Chapter Thirty-One
THIRTY-ONE
WE EXIT THE MAZE AND turn toward McDowell House. My steps have slowed significantly, exhaustion and pain catching up to me once again. When we get into the elevator, Malachi hits the button for his floor. When he doesn’t press mine, I lean forward, but he blocks me.
“You’re coming back to my room.”
I sputter. “I’m sorry?”
“You’re hurt, there’s potentially a maniac on the loose…” He shrugs. “Just let me check your wounds and get you cleaned up at the very least.”
His profile is tense, plum staining the pale skin beneath his eyes.
When the elevator dings, Malachi sticks out his hand to hold the doors open.
I don’t move.
“Let’s go,” he grunts, and truthfully, I don’t have the energy to argue.
I step into the hall, and he follows, his hand resting on my lower back, guiding me forward.
I don’t know what compels me to put one foot in front of the other until we are both standing inside his room, but I blink, and suddenly there we are.
It’s so late, the sky long past inky black. A single, yellow-toned lamp casts the room in sepia tones.
The room smells so intensely of petrichor and star anise that I can’t stop myself from taking extra deep breaths. From trying to coat all my insides with his essence. A blush creeps across my cheeks simply from being smothered by him.
I take it all in. The navy-blue comforter tucked neatly around his bed, pin-striped sheets folded over and wrinkle free.
His desk isn’t a cluttered mess like mine.
There’s a stack of textbooks in one corner, a calendar in the other, and a small jar filled with pens and pencils.
LED lights border the top of the walls, tucked just below the ceiling.
There are no clothes scattered across the floor. No pictures on the wall, save for one of him and Lexie, and there are no novels crammed onto the shelf above his dresser.
No novels? I spin, double-, triple-checking, but my eyes do not deceive me.
However broken I thought this boy was, he’s worse.
“Where are your books?” I blurt, too alarmed to hold it in.
“My… books?”
“You know, the dragons and the medieval knights and whatever—your books! Where are they?”
He sighs. “Please just have a seat, Harper. On the bed would probably be easiest.”
He doesn’t seem any more comfortable than I am, so even though I want to protest—I want to force him to explain himself—I nod.
The mattresses are the same in every room, but for some reason his feels softer beneath me than my own.
Maybe after everything that’s happened tonight, I’d be willing to sleep anywhere.
Willing to take comfort in any form. Anything to erase the last few hours for any amount of time.
Even if it comes from someone who hates me.
The mattress sags as he sits beside me. His fingers drift hesitantly toward my arm where blood stains the fabric of my cardigan. I lift my chin, eyes falling closed as he slowly pulls the sleeve up until my skin is exposed.
He hisses, and I flinch, sneaking a peek at his face.
Barely contained fury.
I can’t tell if it’s directed at me or the person who hurt me.
Or both.
The gash on my arm is raw and split in a clean line that cuts halfway down the length between my elbow and wrist. It’s deep, but not enough for stitches, and tapered as if the person was nervous at first, and the blade caught in their hesitation.
“Where else?” His gaze roams over me, greedy, assessing, vicious. His voice is a siren call to all the parts of me I try to hide.
I turn my back to him, sliding the cardigan down my shoulders. He takes it and drops it onto the floor. “I think I got pretty scraped up when I fell. And when…” I’m trembling. My voice feels way too loud in such a small space. I can’t make my mouth say it.
Carefully, slowly, he peels the back of my black shirt up, his fingers never touching my skin. The fabric sticks over a spot where blood has begun to dry, and I jerk away from the pain.
“Ah, sorry,” he mumbles, gently lifting my arms until my top is on the floor beside us too.
He leaves the bed and heads toward the sink. “Stay there,” he instructs. “It’s not great, but it could be worse.”
I wrap my arms around myself, suddenly feeling insecure, but when I look over my shoulder, he’s focused on his task.
When he returns, damp washcloth in his newly gloved hands, I furrow my brows.
“I get a lot of cuts and scrapes during practice,” he says, reading the question in my expression. “I have a stash of medical-grade gloves to help with the clean-up.”
He’s careful to keep his touch light against the tender, broken skin.
It stings, but the warmth feels good. I sigh. “Odds you’re gonna tell me ‘I told you so?’ ”
His hand stills. Silence spreads. “What?”
“You can say it. I know you want to.”
“Look at me.” He is barbed wire, all tangles and sharp edges.
I turn and face the boy determined to ruin and save me all at once.
“You tried to warn me, and I didn’t listen.
I’m not going to listen, because I know there’s something evil going on here, and I don’t care if you think I deserve everything that’s happened to me, I don’t care if you’re rotten on the inside, ’cause I am too.
But I’m fixing it. If I can figure out what’s going on, if I can find Fiona, I can fix it. If I—”
I almost confess. To the powers, the dream, the whispers, the ghosts—but I bite my tongue.
He tucks a frizzy piece of dirt-streaked hair behind my ear, his fingers trailing down my jaw.
“You’re torturing me.” His voice is rough.
“Every moment you spend here back in Earnest. With every memory of every summer, every piece of my past I’ve tried so hard to forget.
You make me… You bring things out in me.
Bad things. Evil things. Things I wish I could smother.
You carved away a piece of me when you left last summer,” he laughs bitterly.
“I wanted to blame you so bad. I wanted it to be all your fault.”
“What?” Is he talking about the accident?
He shakes his head, eyebrows nearly touching in the middle. “You were right, I was a coward. I was every bad thing you said about me.” His eyes meet mine, and the rest of the world falls away.
“You were right about me, and sometimes I think I’ve had this whole thing all wrong. Sometimes I think that…”
He trails off as his fingers leave a ribbon of shivers down my arm, his bottom lip getting caught between his teeth as he dabs at my cut with a cloth. I’m reminded of the day we met.
“Kai.” His name spills from my mouth like a benediction, and his lips part with a soft gasp as he glances up at me. “Sometimes you think what? What is it?”
We watch each other. We’re playing chicken. “Nothing. It’s nothing.” He loses. So do I.
I groan in frustration and grab his face, pulling it toward me until our foreheads touch.
He shudders, his eyes fluttering closed.
His jaw tensing between my palms. His fingers bunch the comforter in tight fists.
He feels strange beneath me. Rough with stubble, square and angled, somehow so much older than the last time.
How different would it be to sketch him now?
Tears well in my eyes, the exhaustion finally getting the better of me. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Nothing, Harper,” he says again, defeated, sounding just as tired as I am. “Turn around.”
We stare into each other’s eyes for another moment. A moment more. It’s clear neither of us will budge this time. So I do as he says, picking at my cuticles as we lapse into silence.
Done wiping the wounds clean, he opens a jar of ointment and begins to spread it over the tender skin.
Flashes from the maze come back to me while he works. The monster’s words twisting, mutating, echoing over and over. Despite the cloak and the voice distortion, there was something so disturbingly familiar about it.
However sinister I thought this campus was, it’s so much worse. Someone tried to kill me tonight. Or tried to evoke my powers? But why?
I sit, contemplating all of this, so lost in my thoughts that I don’t notice he’s finished until his shadow looms over me.
He hands me face wipes and an extra toothbrush, angling his head toward his in-room water closet.
Perks of having an accessible dorm, I guess.
I didn’t realize how badly I had to use the bathroom until I’m already done.
I don’t bother looking in the mirror, and I can’t bear to face myself quite yet.
When I return, his hand is outstretched, a black T-shirt dangling from his fingers. “Put this on.”
I grab the shirt and stand with my back to him.
“And lose the pants,” he says, voice rough. “They’re filthy.”
Maybe for some girls, Malachi’s shirt would fit more like a dress, more like the man’s shirt on the hot blonde in a rom-com, but on me it fits just right. My chest and curves fill it out enough so that it falls only halfway down my butt.
When I slide off my jeans, I’m thankful that I’m wearing a newer pair of black lace underwear. Then I slip the silk scrunchie from my wrist and pull my curls into a large bun at the top of my head before turning to face him.
His eyes are smoldering in the low light, engulfing me, devouring the sight of me in his shirt and barely anything else.
It is a raw, dangerous feeling, the burning inside me.
Ignited by his gaze, by the tension between his brows, by the bulge of his biceps through his sweater as he crosses his arms against his chest, by the warmth of his body crowding mine.
His voice is smoke and gravel. “Get in the bed.”
“I—What?”
He reaches past me and pulls back the covers. “You’re hurt, it’s late, and it’s clearly not safe for you tonight. I just—I’ll feel better with you here where I can keep an eye on you.”
“But. I—We—” I stutter, backing up a step.
He huffs out an impatient breath. “Get in the bed, Harper.”
Maybe it’s the fact that he’s right, the cloaked figure could be anywhere.
And, secretly, there’s no way I’d ever fall asleep alone right now.
Maybe it’s the leftover effects of the beer and the light fuzziness that remains in my head.
Maybe it’s the addictive feeling of being back where I always thought I belonged.
But once again, I do as he says. Because even if I hate him, he still feels like he’s mine, even if it hurts.
He clears his throat as I climb into the bed. The sheets are cool against my too-warm skin, and I could cry at the relief of finally letting my body relax.
I listen to Malachi as he moves around the room. To the sounds of him brushing his teeth. Picking my clothes off the floor.
When a spell of silence stretches a bit too long, I glance behind me.
He’s hardly visible save for the way the closet light illuminates his body with horizontal slashes through the slats in the accordion doors.
His arms are stretched above his head, the muscles of his bare back rippling as he pulls on a long sleeve shirt.
The obsidian swirls of his tattoos stretch along his sides and up his spine.
My mouth grows dry at the sight of him.
As he pulls the shirt down to his waist, he begins to turn, and I startle, my heart hammering in my chest as I jerk back toward the window and urge my breathing to slow.
Minutes later, the weight of his body lowers the edge of the mattress, and I roll slightly, watching as he slips off his prosthesis and the silicone liner underneath, setting them within arm’s reach.
He carefully lotions and massages the red pressure lines that lessen as his hands work against the otherwise pale skin.
His profile is pensive, and he is methodical, but when he’s done, he finally slides into the bed next to me.
I turn my head and meet his gaze.
“Try to get some sleep,” he says, his fingers running down the side of my face and across my chin, and my cheeks warm beneath his touch. “In the morning I’ll recheck your wounds and walk you to your room.”
I watch the way his mouth moves. “Okay.”
I can feel my heartbeat everywhere.
Eyes lingering on the curve of my lips. “Okay.”
When he finally flips over, facing the other direction, I do the same.
But the bed is small, so we sleep with our backs flush to each other.
It’s not long before our breathing falls into sync.
I can feel his heartbeat against my own, and though impossible, I swear that the tempos of our pulses are the same.
In the morning, swallows sing outside the window, and motes dance through the honey light like lightning bugs.
I stretch my arms above my head and groan against the aches threading through my body, realizing a second too late that this is not my bed, nor my room.
That the skin pulls uncomfortably on my back and arm.
That I spent last night with the boy I’ve grown to hate.
That I was almost killed. That someone here knows about my power.
That the ghosts of the scorned witches betrayed me.
When I roll over, I find an empty, cool space where Kai should be. I prop myself up on my elbow, rubbing the sleep from my eyes as I search for him.
He’s sitting at his desk, typing something into his phone when he realizes I’m awake, all emotion from last night long gone.
“They sent out a notice to everyone on campus,” he says, his voice flat as he meets my eyes. “They found a body.”