by Eva Chase
Cade didn’t even let me finish the apology. He stepped forward and plucked the bag from my hand to toss it down by the roots of a nearby tree. “I don’t care about what food you bring me. I just want to see you, Baby Bea.”
His voice, husky but steady, slid over me like a caress. My skin twitched with recognition. I had to stiffen my legs against the impulse to back away from him.
“I’m here,” I said. “Next time I won’t let anything distract me from making it on time.”
“I wouldn’t want to become a chore to you.”
“Of course it’s not a chore,” I protested. “I came to Roseborne for you. I’ve stayed for you, even when the staff might have let me leave. This is all for you.”
“Is it? You’ve always had my back, haven’t you, Trix?”
“Always,” I agreed. Except for in those awful moments when I’d screwed him over in ways I hadn’t even known at the time.
“And I’ve had yours.” He touched my arm, running his hand up it to my shoulder. His fingers were warm and gentle, but they held me firmly. “I can get by alone. I have, pretty much, for months now. But it’s better with you here. I wish I’d let you find me sooner.”
I choked up abruptly. “Me too. I mean, I don’t blame you, but—it was awful, not knowing.”
“Poor Bea.” His other hand lifted to cup my cheek, and I couldn’t breathe at all then. He bent his head so close his lips brushed my cheek with his next words. “I want you with me every way you can be. Make the most of the little bit of time they give me.”
My pulse hiccupped. I held myself in place, a twisting sensation rising through my chest. I loved him, and I wanted to prove it to him in every way possible. I loved him as a brother, and some of those ways never felt quite right, even if it gave me a thrill that he wanted me that much in spite of everything. But he deserved everything I could give him.
At least, sometimes he’d seemed to want me that much. The question spilled out. “I thought—the last time, you said it wasn’t right, that we’d taken things too far, and you didn’t want to ruin what was really important.”
It hadn’t been the first time he’d said that and then changed his mind, but he’d never sounded quite that emphatic before. He’d looked so determined it’d ripped my heart in two even with the simultaneous wave of relief.
“Going through all the shit this place forces on you has a way of putting things in perspective,” Cade said, his voice soft and smooth as silk now. “Nothing’s more important than you. Every part of you.”
I thought of Ryo, and Jenson, and Elias just a few hours ago. Cade’s thumb traced across my cheek to my lips. How could I say I was here for him if I wouldn’t give him this? How could I deny that part of me was rejoicing that he’d turned to me for everything all over again? What did it matter if the rest of me balked?
Images flashed through my mind of the snatches of conversation and brief moments of closeness our relationship had been reduced to after Sylvie had come along. He’d swoop in, It’s been too long—I didn’t mean to leave you lonely. Can’t leave you with just those asses who are too dumb to realize that being a little screwed up doesn’t define you. A little chat shoulder-to-shoulder, half of a movie that happened to be playing on the TV, a sense of being lulled into security—and then his phone would ding with a text and he’d be off again.
How could I complain? He was still there; he still made time for me. No one else cared even half as much. But it’d still felt as though he was being torn from me bit by bit.
If I was his everything, then I’d never have to worry about losing him again.
He tipped his head, and I let my chin tip up to bring my lips to his.
Chapter Thirteen
Ryo
“All right, kids,” Professor Ibbs hollered, her hands on her hips. She always called us “kids” even though the youngest student I’d encountered at Roseborne was eighteen. “Twenty laps around the school—and let’s make it snappy.”
She started her timer with a click, and I set off at a lope, falling into pace beside Trix. Gym was far from my favorite class, but having my favorite person on campus there made it more tolerable.
“How fast does she expect us to run?” Trix asked, her combat boots thumping against the lawn. I was lucky that I’d arrived at the college in sneakers that were reasonably suited to physical activity.
“Stick to the middle of the pack, and we’re good,” I said. “I don’t think she has a specific time in mind—you just don’t want to be at the back, or she’ll decide you’re not trying hard enough.”
I could tell from the twist of Trix’s lips that she could guess what the punishment for lack of effort might be. I’d been hit by Ibbs’s retaliatory stomach cramps or dizzying headaches enough times to want to avoid them.
The one benefit to the perpetual clouds and damp air was we didn’t have to worry much about overheating. The cool breeze flicked under my T-shirt as the fabric swayed with my strides. A couple of our classmates who’d initially taken the lead dropped back, the exertion taking its toll. You couldn’t push too hard in the first few laps, or you’d burn yourself out before you were halfway done.
No one wanted to be left at the tail end of our jogging procession, though, so I couldn’t slack off. My breath became ragged, making it difficult to say anything more to Trix. She looked as if she was focusing on keeping up just as intently. When we passed around the back of the school, her gaze slid toward the swimming pool and the patches of bare dirt she’d unearthed yesterday.
By the time we’d completed all twenty laps, my calves were burning and my shirt clung to my back with sweat. Ibbs yelled at us through a series of push-ups and sit-ups that would have been less uncomfortable on the mats in the actual gym room, ordered us to run through a row of tires she’d set up, and finally decided she’d harassed us enough for the day. “Take a walk and cool off,” she said, and strode away without bothering to make sure we actually followed that last instruction.
I swiped at my forehead and wandered toward the pool with Trix. She studied the plot of earth with a rueful smile.
“It’s too early for anything to be coming up already anyway,” she said. “But it’d feel like a real victory to see a little sprout in there.”
“Soon enough,” I said with easy confidence. If anyone could pull it off, it’d be her.
She glanced toward the woods then, and her expression darkened in a way I couldn’t remember ever seeing before. Her body tensed slightly as if anticipating an insult or an outright blow.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
Her head jerked around. “Yes, fine,” she said, faster than I could totally believe.
She’d seemed a bit distracted all morning, now that I thought back. I’d assumed she was just mulling over her various plans, but maybe knowing exactly how her brother had been consumed by the school was eating away at her. She might be beating herself up for not figuring out how to help him faster.
I couldn’t contribute anything to those plans, but I could ease whatever stress she was carrying temporarily. “Come here,” I said, giving her hand a little tug so she’d sit with me by the edge of the pool. “Nothing like a good massage after a workout.”
“Is that so?” she said, her smile coming back, but despite her skeptical tone, she sat. I rested my hands on her shoulders and dug my thumbs into the trim muscles there until she let out a sigh that told me I’d found the right amount of pressure.
“Even if those old seed packets you found don’t work anymore, we could probably find something viable in the groceries, right?” I said, letting my thoughts slip to easier problems than utterly overthrowing the powers that be. “Some of the fruits and vegetables will have seeds, and those will be—well, reasonably fresh.”
Trix nodded, her head lolling forward automatically as I moved my hands toward the back of her neck. “That’s a good idea. I’m not sure what we’ll get that would grow quickly… Or germinate with so much cloud cover…
but I could try a bunch of things. Even if just one starts growing, at least I’ll have managed something.”
“You’ve already managed a hell of a lot more than most of us,” I had to say, and added, “I’ll keep an eye out when I have kitchen duty and collect what I can.”
“Thank you. That would be great.”
I felt more than saw her mood change again in the shifting of her muscles under my pressing fingers, as if she’d drawn inward, away from me, for a moment.
“You don’t have to do all this stuff for me, you know,” she said. “I mean, I’m sure there are more interesting things you could spend your time on than searching the meal ingredients for seeds or whatever. Things that actually matter to you.”
“Helping you out matters to me,” I said. “Trust me, I’m not putting myself through any kind of torture here.”
She made a dismissive sound and then just leaned into the massage for a few minutes in silence. As I worked my thumbs down her back on either side of her spine, she drew in a wavering breath.
“You’ve been trying to help me pretty much from the start, as far as I can remember,” she said. “Even though I kept forgetting who you were, so you must have had to start over from scratch each time. Why not make friends with some girl here who’ll still know who you are two weeks down the road?”
“You did end up fixing that problem,” I pointed out, and she swatted my knee to say that wasn’t enough of an answer. I paused, kneading my thumbs into her lower back and thinking of the first time I’d seen her, of our conversations during that initial cycle when none of us had any idea how she’d fit in here or what the staff would do with her. My chest tightened up.
“You were just so determined,” I said. “And you’re the only person I’ve encountered who’s ever come here knowing there’s something wrong with this place and willing to brave it for someone else’s sake. That made you pretty different right from the start. I probably would have just admired you from afar, but I happened to stumble on you toward the end, when the things you’d seen were really getting to you and you were starting to think it was all hopeless—and somehow or other I managed to say a few things that reassured you. Until then, I hadn’t really thought I could help anyone at all.”
“I think I remember a little of that,” Trix said quietly. I wondered which bits she’d retained. The memory was vividly clear in my own mind: Trix hunched over on one of the benches in the carriage house, the shaking of her breath bringing me from the doorway to her, the way she’d tensed at my hesitant squeeze of her shoulder and then leaned into me as if she’d been starving for a hug.
It’d felt like an honor to be allowed a rare glimpse of vulnerability beneath her defiant exterior, even if she hadn’t meant to let anyone in. Even more of an honor when she’d smiled seeing me the next day and hesitantly warmed up to my attempts at friendly conversation.
And then she’d crossed some line the staff hadn’t been willing to tolerate, and I’d lost the fragile connection we’d only just been forming. But the fact that she’d let me in at all had given me all the encouragement I needed to reach out to her again, to be what she seemed to need even if she hadn’t yet shown it.
A swell of emotion rose inside me. I slid my arms gently around Trix’s waist and tipped forward to kiss the bare skin at the crook of her shoulder where I’d swept aside her hair earlier. She set her arm over one of mine, her fingers gripping the back of my hand in a way that wasn’t a rejection but didn’t feel entirely encouraging either.
“I don’t want to be a selfish person who just takes without giving anything back,” she said.
A rough laugh spilled out of me. “You don’t have to worry about that with me. There isn’t a whole lot I can get out of, well, anything at the moment. You can assume I’m making the best of the situation that I can.”
Trix swiveled in my loose embrace to look me in the face. “What do you mean about not getting much out of anything?”
I probably shouldn’t have said even that much when I couldn’t explain the penance Roseborne had enforced with any more specifics. “Don’t worry about that either,” I said. “It’s mine to deal with—and I’m used to it.”
She studied me with those light green eyes. “You’ve never said anything before about how the school is punishing you. That’s what you’re talking about now, isn’t it? As much as you can reveal what they’re doing.”
I gave her a grimace that was the most direct answer I could offer, but the question in her gaze only got stronger. Maybe it’d be better if I laid it out as well as I could. Who knew what she’d imagine I was going through if I didn’t? And then she’d know there wasn’t any point in trying to make me happy in the first place.
“I told you that before I got pretty heavily into drugs,” I said slowly. “And I did a lot of awful things, screwed things up with the people who mattered the most to me, because all I cared about most of that time was chasing the next high. Losing myself in the haze where everything felt so good. Well, back then, before I came here, I could feel really good. I could be just as happy when things were going well as I could be sad or angry when they weren’t. I could get all kinds of pleasure out of life, even if I stupidly focused on just one.”
I could almost see the wheels turning in Trix’s mind. “But you can’t now?” she said, her brow knitting. “You can’t feel good—or happy, or whatever—about anything?”
I tested the words on my tongue to see what I could say if I was only confirming or expanding rather than stating it outright. Only vague terms came together into something coherent. “It’s not completely gone. Just very… dulled. Compared to other, less enjoyable types of sensations, which there are many of here at Roseborne.”
“So then…” Trix drew farther back from me, her expression shifting from puzzlement to something tighter. “All the stuff we’ve done together—when you kissed me just now—you haven’t really been into any of that?”
Panic flashed through me. It hadn’t occurred to me that she’d make a leap like that so quickly—or that she might feel betrayed by it. “No—I mean, I’ve wanted to, all of it.”
“Because you liked the idea that you were ‘helping’ me. Because I’m some kind of project to prove you’ve gotten better.”
“Trix.”
She was already scrambling to her feet. I followed as swiftly as I could manage.
“It’s not like that,” I protested. Even if it had been a little, it certainly hadn’t been all or even mostly that. “I like you. I care about you. More every time we get to be together. Any way I can make you feel good, I— It’s—”
I couldn’t force out any explanation that would sound right. The fact of it was that seeing her happy, seeing the pleasure I could set off in her, made me feel better than anything else ever had in this hellish place, even if the feeling was muted.
“I don’t want to be some kind of charity case to you,” she snapped when I couldn’t finish my sentence. “I don’t want you pretending to get off just to make me feel good about myself. You don’t know me very well at all if you think I’d be okay with that.”
She stormed off toward the school building before I could make another attempt at clarifying, although I might have only dug the hole deeper. As I stood there staring after her, I didn’t feel much of anything but empty.
I love you, I thought. As much as I was capable of loving anyone in my current state.
But if I’d said that, after what I’d just admitted to, she’d never believe me.
Chapter Fourteen
Trix
The sitting room sofa wasn’t any more comfortable than my dorm bed, but my bed was two stories up, and the sofa had been conveniently at hand when I’d finished dusting the foyer. I lay with my head propped on the stiff pillow, gazing up at the molded detailing around the edge of the ceiling and trying not to think about anything else.
“You look like you’ve had a bad day.”
Violet’s melodic voice carried to me t
inged with irony. Wasn’t everyone here having a bad day pretty much all the time? Compared to what the regular students went through, I wasn’t sure I could complain.
I shoved myself upright enough to see her standing in the doorway, her dark curls falling loose around her face to partly shadow the scarred side, her arms folded over her chest. I couldn’t tell whether she wanted some kind of answer to that statement or she’d just been trying to provoke me. My former roommate’s temper was variable at the best of times.
“It hasn’t been one of my best, that’s for sure,” I said. My thoughts slipped back to Ryo’s face, so fucking earnest, as he’d told me that he didn’t get any enjoyment out of being around me, that he couldn’t even feel happy about anything we’d shared, and the hot prickling of embarrassment shot through me again.
I didn’t know what was worse: that I’d somehow not realized he wasn’t all that into me, just going through the motions, or that he’d thought just going through the motions was perfectly fine if it eased his conscience about the shit he’d done to other people before. Maybe both options were equally awful. Either way, the last thing I wanted was to see him again, but I’d only be able to keep that up until dinner time. A small school didn’t allow many opportunities for getting some space.
He was better off without me anyway, wasn’t he? I didn’t have any idea what I really wanted either. Last night, with Cade… Had I betrayed Ryo and the other two by going along with my foster brother’s advances? Had the tentative agreement that we’d take things as they came without worrying about commitments only included the three of them, or anyone I happened to end up kissing too?
My hand rose to the starburst scar on my forearm of its own accord. Cade had needed me, and I’d been there for him, like it was meant to be. What had I carved the matching birthmark into my skin for if I was going to hold back when he reached out to me? I owed him a thousand times more loyalty than anyone here.
