“You’ve got a mean little mouth on you,” he said, leaning closer. His dark eyes sparkled with interest as he studied me. His gaze settled on my black eye. “Where’d you get those bruises? Did someone hurt you?”
My stomach flipped at his question. I knew it wasn’t said with any kind of care, that he didn’t give a shit about my well-being or if someone had hurt me, but the flash of heat that shot down my spine told me I desperately wanted someone to care.
I balled my hands into fists.
“Can you help me?” Thunder sounded overhead as the storm moved on, a distant low rolling that reminded me of a tired, grumbling animal.
“Ask me nicely,” he said again, sitting at my feet. He was covered in mud, just like me, and didn’t seem to care a single bit.
We sat there staring at each other in silence.
I refused to relent. Not to this jackass. And as his gaze slowly trailed over every inch of my face, I studied him, too.
He had the most unique features I’d ever seen, and the freckles, though faint, softened his appearance.
But it was his eyes that unnerved me the most.
They were disturbing and I couldn’t quite place why. They reminded of the moment just before a tsunami hit, when the waters drew back from the shore, coalescing into the coming wave. Unavoidable, overwhelming, striking a primal fear in my very core that urged me torunwithout even knowing why.
He broke the silence, his low, scratchy voice raising goosebumps on my arms. “You new here? A freshman? Sophomore? I’ve never seen you before.”
I ripped my eyes from his and said, “If you’re not gonna help get me out of this, can I at least borrow your phone to call someone who will?”
Mine was charging back in my room.
He pursed his lips and pretended to think about it, which only ratcheted my annoyance even higher. “No, sorry. I don’t have my phone on me. I can go get someone for you…?” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.
“You know what,” I said, exhausted with him. “I’m not doing this anymore.” I lay back in the mud, crossed my arms over my face, and closed my eyes, shutting the world out.
If I was lucky, he’d get bored and just leave and maybe someone else would come and find me…but I wasn’t sure there’d ever been a day in my life when I was lucky.
“There.” The stranger’s soft voice came a second after the tightness around my calf disappeared and my foot fell to the ground.
I moved my arms and lifted my head to look down my body. Two pieces of cut wire hung down the wall, and the asshole who’d cut it was pocketing his knife. He raised his gaze to mine, and I looked right back.
Two larger, darker freckles sat underneath his left eye.
Even with the scar, he was pretty.
Pretty and unpredictable and aggravating.
Everything about his face, his presence, was chaotic. There was something really off about him. Or maybe I was just feeling off-kilter and deeply unsettled by this entire exchange.
When he smiled, it didn’t reach his eyes. There was a shroud of melancholy around him that I hadn’t noticed before, and it was so familiar that for a moment, I thought a piece of my own had broken off to find a new owner to haunt.
He stood up, brushed his hands off on the thighs of his jeans, then touched two fingers to his brow in what I assumed was a salute. “See you later, tiger.”
He hopped over the wall and disappeared as if he’d never been there at all.
If I had a single ounce of luck, I’d never see him again.
Ashbrook was a smallertown in upstate New York, and the academy’s campus took up most of the square-milage. The town itself—from what I’d seen from the taxi ride over—was pretty bare bones, and most of the shops and restaurants catered to the students’ needs.
The forest and cemetery were thankfully pretty close to my dorm, so the walk back didn’t take too long. But being covered in mud garnered me some weird stares from everyone I passed, which was unsurprising. The rest of the students were disgustingly clean and impeccably dressed.
I took a shower and changed into dry clothes to get ready for my next meeting in the administrative building.
My roommate still wasn’t there, and I was thankful I hadn’t run into him before I got the chance to clean up. Not that Icared if he saw me dirty and bedraggled; I wasn’t here to impress anyone, especially not with my looks.
