"Both!" Tom replied, bouncing over to Alexander. If Tom didn't have a girlfriend, he probably would've gone after Alexander. It would've been terrible. Two high energy, low common sense guys. Thank goodness for Sydney.
"Sadly, we're both straight," Alexander confessed. He stretched, not having bothered to even fake being useful today. Not a notebook or text in sight. "But he's pretty cute when he's flustered."
Tom's shoulders sagged. "Damn. Guess I'm glad you didn't take the bet."
"Yeah - but now I’m suspicion."
Nose scrunching up, Alexander bounced out of his seat. "Huh?"
"‘He’s pretty cute when he’s flustered,’" I repeated, and he shrugged.
"Yep! Goes all pink."
God, he was thick. Skipping off without a care in the world, Alexander probably planned to forget the conversation as soon as he turned his back to us. Must’ve been nice to be so secure in your identity. Well, not that Alexander knew what that was like, but Tom did. Tom had a blunt appreciation for good looks and easy smiles. Supportive family and a happy childhood left him without reason to question who he had those feelings toward, and as envious as I was of him, I respected his decision as much as I was determined to keep my own. But - as a liar, I'd gotten good at spotting others. If Alexander wanted to pretend he wasn't getting his heartbroken on the regular by Chad, that was his prerogative. He decided on being the straight jock frat boy. It wasn't my place to say anything else, and I hoped that if Alexander looked at me and saw the same that he'd keep his peace too.
And maybe it was the calm of recognizing part of myself in another that did it, but that night, I woke up back in the house. Mahogany beneath my feet. The smell of something savory baking. Mostly just the scent of onions caramelizing. I didn't have a nose good enough to discern anything else though the scent being anything besides smoke or mothballs was pretty weird.
Gray sat in his regular seat, but his book was nowhere to be found. His lips pressed into a tight line. A slight pink tinged his sharp cheekbones, and the small dread in my heart that he was some sort of mental projection of my emotions toward the incident with Reggie came back full force. The two looked nothing alike. Gray had angles Reggie didn't. Too thin - too pale - too fragile. More like a work of art than a human had any right to be. Which made sense. He wasn't real after all.
"I am sorry if I made you uncomfortable."
I blinked, sitting up to stare at him. "Me? Uncomfortable?"
"I know that I've been - been sheltered," he told me. "No one has ever...I mean, that is to say...I am not the sort who is unused to attracting such attention; however, I do not share such inclinations."
Scratching the back of my head, I sighed. "You're a shit liar."
"Excuse you!?"
Not real. Unlike Alexander, confronting Gray didn’t negatively affect him. I couldn’t out him. He wasn’t real, so slouching back into the couch, I sighed. "I'm a good liar. I've grown up lying, and maybe it's because I'm always afraid somebody will find out despite that - maybe that's why you're so horrible at it, but whatever you say - you're..." and I couldn't. Even in my head - even in my dream, I couldn't call him out in full. This was a delusion. A figment of my imagination, but I couldn't out him. Somebody cooked in the kitchen. That governess seemed like a nightmare. I couldn't do it. "Sorry - I'm...I'm projecting. I've never told anyone about me, and I - I guess I just wanted somebody else like me to talk to about...things."
His chin trembled for a moment before he bit them. "I may not understand or share your...habits, but I would not be adverse to being a kind ear."
No clicking. No stones through water. Nothing but the warm smell of something cooking. Somehow - it formed safety around the room. As if a good dinner could make all the world better. Wash away all the terror. The fear.
What would it hurt? A traitorous whisper wrapped around my head. This isn't real. You could say it - say it here if nowhere else. What would it hurt?
But my mother cooked. We ate dinner around a table after saying grace. Onions and garlic - gravy in a pot - those scents reminded me of home and being fed - being cared for, but they bound up my tongue too. I couldn't tell my dad. I would've been dead to him. He would've thrown me out. Disowned me. Beaten me - but my mom...she would have tried to fix me.
I didn't know when I hunched over, head in my hands and elbows on my knees. My brain sputtered in confusion. A black out with a tight chest feeling. Then Gray touched my shoulder, and my body convulsed, flinching as he held out a handkerchief toward me. When had I started crying?
Chapter Seven
"How have you never had pizza?"
Day to day, the question sounded reasonable. Surrounded by early days electricity, it tasted weird in my mouth the second it came out. I honestly had never seen Gray eat, so the question gained a whole new level of ridiculousness.
Since our awkwardly emotional reunion, the manor hadn't shifted. Everything stayed pristine. Perfectly glowing floors. Additional blankets and pillows on the sofas - which were still stupidly hard and uncomfortable Victorian statement pieces. Every time I woke up there, a new scent tickled my nose, luring me into a weird state of comfort before I even opened my eyes.
Obviously, my brain was taking it easy on me.
Gray shrugged, but he rubbed his palms across his knees. Always did that when I used words he didn't think he should understand. Which was ridiculous. Pizza had been in Boston since the early 1900s. If he knew about Ted Williams, there was no reason for him not to at least have heard of pizza.
"I enjoy Mrs. Hayward's cooking," he told me.
He dropped names as if I should know them. I had a list going on my bedside table whenever he mentioned someone new. Governess (heel-wearing, horrifying), Mrs. Hayward (apparently the cook, a motherly woman akin to Mrs. Weasley or every plump, happy motherly woman I'd ever seen on TV or in film), Mr. Cohen (never leaves his room, a soldier from 'the Great War'), Helena Graham (cries a lot, has a doll she considers her daughter, likely suffered multiple miscarriages (guess on my part)).
They had to mean something, but I wasn't ready to look into them seriously. More than likely, my brain pulled from my textbooks. Which meant my psych degree turned the manor into an insane asylum. Not exactly a fun thought. Seemed like something better suited to the Joker, but it wasn't like I had Cheyenne breathing down my neck asking me questions anymore.
Curled up under the blankets, I clucked my tongue. "What if we brought a slice back for her? I'm sure she'd like getting someone else to cook for her."
His fingers drummed for a moment before he shook his head. "My governess would not give me permission - "
"How old are you?" I asked, and when he didn't immediately answer, I sighed. "There's no way you're young enough that you need to listen to what your governess says all the time."
"Even if that were true, she isn't the only one I'd need permission from if I wanted to leave," Gray said.
His voice fell low and gentle. Whenever he spoke like that, the timbre of his voice dropped almost as deep as my voice, but it carried the posh English clip which set my heart to flutter like a nerdy school girl. The urge to ruffle his hair had my hand moving, but I shifted, keeping my fingers knotted in the soft woven fabric of the blanket. If I touched him, this would all shatter again.
Which was stupid. This wasn't real. Everything here was in my head. Gray wasn't real.
"What if I made pizza for you?" I offered.
He blinked, tilting his head. "You can cook?"
"A bit, yeah."
How hard could pizza be? I could find a recipe, memorize and make it in real life enough that I could walk through the steps in a dream. It would be worth it. I loved pizza. Gray was part of my mind - a very horny yet prudish part of my mind, so he would likely love pizza too. Nobody would be hurt if I wanted to see him happy. Honestly, it was like self-care.
Before he could answer, the manor shifted as if someone had pinched one end of the room and pulled it like taffy. Peddles ploppe
d into water. Gray paled. The growing calm which seemed to reveal his true age - closer to mine that I had first believed - vanished, and the youth-inducing terror returned, widening his eyes.
She wanted him dead. The Governess was going to kill him. I knew it. His face screamed he knew it too, but he didn't move. Gray remained in his seat, tensing but waiting as if he had just come to accept that there was nothing he could do.
I couldn't say what made me do it. Or even how I did it. Everything inside me had frozen with fear last time she interrupted us, but this time, all I could think about was how scared Gray looked. He shrunk into himself. A sort of horror I never allowed myself to imagine. The face I envisioned as a child taking over my face if my father ever learned what I was - who I loved, so I couldn't stay still this time. Darkness loomed. Crawling in at the corners, waking threatened, but I moved. I stretched with the taffy pull, leaping forward toward Gray.
His eyes remained beyond me. Focused on the stairs. I dove. His knuckles whitened. I grabbed his hand, and -
And I woke up.
Chapter Eight
No matter how many showers I took, a cold sweat enveloped my body. A layer formed like lamination upon my skin. No scrubbing rid me of it. Three days without dreams - my skin red and raw, I sequestered myself in my dorm room.
"He's not on drugs," Tom hissed. Whether he spoke with Chad, Alexander, or our R.A., I had no idea, but I wasn't so sure he was right.
Sure - I hadn't taken any drugs, but something had happened. Maybe Cheyenne got pissed enough to poison us. But then again, Alexander ate the cookies she baked as an end-of-project celebration too. If he had the same symptoms, Chad would've caught on, right?
Knees pulled to my chest, I huddled in the corner of my bed, hidden behind the height of my desk which abutted the end of my bed and the wall. My stomach churned. Sick. Not hunger. I ate recently. Didn't I? I remember eating. Maybe thirst?
My water bottle sat on one of the bedposts. All I had to do was reach out, but my arm wouldn't move. Somewhere inside of me, I tore myself apart. Beat all honesty out of me. Wrecked the terrified reality of who I am, and nothing I did could stop that, and it was me, so I shouldn't have felt guilt, but like a bitter coating on my tongue - nauseating and thick to swallow - guilt settled about my shoulders, weighing me down until I became a stone. Unable to move. Unable to think. Just staring at my blankets - gathered around my feet.
When my eyes fluttered closed, I expected blackness. Empty space. A vast abyss like the last few nights, and there it stood. Cold and stretching like death - unfathomable. Untouchable. A stark reality which threatened to drown me. Discomfort and unsettled, I broke beneath the tidal wave of helplessness. My mind was not my own. My body - exhausted. His hand on my forehead, a welcome chilling relief.
"You've got a fever," he whispered, sitting down beside me.
The sheets scratched at my bare chest, but I didn't have the energy to fling them off. All I could manage was to cling to him, burying my face into his side as my arms wound around his hips, keeping him planted at my side.
His hands brushed through my hair. Nails scratched across my scalp, and under his touch, I melted even as my body ached. Tears gathered in my eyes. Liquid I didn't have to spare seeking release. I held tight.
"Don't leave me. I’m sorry - don't leave me." My lips moved. The words vomited out without my consent.
He shushed me. "Mrs. Hayward says I'm to take care of you. I'm not going anywhere."
And like a demon - a snake in the garden - he shifted, and the smell of soup - chicken broth and something more which I couldn't concentrate on enough to name - curled around my nose. Forcing my eyes to open, I pushed beyond the blur until Gray's face came into focus. His pale features and calm countenance soothed my soul - a poisonous balm.
"You need to eat something," he insisted.
At that moment, the pomegranate seeds made sense to me. Trapped in phantasmagoria, I lost sight of all sense, and with an indescribable hunger building beneath my skin, I could only open my mouth and take what was presented before me regardless of how it might later haunt me. Each spoonful of broth coated my tongue. Swallow by swallow, the bitter taste faded, but the weight of it remained as my sight cleared, and my focus - lost for longer than I cared to admit - honed in on every nuance of Gray's movements.
"You're hurt."
Wincing as I shifted, wrapping my arms tighter around him, Gray bit his lip. When I refused the next spoonful, he sighed. "It is only a bruise."
"You're lying," I insisted.
My fingers slid over his sides, tracing his ribs - too defined beneath his shirt. Though he didn't seem keen on my exploration, Gray remained seated. Perhaps my pitiable state forced him to indulge me. For all my concentration on him, sense hadn't returned to me, so I shifted, unbuttoning his shirt until his undershirt could be tugged up, and all the bitter nausea returned. His flat stomach remained untouched, but his back - visible from where I clung to his side, had raised red lines. Welts crisscrossed.
Again, he shushed me, thumbing away the tears which rolled down my cheeks before I even realized they were there. Somewhere in my exploration, he had placed the bowl aside, and seeing his arms empty, I lunged upward, wrapping a hand around the back of his neck - the only bare spot on his back that I could see and dragged him down atop me.
A delicate pink highlighted the sharp cut of his cheeks. The warmth of him leaked down into me from where he straddled my thighs, sending my pulse racing. He was incredibly close, and every bit of me ached. Not to kiss him. Not even to touch him. Just an incredible churning of my body. Too tired, too desperately lonely for me to exactly intend where my lower brain immediately ventured, but his prior discomfort should have put me off it.
"I'm sorry," I whispered, trying to find some way to build distance between us without letting him go. "I...I don't know what I'm doing."
His fingers ran through my hair. The soft drag of his nails over my scalp sent me sinking down into the sheets of the strange bed in the strange room in that shadowy room where only he practically glowed in the dim light. When I laid far enough to lay my head upon the pillow, he slid off to the side and gently removed my hands from his sides.
"You need to sleep," he told me.
A joke. Funny man. If I weren't sleeping, the two of us wouldn't be here - in this strange room - wait, I've thought that before. I've never fallen asleep in a dream, but darkness - friendly and warm - crawled into my vision. All the while, Gray remained beside me. His hand, holding mine, kept me grounded in a dream, sending me deeper into sleep.
Chapter Nine
"Man, you're a stressful roommate," Tom complained as we headed to class. "Do you always get sick this often?"
Chad snorted. "Or he's doing drugs."
"Come on," Alexander urged, bumping shoulders with me. He meant the gesture to be friendly, but it nearly knocked me off my feet. "You can tell us. No judgment."
"Sure. Safe space," I drawled.
And my stomach sank. Chad - rested for once - blinked. I could hear the gears between his ears turning. Any other day, and he would've been too tired to realize, but leaving the air charged with possibility was dangerous. He would only read into it if I acted weird, but my heart buzzed like a hummingbird's wings. Frozen - though still walking in pace with them, I swallowed, but Alexander just bumped into me again.
"Yeah. Totally," he declared, and like that, the spell broke.
"I'm fine. No drugs." I drew an X over my chest with my finger. "Promise."
Tom hummed. His steps bounced as he declared, "It must be the air. Like Heidi, right?"
"What?" I asked.
Nodding along as if someone else were already agreeing with him rather than asking explanation, Tom said, "You're from back town nowhere, right? This is - like - your first winter in the big city."
"Not exactly winter yet," Chad argued, shoving his hands in his pockets where Alexander's swung too close.
"Still cold," Alexander retorted.
Brilliant Tom. He had to be the ideal mix of well-intentioned and gullible. Anyone else - like Chad - would've been suspicious. Hell, Chad had called their RA on Alexander even when he had been drinking too. Unfortunately, their RA was like a larger, slower-talking Tom, so there were way more 'next-times' and second changes than anyone deserved. Maybe that's why Chad always ended up drinking too.
"Yeah," I said. "Probably. Must've been the flu."
Chad scoffed, but he only grumbled, "You better not get me sick."
We shuffled into our seats. Professor Haggard hadn't arrived, but his teaching assistants all sat in their perches, waiting to shut the doors and take names of any stragglers. As we settled in our usual Wednesday sprawl, my eyes caught on a huddle down front. Cheyenne sat with her things, taking up two spots, but that wasn't new. What was, however, was Maddix standing in front of her. He hissed, speaking way too low for me to hear, but the way he glared at anyone who walked by and stopped talking, whatever he was saying had to be interested. Not for the first time, I wished I could read lips.
"Not that it'd help," a familiar voice drawled. "He's purposefully minimizing his moments."
A cold sweat beaded on the back of my neck. In dreams, Gray's soft voice had grown more comforting the longer I spent with him. However, while I was awake, his presence set me off kilter. My stomach churned, yet I dared not turn around. As if to torment me further, he ran his fingers through the short hairs at the back of my neck. He leaned forward. His cheek hovered only inches from mine as his indecently pretty profile came into view.
Not many people had good profiles. But his nose tilted slightly up at the end. It wasn't terribly noticeable from the front, but from the side, it gave him a spritely appearance. His long dark lashes curled up, and the worried pink of his lips parted like petals. With a pointed chin, he went from Victorian dandy to ethereal fairy in profile, and I didn't need to think about Gray in a loincloth or with flowers crowning his hair.
All That We Say or Seem Page 4
