The water roared too loudly between us, suddenly intrusive, and I twisted the tap off sharply. The abrupt silence rang in my ears.
“That doesn’t make me a possession,” I snapped, asking myself why I wasn’t yet willing to make Oblivion out as the villain that Bo was trying to paint.
“Then leave,” he shot back instantly, holding his skinny arm out toward the door.
“Just go ahead and walk right out of here. Tell him you’re done. Tell him to let you go. See what happens.”
The image rose before I could stop it… standing in that long corridor, saying the words, watching his face shift.
I didn’t know what would happen.
But Bo saw it in the hesitation I couldn’t quite hide.
“That’s what I thought,” he muttered, and it wasn’t cruel, just resigned to the facts.
Anger flared in me, but it tangled with something else, something I didn’t want to examine too closely.
“You think he’s manipulating me?”
“I think that he likes you. And that’s fucking worse,” Bo said, dragging a hand down his face, and silence settled between us, thick and uncomfortable.
“He protected me,” I said quietly, because that mattered, whether Bo liked it or not.
“From what?” he demanded, and the question lingered.
Because what could I say? That he had protected me from statues? From my own fear? From my own foolish decisions, like when I put myself in danger the night I entered his club?
But that wasn’t what he meant. Bo knew as well as I did that the only person I needed protecting from was the one who had brought me here against my will…from Oblivion.
I looked at him properly then, really looked, and beneath the agitation, beneath the swearing and the bite, there was strain.
“You’re afraid,” I said softly.
“Yes,” he answered immediately, no deflection, no joke.
“And you should be too.”
A sudden knock at the door cut through the air. Three firm raps against the bedroom door beyond the bathroom walls made both of us freeze.
“Miss Shadowmere?” A voice filtered faintly through the wood, one I didn’t recognize, but my pulse spiked regardless.
We both waited, and the second there was another knock, I shot Bo a panicked look. Then I turned the tap back on and whispered,
“You need to leave.”
However, he didn’t move.
“Girly, come on now… don’t forget what this is. He didn’t reinforce this place because he’s bored. You’re not a guest here, no matter how soft he makes it feel,”he pressed, urgency seeping into his words, as if he was worried, I was falling for the dark side or something.
The knock sounded again, firmer now, and I felt it like a pulse against my spine.
“I’m not chained to the bed,”I hissed, though the words felt thin even to me.
“You don’t need chains when the walls won’t let you through,”he shot back quietly.
“Metal bars are obvious. Spells aren’t. That’s the difference here, Girly.”A pause followed, the kind that carried meaning neither of us wanted to say outright.
“He needs you, that much is clear, we just don’t know what for,”Bo added, lowering his voice further, and again, his words hit me like a punch in the gut.
