“Welcome,” he says. I notice then that his expression changes. I don’t know how to explain it—like he’s looking at something behind his eyes. My jaw cracks with a yawn as I stretch in the chair, and my eyes droop.
“I think I need to go back to my dorm and sleep this off. If I don’t go now I won’t leave this chair for the rest of the night.”
“Okay, let’s go.” I hand him his sweatshirt but he doesn’t take it. “Keep it, it’s cold as fuck outside.”
I mumble as I put it on. “Ugh. I thought winters in Lynden were shitty, but this place takes the fucking cake.”
“I haven’t noticed. I usually run hot. It’s?—”
“A shifter thing, yeah, yeah.” I roll my eyes as he leads us down the marble staircase and out the doors. The icy coastal wind nearly knocks me over at first, so I scoot behind him and cinch the hood of his sweatshirt until I can barely see out of it.
“Are you using me as a human shield?”
“Well it sounds bad when you say it like that.” I tease as his body continues to block the worst of the wind on the way back to the dorms. Even though his sweatshirt dwarfs me, by the time we reach the common room my teeth are chattering and I’m shivering like a drowned rat. He parks me in front of the enormous fireplace as it flares to life when he snaps his fingers.
“Stay.”
“Sir, yes, sir,” I burrow into his sweatshirt, which muffles my sarcasm. But—I notice it again. Where he’s looking at me but not seeing me.
“You want dinner?” He finally asks, but I shake my head.
“I don’t think I can stomach it. I’ll go back to my dorm as soon as I thaw. Thanks for today.” I give him a tired smile, which turns into another jaw-breaking yawn. There’s a moment when my bleary eyes meet his and I’m transported back to Samhain when we were on the patio, before everything went tits up.
“You’re welcome,” he says quietly. “See you tomorrow?”
“Yeah.” I smirk. “Still going to teach me how to knock Luther on his ass?”
He scoffs, shaking his head. “Baby steps.”
I can’t help but laugh before remembering I’m wearing his sweatshirt. “Oh shit—sorry, let me—” I begin to take it off, but he stops me.
“I think you need it more than I do right now. I’ll grab it tomorrow.”
“Oh no, twist my arm why don’t you?” I roll my eyes, but we both grin. “‘Night Ramsey.”
“Goodnight, Nyx.”
My eyes close as soon as my head hits my pillow, practically swaddled in his sweatshirt that I finally admit I really, really don’t want to take off.
A fresh blanket of snowfall glitters in the early morning light when I finally wake up the next day, curled into a little ball inside of Ramsey’s sweatshirt under my covers. In the privacy of my room, I let myself breathe in the scent of him, a mixture of sweat and ozone and ash.
I let myself pretend that it’s his warmth surrounding me, and it makes me wonder about everything that happened on Samhain. About what might have happened if Killian hadn’t pushed him.
Fucking—ugh.
Why did Killian have to push him? I don’t even know half of what he was talking about. I just saw Ramsey get more and more upset. And then his eyes changed and even the air felt heavier. For a split second, he almost looked?—
Scared.
Which is why I haven’t brought it up. If he doesn’t want to talk about it, I won’t make him. God knows we’ve both got our own damage. And this place is lonely enough that I don’t want to alienate one of the handful of people who seem not to care that I’m a poor, powerless nobody. Which is yet another reason I’m kicking myself for sleeping with Killian.
God damnit.
I roll over and groan into the pillow at my own idiocy. When I finally have enough courage to face the day and open my eyes again, the fucking tarot deck is dead center in the middle of my desk. Precisely where I didnotput it. Itshouldbe at the bottom of my backpack, which is at the bottom of my wardrobe, underneath a pile of clothes and shoes.
“It’s too fucking early for this,” I mutter, rubbing sleep from my eyes.
Nope. Still there.
