Chapter 27
By the time I made it back to the dorms, the others were already gathering close to the third door on the right—now Silas’s room, since he’d switched with Reggie.
Reggie wasn’t there, though, but the others were. All of them whispering, telling me to keep quiet with their fingers in front of their mouths, before they waved for me to follow them away from the dorms again.
It seemed Calren was already gone.
I considered telling them I wanted to rest, but then what would I do alone in my room, except stare at the ceiling or sketch?
March was with them, and I wasn’t even sure if I wanted him in my room again, not after the way I’d behaved toward him all day.
It was honestly a little embarrassing. If I couldn’t control myself, I might as well just stay away from him altogether.
Staying away would be better if I was out here with everyone else—so I followed.
March, of course, stayed behind and waited for me, fell into step with me, but he didn’t say a single word while the others led us down to the ground floor, through one door and another.
They took us straight to the kitchen.
Laughing and cheering to find it empty, they all ran for the cabinets to find things to eat—crackers, fruit, cake, chocolate.
I rolled my eyes with a sigh when the doors closed behind us. “We just had dinner.” It couldn’t have even been an hour.
But then again, I wouldn’t really mind trying a banana with whatever chocolate syrup Levana was squeezing over hers.
“Snacking’s different. C’mon,” March said as we went closer to the first aisle. Most everyone had already sat on it, and they talked like they always talked, one over the other. Three different stories were simultaneously being told by three different people at any given second.
“What’ll it be? Crackers? Cherries? Chocolate?” March asked when I hopped onto the edge of the isle, the only free spot between Mimi and Anika.
“Actually, I—”
“No, don’t tell me.” March held up a finger. “I’ll be right back.”
He was—two minutes later, in his hands a small glass cup full of chocolate.
“Chocolate mousse,” he called it. “Pretty sure you’re going to like it.” He’d brought me a spoon, too.
“Thanks,” I said, looking at the mousse skeptically. I wasn’t sure if I’d tried something like it before, but it did smell delicious.
“Hey, I want some of that, too,” said Anika, and she’d been eating something white in her own cup, but she shoved her spoon in my mousse anyway, and tried it before I did.
She moaned. She closed her eyes. She screamed, and lastly—“Perfect!” she concluded.
And she was absolutely right.
It was heaven on my tongue the way it melted, so creamy and sweet. I tried not to be irritated with her every time she snuck a spoonful, but I failed. I wished she’d gotten her own—-but everybody was taking everybody’s food all around me.
In fact, the sound of everyone talking at once, and the feel of being surrounded by so many loud individuals, to hear so much laughter…
It reminded me.
It reminded me of the junkyard and the dancing and the jokes.
Sparetime save me, I’d almost forgotten.
How was that even possible when it had been only a handful of days ago?
“Hey.” Silas stopped to March’s side, eyed my mousse.
I only had a spoonful left, so I said, “Get your own. This is mine.” Nobody was going to take the last bit from me—it wasn’t even fair.
Silas laughed, then flinched, and held onto his right shoulder with a hiss.
“What’s up, man? What happened?” March said, and attempted to touch Silas’s arm, but he immediately leaned away. “I just hurt it a little bit during sparring today, that’s all. I’m fine.”
Except he hadn’t hurt anything during sparring today. None of us had.
“And I’m not planning to take your chocolate, Ora, only to ask you if you’ve gone to see Master Talik today, by any chance.”
The gears in my stomach malfunctioned like they sometimes did.
“Why?”
He shrugged, then flinched again—his shoulder was definitely hurt. “Only curious.” I held his eyes, waiting a heartbeat if he’d say something else, but… “Well, did you?”
March’s eyes were on my face, too. He was right there—he could hear me, yet for some reason, I didn’t even consider lying to Silas. I was too curious to see what he’d say.
“I did. Only briefly.”
Silas nodded.
March said, “Why would you go to see Master Talik?”
“I had a question,” I said.
He raised a brow, and the look in his eyes turned colder instantly. “A question?”
“Yes. He didn’t answer it. Did you go to see Master Talik, Silas?” Because why else would he ask me?
“What else did he say, if he didn’t answer your question?” he asked me instead.
“Nothing. Did you or did you not go to see him?”
A tick of silence. March’s eyes moved from him to me lightning fast. “No,” Silas said.
“But Reggie did.” His eyes widened just a tiny bit, and he composed himself quickly but I saw it. I saw it clearly.
“Is that so.” Silas stepped back. “Gotta go now. I’m feeling a bit dizzy from all the sparring. Goodnight.”
With a quick nod, he turned on his heels and walked away.
March and I watched after him as he smiled and waved at the others, then left the kitchen. I knew that if I tried to follow him now he wasn’t going to actually tell me anything, so I didn’t bother.
“He’s hiding something,” March muttered, his eyes bright with suspicion.
“He is.”
“So are you.”
I raised my brows. “I’m really not.”
To my surprise, March didn’t believe me—but the surprise didn’t last. Not when I remembered what he’d had to give away.
He smiled a little, so bitterly I almost flinched, and stepped back. “Right. Goodnight, then.”
Just like that, he walked all around the isle without so much as another look my way.
Impossible. No way. My mouth opened and closed as I watched after him—are you serious, Heartling? He was just going to walk away from me like that?
And I wasn’t even hiding anything—he knew more than anybody else in the world about me. I’d told him things I never dared to even talk about with myself.
Yet he walked all the way outside the kitchen with his chin up, leaving me to try to catch my train of thought all by myself.
“Hey, mind if I have that?”
I blinked and Mimi’s big green eyes filled my vision. I looked down to where she was pointing—the last of my chocolate mousse that that asshole had brought me, before he stormed off like a damn toddler.
Well, now I didn’t want his stupid chocolate, either.
“Take it.” I put the cup on Mimi’s hand and jumped off the isle. “Goodnight.”
Not sure who I said it to, but everybody else said it back, waved at me as I went, and I was rushing now. I was almost running, and I didn’t know why until I saw the back of March’s head walking up the stairs.
“Hey!” I called, my nerves getting the best of me, because this wasn’t fair. And I knew that somebody could see us out here, and nobody was supposed to know we’d left our rooms, but they did know. And I really couldn’t care less if Calren came running with his cane in his hands—I was pissed off.
March stopped. Turned.
“What in the Everstill was that?!” I said as I took two stairs at a time, pointing behind me. “What are you, in first grade? You’re just going to walk away?!”
March took a look around, hands fisted at his sides, jaws clenched, and he didn’t answer until I stopped two stairs away from him.
“What exactly did you think I’d do when you lie to my face?” he had the audacity to say.
“I didn’t lie,” I hissed.
“Oh, really. Is that why you didn’t even mention Talik before Silas asked?”
And he turned around and continued to walk upstairs.
I doubted I’d ever been more frustrated in my life. Fuck, I wanted to scream.
Instead I followed him up to the first floor, and he moved toward the hallway, didn’t climb up to the second. That’s how I knew he didn’t want to walk away, not without talking, at least.
We stopped just around the corner.
“Why would I mention Talik when you didn’t even ask me about it?!” I stopped, hands on my hips, ears burning with my anger.
“Why wouldn’t you? If you went to see him, and you even saw Reggie—I don’t know, that seems exactly the sort of thing you would tell me about when you saw me!”
“You’re being ridiculous.” And he really was. “I don’t have to tell you about everything I want to do or every place I want to go to, or everyone I see!”
He came all the way up to my face. “Then why are you following me?”
I blinked. Leaned back a bit. “Because you’re…you’re frustrating.” And I hated that he just turned around and left like that. Made me feel guilty for no reason at all!
Bitter laughter left his lips. “Well, then let me be perfectly clear with you, Ora: I want to know about everything you want to do and every place you want to go and everyone you see. I want to know what you’re thinking all day, every day, and what you’re planning, too.
If that’s frustrating to you—fine. I don’t mind.
But walk away, right now. Go sleep, and do and see whoever you want. ”
He said all this in a breath, and my jaw almost touched the floor. He was serious.
“Do you hear me?” he said. “Walk. Away.”
Fuck!
I didn’t want to walk away. Damn him, I didn’t want to do any of this, with him or with anyone else. The guilt was going to eat me from the inside—but the look in his eyes was wild.
I waited a moment and two, hoped maybe he’d regret what he said, hoped maybe he didn’t really want me to walk away, that he’d laugh and tell me he was joking or something.
He didn’t.
The problem was, I couldn’t move if I tried. Not sure why—I just thought about turning and walking away, and I couldn’t. Like my feet were glued to the stupid floor.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, tried to reason with myself.
But March leaned closer, and I felt the heat of him just fine without looking. I still opened my eyes, though. I still saw him there. Angry. Furious. As furious as I’d been running up those stairs, and I didn’t even know when we switched places.
“Which one is it?” he said then. “Are you hoping to manipulate me? What exactly are you trying to get out of this? Or maybe you’re just…afraid of me?”
I could have laughed. “I am not afraid of you.” I wasn’t afraid of anyone.
But March smiled. It didn’t even reach his eyes. “Yes, you are.”
“I’m not—”
“You’re afraid you’ll get attached, aren’t you.”
This time I did laugh. “You can’t seriously think that! I’ve known you for days and you’re assuming I’m afraid you’ll hurt me or something?” Did he really think me that pathetic?
Because the truth was that maybe I wasn’t.
Or maybe I was—but I still had to figure it out myself.
But March said, “I think you’re afraid I won’t.” I stopped. My mouth clamped shut. “I think you’re afraid that I’ll see you, and then I’ll want you anyway.”
Stabs at my gut and my chest and my head.
I turned around to leave. The audacity on this guy—the audacity!
That was it, I was never spending another second in his presence again.
Except… “Oh, you don’t get to walk away now.”
There he was, like a fucking wall in front of me, moving faster than I could even see.
Time’s Temper, I was going to burst into flames any second.
I forced a bitter smile on my face, pressed my finger to his chest. “You think just because you went down on me that you have me all figured out, Heartling? Grow. Up.” I filled each word with all the venom they could carry—and he still wasn’t as affected as I’d have liked.
Very bad for my ego.
“No,” March said. “But I know what a person looks like when they’re running, even when they’re standing still. Even when they have all the right comebacks and excuses—like you do.”
“It’s not excuses,” I hissed. “I am not running!”
But I was.
He smiled, shook his head, rubbed his face, as frustrated as I was.
Except we kept switching roles so quickly I was having trouble keeping up.
“You know what I’d never do?” He waited a heartbeat, but not for my answer. Just to look into my eyes. “I’d never cross anyone’s boundary. So say the word, Ora. Say you want me or say you don’t. Make up your mind—but you’re either all in, or you’re not. I won’t accept something in between.”
“Don’t tell me what to think or feel or do,” I said, only because my mind was buzzing, and words and arguments kept escaping me, slipping right between my fingers.
“Then tell me.” He came even closer, so close the tips of our noses touched. So close I could count the vibrant shades of red and brown in his eyes if he’d let me. “Say it. Look me in the eye, and tell me you don’t want me.”
My mouth opened—I DON’T!
Time’s Teeth, I wanted to say it, shout it, scream it at the top of my lungs for all the realm to hear.
I didn’t.
“Exactly,” the asshole said.
Then he turned around and walked away.