“I can’t.” My voice cracks. “Every time I close my eyes, I’m back there.”
His shoulders stiffen. “You’re not.”
Silence stretches between us. He exhales a heavy breath. “Sleep,” he rumbles again.
I desperately shake my head.
“Try. I’m working.” His gaze flicks toward me, unreadable. Those words hang in the air, rougher than he probably meant them to be. His jaw flexes once before he turns, muttering something I don’t catch. Then he stumbles out my door, closing it behind him.
I sink back into the plush bed, but the sheets are scratchy, and each time I try to close my eyes all I see are their faces. Juliette’s as I’m hauled off stage, the disdain in her snarl.Did the other girls get Culled because of me? Due to Slade’s interruption?
Shadows crawl across the ceiling, the trees and hedges outside slicing through the blinds. I flip the pillow, then thrash the blankets off with my legs before turning over myself.
It’s all wrong. Nothing feels right. Why me?
The air is heavy, and when sleep doesn’t come, I resort to picking the skin around my nails while staring across the room to the bathroom. The small tugs sting, but in the silence of the room, between my rapid heartbeats, they’re semi-soothing.
My mind won’t shut up.“Try. I’m working.”Slade’s words bleed into my thoughts. The ones I still can’t believe he’s spoken.“Wake up.”
I wish I could. I wish I could wake up and my mother still be alive, my parents in a loving relationship. I’d have a clearly defined future, and I wouldn’t be the subject to EV’s Market.
Ugh!
More tears spring up, hot and sudden, and they roll down my cheeks and catch on my upper lip. I shove the suffocating covers off and swing my legs over the side of the bed. Standing, I pad barefoot across the wooden floor, the chill biting at my soles. Once, twice, three times I pace before grabbing the door handle and slipping out.
I creep forward, shoulders tight, eyes flicking down the stretch of hallway in both directions. A faint light comes from his cracked office door at the end of the hall, and I press myself to the wall to move toward it.“I’m working.”
It must be two or three in the morning. Working? As I get closer, a version of some sort of talk radio rushes from the room, and the staccato taps of a keyboard clack away. Quietly, I hover outside the door, listening before peeking through the crack, though I can’t see much of the room. I imagine the desk and computer inside, and I file that away. A possibility, perhaps.The sparse bookshelves I noted before are lined with gray- and brown-colored books. Such a difference between this and his room. Those comics.
When the typing on the keyboard becomes more aggressive, and what sounds like a fist blows on the desk, I jump back and spin, hustling back toward my room. Though I can’t sleep and nagging questions about Slade DuPont occupy my thoughts. Drawn upstairs, I wander there, grateful that while security seems to pace outside the front doors, they don’t hover in every corner of the house.
Slade’s suite is the only room on the upper level, and his door is cracked. With a nudge, it opens farther. I’m not sure why I’m drawn to it. The last time I was here, I’d been half asleep, half panicked. The memories from that night cling to the air as I push inside—the warmth of his sheets, the scent of fresh laundry and linens. When I push the door open another inch, it’s still the only room in this house that feels real. Not curated to perfection with polished coastal furniture.
An odd sensation fizzles up my spine. It shouldn’t make sense, but in a way it does. Everything here is him, and the room itself is buried beneath the restraint of the rest of the lake house. Like Slade and his silent, poised demeanor. Though his voice is buried down in there somewhere.
I shouldn’t be here. I’m fairly certain Slade extended his only modicum of hospitality to me when he offered his bed before, but I can’t help the way my fingers trace the framed posters on his wall. My reflection bounces back at me in the glass frame, and I blink at my swollen eyelids, clumped lashes, and blotchy, salt-streaked cheeks.
I sigh, spinning slowly in a circle to take in his room. The color, emotion, and life that I’ve been starved of for the past weeks are all here.
As I slide my fingers over the bookshelves, I can’t help but thinkthiswood is solid.I trail my pointer over the dust-free shelves, careful not to bump any of the plastic sleeves displaying the comics. The colors are bright and slightly overwhelming, but one in particular catches my eye. Perhaps it’s because the title looks like those bubble letters I used to doodle all over my notebooks in high school.
A throat clears from the doorway, and I spin, snatching my hand away and tucking it behind my back. Slade stands there, arms crossed, one leg crossed over the other as he leans into the doorframe.
I swallow, eyes flicking past him toward the exit wondering just how many strides it’d take to get past him and away. He follows where I’m focused and smirks but not before his brows tighten, drawing down and eyes assessing a way that makes my skin prickle.
I chuck a thumb over my shoulder. “Looks like quite the collection.”
He dips his chin.
“This one—” I point to a bright yellow one with brazen colors, but my fingers accidentally connect with the plastic display case, and it tips over. The comic wobbles and then gives way, tumbling off the shelf. “Oh no! I’m so sorry!” I fall to my knees, reaching for the case to turn it over in my hands. I don’t see any breakage, but—shoot. I sit back on my knees and lift it up to him.
He still hasn’t moved from the doorway.
“I think it got scratched. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—does it damage the comic book inside at all?”
He tilts his head to the side, and when I shuffle forward on my knees a bit, he stiffens.
Looking up at him, I wince. He’s mad. Considering it’s one he keeps in a fancy display, I’m sure this is his favorite, or perhaps a rare one? It’s a Batman comic with No. 1 in the upper left corner.The characters on the cover seem to soar across the page with capes and wings, with a city sprawled behind them, but it’s not fancy.
