I feel like I’ll break apart if he lets me go. Shatter into pieces. Slowly, I nod. I glance at Theo again.
Maybe… “I still don’t want to smell… her.”
My gaze moves up to his neck.
Ibithim.
“Washing it off right now.” Theo studies me. But he hesitates. His gaze flickers to Oscar. “I—,”
“Go.” I shift back into him. Still eyeing Theo. “She’ll be here. We need to get hold of Abrams.”
Abrams?
“I’ll do that.” Jake draws my eye from where they’ve been standing, watching me. He walks over to a door set into the wall and enters a code.
A whole damn year.
My head turns. Oscar’s eyes are close. It’s… reassuring. My heart thumps painfully. “Did – did Rick come back?”
Everyone pauses.
I already know what he’s going to say. The answer fills the room around us.
“Never mind.” My voice sounds small. And shaky. “Doesn’t matter, right? I mean… I’m here.”
Here. Alive. Not whatever I’ve been for the last year.
Not that Rick would know that. He’s out there somewhere living his life, thinking that I’m dead.
And he didn’t bother enough to check.
When Oscar’s arms wrap around me again, I hold onto them. His voice grits over my nerves. “It matters. You matter.”
It’s a nice thought.
I just wish I believed it.
Then - Oscar
“Idon’tgetit.”Ascoff in the back of his throat, Brett tosses his notepad down and sprawls on his back on the floor. “None of this shit makes sense to me.”
“And it won’t,” I point out drily. “If you don’t bother finishing it. We need to finish those questions. I’ll go through it again.”
He stretches, a yawn pulling at his mouth before he smothers it with the back of his hand. “Honestly. If Dad wasn’t so obsessed with college, I probably wouldn’t bother. There has to be an easier way. This room is grim, Oz. Put a fucking poster up.”
I feel my lips tug down as I glance around at the bare walls. “Well… Max and Jake aren’t going to college. Maybe I will. I don’t want to mark the walls.”
Not when May and Charles were good enough to let me stay. I’m under no illusions as to why I’m here, at least in Charles’s eyes. I glance at the book again. “Come on.”
But Brett isn’t listening. “Yeah, and they’re gonna be doing the same thing in ten years. Twenty. They’re not exactly going places.”
I stiffen at the judgmental tone in his voice, tearing my eyes from the wall opposite me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Comeon.” He rolls his eyes. “Max thinks he’ll be happy wandering through the forest for the rest of his life. Jake and his trees. Neither of them have any ambition.”
“That’s unfair,” I say quietly. But there’s steel in my voice. “They work hard. But there’s more to life than work.”
And neither of them have the luxury of not working. Something which seems to have passed him by altogether.
