Chapter 14 #2
“Ezra—”
“That night we talked in the courtyard, I told you my mother left us. That’s not true.” Ezra closes his eyes, and Mallory immediately falls quiet at the admission of another lie. “My father killed her.”
Too many emotions cascade inside her at once—anger, fear, empathy, compassion. The mismatched concoction makes her queasy, palms slippery with sudden cold sweat.
“He never admitted it.” Ezra opens his eyes, and they’re rimmed red.
“The public story is that she moved to Europe to be with a younger man. I only knew her for a few years, but I don’t believe she would have done that.
She loved me—she never would have left me like that.
” His gaze hardens. “I think she wanted to leave him. And if he couldn’t have her, no one could.
That’s where I come from. That’s my family.
” He shakes his head. “It’s all I know.”
For a moment, Mallory doesn’t say anything. She could climb out of bed, get dressed, leave. Bury the remaining hurt, try to forget all the divergent ways he’s made her feel.
Or she could stay.
She’s not sure what makes her decide. But her free hand lands on Ezra’s jaw, fingers caressing his cheekbone.
“Ezra,” she says. “The man I met in the chapel—you’re nothing like him.”
Ezra’s expression is impossible to read, caught somewhere between despair and something strikingly numb.
“You don’t understand,” he says. “I’m terrified I’m going to hurt you in some way, like he did to her.
Like I’m genetically programmed to be evil.
Like it’s something I can’t control.” He swallows.
“Maybe you were right to want nothing to do with me. Maybe you should leave before it’s too late. ”
His tone is all too familiar, and she realizes that Ezra’s hatred for himself sounds a lot like the self-loathing that’s pinned in her own belly.
The fear that somewhere, deep inside, she’s just like her mother.
Predisposed to reject romantic love and forge a hardened shell around herself, believing that being lonely is better than being the cause of others’ pain.
Maybe it’s not weakness that’s kept her in Ezra’s arms after he deceived her. Maybe it’s forgiveness. Grace. He may be her undoing, but she’s allowing herself to come undone.
“It’s already too late,” she says. “I’m where I want to be.”
Ezra holds her stare, dozens of emotions shifting in his eyes. And then, he squeezes her hand, hard.
Their code but reversed. Because this time, Ezra is the one who’s scared.
Understanding, Mallory squeezes his palm back. Once. Twice—
Ezra’s mouth is on hers before she finishes the second pulse, but the message is woven into his kiss all the same. This is what’s real.
He’s softer with her this time, his broad, ring-covered hands carefully caressing her bare skin in the muted light. Kissing his way down her body, giving her everything she wants without making her beg. And when he’s inside her again, he’s patient and focused, like she’s the only thing he can see.
Ezra holds her afterward as they drift in and out of sleep, lazily kissing in tiny, shared stretches of consciousness. They stay tangled up in each other until his watch beeps and he drags a hand over his face, grumbling at the thought of getting up.
“I want to come back and find you here,” Ezra says, trailing kisses along her jaw. “Better yet, let me keep you in my room forever.”
Mallory laughs softly. “What about class?”
“I can tutor you.” Ezra grins against her. “There will be tests. But also extra credit.”
“Hmm.” She playfully bites his lower lip. “And the dining hall? I’ll get hungry.”
“I’ll feed you.” His mouth hovers over hers, suddenly more serious. “I could take care of you, Jules.”
Ezra stamps another kiss to her forehead before climbing out of bed. Mallory leans back against his pillows and watches him dress, taking in his tall body. The textured veins in his arms. The stark, muscular lines in his chest and abdomen and thighs.
All the parts of him that now belong to her.
He tugs on his coat and leans down to kiss her again.
“Don’t go,” she whispers teasingly, and he groans.
“Believe me, I don’t want to.” Ezra straightens, swinging his messenger bag over his shoulder. “Be back in an hour. Don’t move.”
She makes a show of pulling up the covers and catches sight of his grin, boyish and unabashed, as he closes the door.
For a few moments, Mallory listens to the distant hum of traffic, the occasional trill of a bird.
She tries to fall back asleep, replaying last night in his room after they left the theater.
How he kissed her like he was already starving for her again.
His endless stream of praise when she was on her knees for him, telling her how fucking good she was being.
How he laid her onto his bed and asked if he could tie her wrists, turning her into a writhing, pleading mess with his fingers and mouth, until she was desperate for him to fill her any way he wanted.
Mallory sits up. She can’t think about this right now.
She swings her feet over the bed and surveys the empty room. Textbooks open on his desk, just like in her dream. His nightstand, with the clock stuck at 3:33. And his drawer—
His drawer is slightly askew.
Mallory looks out the window before gently opening the drawer. She pokes a finger inside, nudging a box of condoms, several lighters, and two orange pill bottles. Migraine medications.
She’s about to slam the drawer shut, feeling wrong for snooping, when another bottle catches her eye, this one larger and amber colored. She reaches carefully, tugging it loose. It takes her a second to realize she’s holding an iron supplement. In an injectable form.
Mallory bends, looking deeper into the drawer, and her eyes widen at a container of syringes toward the back. She pulls the box out, holding both objects in her lap. She’s heard of iron pills you get at the pharmacy—Arden’s mom was anemic and used to take them—but this is something else.
Without meaning to, she brushes the bite marks Ezra left against her clavicle last night. Recalling the taste of his blood-slick kiss, the shape of his lips around her red, wet fingers.
And the smallest ounce of suspicious fear pricks at her neck.
What if, a tiny voice asks inside her, Ezra isn’t done lying to you?
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says aloud, shaking away thoughts of Anne Rice novels and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Reading about the Vampire Panic has clearly messed with her head. There’s no such thing.
Mallory tucks the items away, feeling foolish, and reaches for the discarded rosary beads on the nightstand. She pulls the strands over her neck, arranging the cross between her breasts, and grins at the idea of Ezra coming back to find her wearing this and nothing else.
Before she can sink into the fantasy, a rapid-fire knocking on the window makes her jump.
Heart pounding, Mallory whirls. The knocking grows louder, and her pulse skips at the faint sound of her name.
“Mal,” someone yells from outside, “are you in there?”
Without enough time to dress in her clothes from yesterday, Mallory snatches a sweatshirt from Ezra’s bureau and yanks it on, the hem practically skimming her knees.
She glances at her reflection in the mirror, wincing at her swollen lips, the obvious kiss-tinged bruises on her neck.
Ignoring the rise of an embarrassed blush, Mallory marches to the window—and her eyes widen to find Saskia amid the reddening trees, holding a fistful of papers.
Mallory cracks the window. “What are you doing here?”
“Do you ever answer your phone?” Saskia replies. “I’ve been calling you for hours.”
Frowning, Mallory grabs her bag. She rummages, finding her cell phone turned off. Her frown deepens. She doesn’t remember doing that.
“Sorry. What’s going on?” Mallory narrows her eyes. “Are those the blueprints from the library?”
“Yeah, and you need to see this.” Saskia peers into the dorm, a strange look on her face. “I can’t believe you’re here of all places.”
Another wave of embarrassment floods her at the awareness that Saskia can see the rumpled bedsheets, her discarded clothes on the floor.
Mallory steps closer to the window, blocking her view, but it just makes Saskia peer closer at her.
Something unnameable flickers in her eyes as she registers Mallory’s flushed complexion and mussed hair.
Mallory pushes away her discomfort to ask—
“What do you mean, ‘of all places’?”
“I couldn’t sleep, so I studied the blueprints,” Saskia replies.
“I wanted to figure out which building used to be the actual sanitarium. So, I layered these two sketches together: the old one from the eighteen hundreds, and the one from today.” She jabs the paper.
“Thorne Hall was the sanitarium. As in, the building you’re in right now. ”
Mallory’s mouth falls open. “What—?”
“And this room? Ezra’s dorm?” Saskia lifts a brow. “Do you want to know what it was used for?” She holds up the blueprints. “Look.”
Mallory glances at the two drawings, flicking back and forth between past and present. Her breath rushes out at what’s written just above Saskia’s finger. A word that turns her stomach and lights a fresh candle of fear inside her.
Six letters, one syllable.
M-O-R-G-U-E.