And the room gets very, very small.
Chapter 20
I've reorganized my bookshelf three times.
After realizing I forgot my notebook in the library, I snuck back in there once I was sure Bane was gone and took it back. I stowed it away under my pillow after a mini freakout at the idea of anyone actually reading it, and then focused my neurosis on my room.
Alphabetical. Then by genre. Then by spine color, which is insane, which is something a crazy person does, but my hands won't stop moving and if I sit still for more than thirty seconds my skin starts crawling and I have to get up and dosomethingor I'll lose my mind.
Or think about the bolt of electricity that shot up my spine when Bane grabbed me.
So. Spine color it is.
I line up the blues next to the greens. Straighten the stack of paperbacks on my desk. Fold the hoodie draped over my chair. Unfold it. Fold it again. Refold the shirts in my top drawer even though they're already folded. Wipe down my nightstand with a sock because I don't have cleaning supplies and there's a water ring that's been bothering me for days.
The room is spotless. Has been since round two.
I keep cleaning anyway.
I'm too wired to sleep. Too wired to write. Too wired to do anything useful. My body hums with a restless, jittery energy that has nowhere to go—this low-grade vibration under my skin that makes everything feel urgent and nothing feel possible. Every nerve is on high alert. Every sound in the hallway makes me freeze, head cocked, listening, waiting for footsteps that might stop at my door.
Bane's footsteps.
I shove the thought down. Rearrange my pens.
Margot and Richard are due back soon. An hour, maybe less. She'll want to talk because we haven’t in days. She always wants to talk—that gentle, patient way she has of sitting beside me and waiting until the silence becomes unbearable and I crack. And usually I can handle it. Usually I can give her enough to satisfy the worry without giving her everything. A carefully constructed version of the truth.
Edited.
Safe.
But tonight I don't trust myself.
There's too much inside me right now. Too many things pressing against my ribs, my throat, my teeth—fighting to get out. What happened with Zero. What happened in the library with Bane. The way my body is changing, betraying me hour by hour. The heat building under my skin that I can't control and can't explain and can't hide for much longer.
If Margot sits next to me and takes my hand and looks at me with those kind, knowing eyes—
I'll break. I know I will. Everything will come pouring out and I won't be able to stop it and then she'll know. She'll know what's happening to me. She'll know what Zero did. She'll know what I let him do. What I wanted him to do.
She’ll know.
I can't. Can't let that happen. Can't let her see what I'm becoming.
So I stay in my room. Door locked. Rearranging books by spine color like that's a normal thing a normal person does at seven o'clock on a Tuesday evening.
I'm lining up the reds—three of them, all different shades, none of them quite matching—when I hear it.
Voices.
Muffled. Coming from down the hall. Atlas's office—I've learned the geography of the second floor well enough by now to place sounds. The thick walls and heavy doors muffle everything, turn words into shapes without edges. I can't make out what's being said.
But I can hear the tone.
Low. Tense. Two voices, maybe three. The cadence of an argument that hasn't boiled over yet. The kind of conversation that happens through clenched teeth.
I stop moving. Hold still. Listen.
One voice is Atlas. I recognize the register—deep, controlled, deliberate. He's the one asking questions. Short sentences. Pointed.
