She wasn’t as angry as Harriet. She simply and quietly left. Packed her belongings while I was away and left a letter telling me not to try to contact her. She wanted a clean break.
Sara had to physically restrain me when I found out she was seeing someone else, not even six months after we ended.
“That’s enough,” I told Harriet.
“No, answer me,” she demanded.
“That’s enough, omega,” I warned, raising my voice and baring my teeth.
Harriet was visibly taken aback.
She shuffled off the bed and walked around me—leaving as much space as possible between us—towards the door.
“I’m going to my room,” she said as she moved towards the door, turning her back on me. “Don’t bother me again,” she added, echoing Hannah’s last request.
Chapter sixteen
Bonfires
Cole didn’t acknowledge me as I poured a cup of coffee from the pot.
For the last five days, we had lived in silence, not uttering a word to each other. The morning after… that, which I couldn’t think about without becoming damp between my legs, I had entered the kitchen and found Cole sitting at the little table in the corner with a mug of steaming coffee. I had poured myself a cup, and we sat silently at the table together. That first morning, I had expected her to say… something, anything. All I got was silence. It had become a ritual.
I entered the kitchen, Cole already awake and dressed. I had no idea what time she got up, but I had never heard her getting ready in the morning, so she was either as silent getting ready for the day as she was sitting at the table opposite me, or she was up long before me.
As usual, she got up, placed her mug in the sink, and left without saying a word.
It was driving me crazy.
I dreamt about her every night, waking up sweating with ruined underwear and Cole’s name on my lips. But she never answered.
I would look at my closed bedroom door and wonder if she had heard me. If she were on the other side, ready to open the door that I hadn’t locked to wake me from my nightmare. But I was always alone in the darkness.
Alan wasn’t much for words unless he was taking joy in tormenting one of Patricia’s wayward youths, but still he smiled cheerily. How bad had it gotten that Alan’s morning smile was something I had begun looking forward to?
The days dragged on. The Pack House cleaning was an endless task. Start at one end, finish at the other: just to start all over again.
I was scraping glue off the tables in the arts and crafts room, where a noisy bunch of preteens had been making cards for the seasonal blue moon, which always coincided with the National Assembly. I remembered celebrating with my parents as a child, how excited I had been to make my own card. I’m sure I wasn’t as messy. And why were they making cards so early? It was still a few weeks away.
Scraping dried glue from tables was hard work.
“Were they using superglue or something?” Darren asked, and I got such a fright at the interruption that my scraper skidded across the table, and I made the least dignified mini-screeching sound.
Darren was laughing hard, a hand on his stomach, as I retrieved my scraper.
“You did that on purpose,” I accused.
“Hey! I knocked.” He raised his hands in defence. “You were so engrossed that you didn’t hear me. What’s so interesting about scraping tables anyway?” he asked.
“The last group in here was kids making cards for the seasonal blue moon. Probably the first they’ll remember,” I said.
“Do you remember your first?” he asked.
I nodded.
“I think I was eight—no, seven. We used colourful paper to make paper chains. They were hung all over the school. My mum and I made some for home too. I thought it was so cool.” I laughed.
Darren smiled.
