Chapter 22
I spend all Saturday in bed.
Sunday comes, and my stomach is eating itself. It churns acid and bile, since I didn’t pack snacks to keep in my nightstand for the semester, and also, I don’t exactly have an appetite.
Still, I force myself out of bed.
My socks drag over the floorboards to the long mirror by the vanity, and the sight should startle me.
I look as rough as I feel.
My eyes are burned raw from the tears, my face is puffy and scarred with the indents of my pillows and hands.
My hair is knotted to the touch, and the sound of the brush stroking through it isn’t unlike Velcro ripping. I tangle it into a plait before I slip on a pair of plimsoles, thermal leggings and a lumpy sweater.
I need to be utterly alone today.
But if I don’t eat soon, I’m going to start sicking up bile.
Obviously, the mess hall the last place I want to go. The heart of the academy.
Where everyone will be shouting and laughing over their trays—as though I didn’t just let my enemy, my tormenter, fuck me into his mattress in the blackout.
A groan rolls through me.
I tilt into the mirror.
My forehead presses against the cold bite of the glass, and I shut my eyes, willing the surge of turmoil back into my shellshock.
At least in that, I can stomach leaving my bed.
The grandfather clock strikes to the twelfth hour. I flinch as the chime reaches my bones.
I managed to fight my hunger until noon.
I hope that’s good enough.
The Snakes might have eaten and gone at breakfast, maybe to the village, off to watch a game if there are any on, or even to study hall.
I need them to be out of the mess hall.
But I’m not so certain.
Ropes of anxiety unfurl through my insides, my worming gut slowing down the steps I take out the dorm room.
Last night, some of the Snakes could have stayed up late, being a Saturday, and so maybe I’m walking right into their late-hour start with a hangover.
My steps are dragging by the time I reach the atrium.
The unwillingness turns my legs to lead, and my hands fist on the long sleeves of my lumpy sweater. The wool creaks under the scrape of my fingernails—but I don’t hear it over the surge of clattering as I enter the mess hall.
It’s busy. Busier than I care for.
I throw a sweeping glance around the faces, some dull with hangovers, others alight and animated, mouths moving, hands flailing—probably still going on about the blackout, the things that happened in it…
A shudder pulses through me.
I drop my stare to the toes of my plimsoles all the way to the buffet.
I move fast.
Stares follow me.
I know because I spotted them, sitting around the Snake table, before I looked away.
Serena and Asta sit there with Landon and Mildred, all sheathed in snowsuits.
I keep my cheek to them as I move down the buffet, grabbing what I can before rushing to my old table.
The draughty one.
It’s free this morning, Courtney and James nowhere in sight.
I start on the most important part of my meal.
The coffee.
It’s been too long since I’ve had any.
I guzzle the first, faster than I should, then push aside the empty latte glass.
I rush through the toast. It’s overly buttered and soggy, a smear of pale yellows.
I’m on the second slice when someone drops a tray in the hall, and the clatter clangs my bones.
I flinch and throw a look over at the buffet.
Teddy, in a certain hangover, stumbles back from Dragana. His mouth twists around unkind words before he kicks the dropped tray under the buffet, then reaches for another, fresh one.
Dragana’s face is aflame. A fresh stack of school newsletters piled in her arms, she backsteps—out of his annoyed path.
Teddy moves down the buffet, and only then does Dragana drop the pile of newsletters onto the side-bench.
The newsletters are late today. Usually they’re printed and stacked by the buffet for breakfast.
“Olivia.”
I wince.
Stiff in my seat, I throw a look across my table.
And I am met with a pair of diamond eyes.
A hand reaches up through my insides, fists my heart in its vice grip, then drags it down to my gut.
Hands in his pockets, Dray stands on the other side of the table, just a few steps in from the open doors.
Behind him, Oliver stalks by. He spares a stormy look at me on his way to the buffet.
Dray lures me back to him. “Olivia…”
I blink, the echo of his voice whispering at my ears, like I’m in a trance.
I look at him.
The sandy hues of his hair are tousled, strands falling into his sleepy eyes.
In plain slacks and a corded sweater, I guess he’s not joining the others on the slopes today.
Maybe he planned on hanging around—to find me, wait me out, because in his eyes that are grazing over the features of my face, there’s a hint of confusion.
Dray considers me for a heartbeat.
His steady gaze is unflinching. “You slept off quite a hangover.”
I part my lips around words that I don’t have, then shut them again.
There is patience in the way he watches me. But behind his glass-blue eyes, his mind works.
He looks me over, from the flyaways that frizz my braid to the damp spots on my lumpy sweater, a painfully slow look.
He finds some conclusion on me.
He sighs, a soft sound like cashmere running over freshly moisturised skin. “Are we going to do this again? Back to enemies so you feel better about what happened—what you wanted?”
Still, there are no words I can give him.
I just stare.
And I wonder if my mind really has broken.
But what can I say to him?
Sorry, thought you were Eric?
A scoff jolts me, faint and lethargic.
Dray’s jaw rolls, slow, the contours of his dimples darkening with the movement.
The soft pink of his lips part… Lips that traced every curve and freckle on my body, that sucked and kissed and licked between my legs, that gave the most vicious torments I’ve endured.
But he doesn’t get the chance to speak.
Not before a flurry of movement is storming towards us, right for my table.
Instinct braces me.
My gaze darts to the mutinous face of my brother.
I sink back in the seat, as though I can escape him, but before I can so much as utter a sharp breath, Oliver is slamming down a folded copy of the school newsletter on the table.
I frown down at it.
The tension in Oliver’s knuckles sears them white.
A second ticks by, then another—
Then, it hits me.
Oh…
Fuuuuck.
My stomach flips.
My eyes widen on the thin, dusty paper, folded over, and pressed into the table by his tense grip.
I can only make out part of the headline.
But the small text falls down from it in columns, too much text for Oliver to have read at the buffet in just the few moments he was there.
The headline must have been enough, but I can’t read it from here, not with it folded and his fingers crinkling the paper.
Dray leans back a step, his frown faint as he considers us, his calculating gaze shifting between us.
Oliver’s exhale trembles with rage. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
The question is growled out, his lips curled and teeth bared.
My shoulders curve inwards, as though I can shrink away from him, that barely controlled rage lashing through him.
His eyes darken into nothing short of threats before he leans over the edge of the table. “What the fuck have you done?”
Behind him, snowsuits are moving closer.
Serena and Landon approach, their steps slick with the same confusion that has Dray’s brow faintly furrowed.
Asta follows behind them, curiosity luring her in—and fucking Mildred right at her side.
This…
This is really fucking bad.
Not the day, not the morning for the fucking article.
I forgot about it.
I should have stayed in bed.
Courtney should have given me a heads up.
I should never have talked to her.
I should never have gone out to the party—then I wouldn’t have gotten stuck in the blackout.
I’ve been in trouble before… but not like this.
Not with Oliver so furious that, in front of all the faces turned our way in the mess hall, that I’m a bit worried he’s going to literally lunge at me.
His fist trembles on the newsletter.
Serena inches closer to him, her whisper soft, “Oliver—not here.”
Slow, he turns a dark look on her. His jaw is tighter than the ball of lead in my stomach, pulling my insides down.
That look silences Serena.
Her face hardens, but her mouth clamps shut.
Whatever tactics she was about to pull out are cut down. Her face locks.
Before Oliver can finish with that loaded stare on her, before he can turn it back on me—
Eric walks in through the open doors.
Piper rambles on beside him, but the moment his lovely face and his relaxed smile turns on us, the Snakes clustered around the nearest table, Piper is forgotten.
Eric lands his gaze on Asta.
His pace is unfaltering, even as all the stares slide to him, as if waiting for him to pass, and without missing a beat, he moves right for her.
Eric takes Asta’s hand into his, a soft greeting he pairs with a grazed kiss over her sharp cheekbone.
Ohhhhhhhh fuck.
Oh, fuck fuck fuck!
If I was stupid enough to think that this moment couldn’t get any worse, that I couldn’t get in even more trouble, I was wrong.
Eric’s sleeve shifts.
With his hand on Asta’s, the sleeve has lifted a bit higher, and on his wrist…
Everyone looks.
Everyone notices.
Asta’s hand tightens on Eric’s.
Her sharp stare is aimed down at his wrist.
Landon’s brows shoot up to his hairline.
Serena double takes, tracing Dray’s steady frown as it darkens into a look as hard as steel.
Oliver straightens. Slowly. Dangerously.
And my stare starts to burn with the tears thickening my throat.
On Eric’s wrist is a platinum watch.
Landon is the first to break the glass silence. “Is that a Vacheron, Harling?”
His mind hasn’t caught up.
Neither Eric, with his brightening smile, or Landon with his dumbfounded expression, have started putting the pieces together.
But everyone else is threading it together.
Eric shifts his grin to Landon. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? I’ve been saving it for the day I got offered a master contract.”