I crack my knuckles and sit again.
She’s in my …
A bowl of sea glass on the coffee table reflects the minimal light in the room, and I blink, taking out my phone only to lock it again. I rip my glasses off and press hard into the bridge of my nose with my thumb and forefinger.
Make it stop. I have to stop thinking about her up there inmyroom.
This is ridiculous, painful even.
A throw pillow tilts and gives way under my elbow, mocking me.
I drum the pads of my fingers over my bouncing knee.
I’m wide awake, uncomfortable, and stuck in my living room for no reason other than I can’t control my thoughts. All of them swim around, sloshing up and over anything else I can think of to distract myself. I’m drowning.
I’m drowning in her, and I did this to myself.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THEA
I’m only mildly ashamed when I wake up drooling onto Slade’s silk pillowcase. I’m sprawled out, facedown and spread like a smooshed stick bug. My legs are every which way with zero regard for whose bed I’m in.
It’s a relief, waking up with room to spare on either side of me as opposed to my limbs askew and hanging off the twin-sized bed I normally sleep on. Slowly, I peel myself away from the pillow suffocating me and eye the wet spots. Gross.
I slept like the dead.
I barely remember dragging myself to the bed and passing out after getting out of the congressman’s lavish shower—after being beaten by seventeen different sprayer heads. The whole room was shrouded in darkness when Edmond showed me to the upstairs suite, guided me to the attached bathroom, shoved clothes in my hand, and noted my Frosted Flakes would arrive soon.
Oh … crap. My Frosted Flakes.
I scramble up, glancing around the room. My goal is to find the soggy bowl of cereal more than likely set up somewhere in here for me, but I can’t seem to skip past what I’m seeing.
This is not what I’d have pictured Slade’s suite to look like. Not that I spent much time imagining his room upstairs, but in my mind’s eye it was like his bathroom: lavish, refined, affluent.
Except there’s no gleaming marble or staged hotel quality here. It’s … colorful. Lived in and charming. The walls match the linen—cotton-colored walls like the rest of the lake house—but I’m stunned by the vintage movie posters framed in several locations. Is that Star Wars?
Color weaves throughout. Slate blue and moody golden accents flow through the throw pillows, oversized Persian rug, and scattered yet worn décor.
I sit up straighter, my back hitting the unpretentious upholstered headboard of the king bed lodged front and center along the wall. Then, when I decide I need a better vantage point, I shove the covers off, crawling down the center of the bed.
My eyes scramble to keep up. Across the room, tall maple-stained bookshelves fill most of the room. They house one of the most mind-blowing comic book collections I’ve ever seen. The top half is filled edge-to-edge with comics in pristine plastic sleeves, each one angled to read the titles and see the covers like some sort of sacred gallery. Mindlessly, I wander off the bed, sucked in by the vivid colors and iconic casings—some decades old, I imagine.
Sleek pull-out drawers take up the bottom half. I glance around, reaching to pull one out. They’re deep, custom, and meticulously organized. The comics are arranged in tight rows with obsessive precision. This is … wow. Every issue appears cataloged and untouched.
I move on from the first shelf to the next, an identical replica of the last. Shelf after shelf, I comb over them, smelling the faint cedar and inky tang of polished comics. Does he read these? Surely not, but he protects them with reverence.
X-Men, Spider-Man, Thor, Superman—the list is extensive. I wouldn’t recognize most of the names if Tristan hadn’t made me watch the Marvel movies one weekend. Though the most popular comic in Slade’s collection is Batman. There are even framed prints of Bruce Wayne scattered around his displays.
Back in high school, a friend of mine and I watchedMTV Cribs. The show highlighted famous people’s mansions and multimillion-dollar homes, and they always had killer recreational rooms. That’s what this reminds me of—a room that screams playtime, but for adults.
Finally, I make the circle back around to the sleek and modern bed, and I run a finger over the single nightstand, holding a minimalist brass lamp, a smartwatch charger, and—I fight the twitch at the corner of my mouth—a well-loved copy ofThe Dark Knight Returns.
Spinning, I take it all in again, then again. I’m baffled, unable to move as I try to reconcile the rest of the house with his bedroom suite, or better yet, the quiet congressman with this splash of nerd.
It takes another several seconds of pondering, of standing there slack-jawed before the rumble of my empty stomach reminds me I missed my coveted Frosted Flakes. I pad into the bathroom to splash some water on my face and finger-brush my hair. I don’t have an abundance of products like I did in the other room downstairs, but Edmond gave me a toothbrush last night, and I brush out the sour graveyard in my mouth.
The silence is deafening, and I recall the week’s worth of mornings I brushed my teeth with chattering girls in the communal bathroom at EV. My heart pinches—I hope they are okay. I was one of the first auctioned off last night, so I’m unsure how many were bid on, and for the first time since I’ve been here, I want to go back. To know if they’re okay, or as okay as they can be.
