Chapter 28 James
James
Chapter 28
She’s so fucking beautiful.
I’d never seen her in normal clothes, and now I wish I never had. She looks even more ethereal in these soft colors and fabrics. Her platinum hair is in a long, messy braid, and she keeps batting loose strands away from her face. Her cheeks are pinker. Her skin and eyes are brighter, more alive. She’s sitting in bed in white socks, knees pulled up to her chin, and she’s both effortlessly stunning and deeply unaware of the havoc she’s wreaking on my nervous system. She doesn’t look capable of hurting a dust mote.
God, this is a nightmare. An actual nightmare.
We’ve been doing this—I check my watch—for two hours now, and I’m already losing my cool. Warner was right. I have several more hours of this to sit through, and I don’t know how I’m going to make it. I wasn’t trained for sitting in rooms and talking about nothing. I’m drowning. If she keeps this up I might just have to leave.
I drop my head, push my hands through my hair.
She’s got these soft, grayish eyes I don’t know how to describe. It’s not even about her eyes, really. It’s not the color or the shape. It’s more about the way she looks at me, like I’m brand-new, like each time she sees me it’s the first time, like it blows her mind. I feel it when we make eye contact: the way she sort of stills, like she’s been stunned. She doesn’t look at me a lot, but when she does it’s like driving a hot knife through my chest. Most of the time I feel like she’s trying not to look at me.
Like right now.
I sit up. She’s staring at the wall.
“Rosabelle,” I say. “Please answer the question.”
She turns toward me, locks eyes with me and boom , again. Like a slingshot, strikes me in the heart. I try not to breathe too hard as her eyes widen, searching me like she’s never seen me before, and then she goes soft: her eyes gleam, dreamlike, her lashes lowering, lips parting as she lingers on my face.
It’s doing things to my head.
I want to go for a run. Jump in a lake. Drive a thumbtack into my forehead.
Warner might actually murder me if I bail.
“What was the question?” she asks, and she’s staring at the wall again.
“These are really easy questions,” I say, trying not to notice the elegant line of her neck. Her sweater is a little big for her, and it keeps gaping at the collar, torturing me with glimpses of skin I shouldn’t be glimpsing. I press the heels of my hands to my eyes, speaking toward the ground when I say, “I asked you what your favorite season is.”
“Why?” she says, and it’s the first time in hours I’ve heard some heat from her. “What’s the point of knowing my favorite season?”
I sit up, and she looks at me again, and—
Fuck it, I have to get out of here. Cool my head. Tackle a bear. There’s too much adrenaline running through my veins right now, and I’m going to start climbing these walls soon.
“You know what,” I say, getting to my feet. “I think, uh, I’m going to get something to eat. You want anything?”
She unfurls slowly, arms unwrapping from her legs, unclenching from her chest. She turns, sits on the edge of the bed, her socked feet not touching the floor.
I’m staring at this, studying the distance between her feet and the ground when she says, carefully, “What do you mean?”
“I’m going to the dining hall.” I gesture toward the door. “Do you want me to bring you something?”
“Dining hall?” Now she’s standing. “What does that mean?”
“It’s”—I frown—“it’s a dining hall. It’s where you eat. Did no one give you a tour?”
She shakes her head. Her cheeks are suddenly pinker. “Agatha said that my sponsor would show me around today. I don’t have a sponsor yet.”
I laugh out loud, then seriously consider throwing myself off a building. “ I’m your sponsor,” I say to her. “Did I not mention that?”
Apparently, this is the worst news she’s received all day.
The color drains from Rosabelle’s face. She becomes a statue before my eyes. When she does this I feel so powerless I want to put my head through a wall. It takes everything I’ve got not to do something as elemental as comfort her.
This is not a level playing field.
It doesn’t come naturally to me to orchestrate the downfall of vulnerable women. I liked it better when she was actively trying to murder me. I liked it better before I made her cry. Hell, I could’ve sworn she used to talk more. And she never used to look at me like this, like a cat when it’s comfortable. Softly blinking, sleepy eyes. I don’t like it. It’s freaking me out. I need her to try to stab me or something, and soon. Really soon.
Wait, why isn’t she trying to stab me?
“No,” she says finally. “You didn’t mention that.”
“Well, yeah, I am.” Clearly, I’ve never been a sponsor before. Now I understand why Warner left those binders on my desk last night. I did not, in fact, do more than glance at them this morning.
“Oh,” she says. Then, again, a whisper: “ Oh. ”
“I guess, uh, I can give you that tour. If you like.”