: getting iced out by Blake was at the top of my list for worst things ever and was steadily getting worse the longer I sat here staring at this damn bonfire while pretending to give a shit about whatever the couple next to me was rambling on about in between sharing a single bottle of beer.
Three: no matter how many times I tried to talk about this to Silas, he wasn’t going to get it.
No amount of explaining, re-explaining and then explaining myself again was going to get through that thick skull of his.
I was convinced he was incapable of feeling most human emotions outside of pure petty spite, but that was me.
Avery was pretty sure he felt love and deep affection, at least for us, so we had that going for us.
But other than that?
He was like a damn robot with the wrong default settings installed.
Four: I was fucking over my own self.
How I’d gone from coming here with the sole purpose of bettering my health to combat the very real fear I’d drop dead just like my pops and somehow turned that into a ‘why doesn’t he like me?’ situation was never going to cease from blowing my mind. And pissing me off.
Mainly because I could no longer pretend I didn’t care.
I did.
A whole lot.
“What do you think, Marlow?” the man next to me asked. Mark, I think his name was?
“About what?”
His wife laughed. “About what we were just discussing. I think the ropes course was way tricker than the rock wall. There was nothing to grab onto and it was all core strength. Which one did you do already?”
Yeah, fuck this.
Pushing myself up from my stump, I nodded to their bottle, waving my own completely full one in the air. “Another round?”
They both glanced at each other. “Oh, uh—”
Before they could tell me no, I stepped around them and headed for the small group of staff huddled at the edge of the fires. Their voices were quiet as they talked amongst themselves, a rumble of laughter rippling through them right as I approached.
“Hey…” I threw on my best endearing smile. “Was looking for the director’s office. Would any of you be kind enough to point me in that direction?”
As my eyes adjusted from staring at the fire, I noticed Talos was among the group.
I had a hard time seeing his expression from the flickering of the flames behind us making the shadows on all of their faces dance and move in weird patterns.
All of them were quiet for a moment, defaulting to Blake’s second almost instantly.
He was the first to speak. “What’s the matter?”
“Have to return something.”
“What’s the item?”
This weirdly felt like I was talking to a self-service kiosk trying to return an online order.
I sunk my beer into the dirt next to my foot, unlooping one of the pockets of my cargo pants to fish out the ice pack that had long since melted and grown mildly toasty from the fire.
I’d been holding onto it like some fucking up keepsake memento, if only to immortalize Blake caring for me for those ten minutes.
Holding it up to show him, I said, “He gave this to me earlier. Just wanted to give it back.”
The second he reached out to take it from me, I snatched it back. His hand paused, mirroring the confusion of the rest of the group.
“I can give that back to him,” he said.
I plastered on another smile. “Yeah, but then how am I going to use this to butter him up into getting the cooks to give me another cup of bread pudding?”
The rest of the group, besides Talos, laughed. In the dim lighting, I watched as his eyes narrowed slowly, his fingers twitching while he slowly lowered his arm back down to his side. The suspicion was evident but with nothing to pin it on, he had no reason to call me out for it.
Not at this stage, anyway.
I was good at playing the innocent and bumbling fool that everyone thought was only slightly smarter than a box of rocks. That was my home field advantage and one I used quite often when going into a rather tough meeting with a competitor.