Page 111 of A Heart of Bluestone

His eyes don’t stray from mine as he steals the receiver, then punches in the numbers.

He lifts the receiver to his ear.

I am still, sagged, and I watch.

A heartbeat passes before Dray speaks, but not to me.

“Olivia calling for her father.”

Another pause.

My heart doesn’t slow down.

It’s fluttering now, flapping against my ribcage like a bird with a broken wing flounders against a wall.

Then—

“Sir.” Dray says, the way he will address my father until graduation, a greeting of respect, and my heart stops fluttering, it plummets to my wormy gut.

“The lines were disconnected briefly,” Dray lies, the sharp gleam of his gaze cutting into me. “I helped Olivia reconnect the call. I hope you don’t mind.”

I blink at the ease of his lie, one he doesn’t have to tell for me, one that is smooth on his tongue.

And he doesn’t look away from me. Not once.

“Please,” he says, after a faint murmur of Father’s voice that I can’t make out, “don’t mention it. It changes nothing.”

Dray waits a beat before he brings the phone to me. Not to hand it to me, because is trust is that fragmented, but rather, he brings the receiver to my ear and presses it there.

I reach for it.

Only when my fingers clasp around the receiver does he draw away from me. His fingers slip from my jaw, slowly, grazing down my neck to my exposed collarbone.

But he does not leave the booth.

He waits.

“Father,” I whisper.

And the moment I speak, Dray turns his back on me. He slips around the drawn curtain and leaves me to my call.

To my berating.

“Father?” I echo and, twisting around, I slump on the bench.

My voice is hoarse.

He’ll think I was sobbing myself ragged.

Maybe he will be kinder.

I fast find out, that is not even close to the truth.

Father has no mercy—he chews me up and spits me out like I am nothing more than a krum to him.

19

The drapes around the postered beds are enchanted to muffle outside sound coming in. That enchantment isnotapplied to the curtains of the phone booths.

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