Page 48 of Caelum

“Not me. I’m new to TV. New to all the violence on there.” Not a day passed when the boys weren’t watching something that involved someone being punched or stabbed somewhere. Even though it no longer made me sick to my stomach, I still felt distinctly odd watching someone pass away or pass out on the big screen.

“We’re all desensitized to it. From an early age,” he said, matter-of-factly, and I almost hated him for how fast he was moving on the machine and how ‘in’ breath he was. Whereas me, who was going half the speed, was barely managing to gulp down air.

“I think that’s very sad.” If I sounded prim, then so be it. I wasn’t about to complain that seeing such a sight as the one before me was sickening.

I thought it was even more disturbing that everyone could carry on as though this were normal.

“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.” Samuel shrugged as he began to move faster on the machine. I half-stared at him, wondering how he made it move so fast, and then when I did, there was a flash of his thighs from underneath his shorts.

I knew I shouldn’t have been looking, but it had been accidental. They were strong. Thickly muscled. Just like Stefan’s.

Swallowing back the flurry of butterflies that soared loose at the sight, I stared straight ahead and flinched when the first thing Isaw was Reed, staring right back at me. His tee was covered in another boy’s blood, and the sight of it totally unnerved me.

“You hang around with Stefan and his crew a lot, don’t you?”

The question at least put my thoughts back into some semblance of order, which was something. I felt like I was about to die on this machine so it was easier to focus on Samuel than the blinking red digits that told me one thing and one thing only—how long I’d been on here, and I still had another twenty-five minutes of this misery to endure.

“They befriended me on the first day, and they’re nice to me.”

Samuel snorted. “Those guys aren’t nice.”

I cocked a brow at him. “Aren’t they?”

“Nice is relative. They’re only out for what they can get.”

That had me frowning. “And what might they get from me? I have nothing to give.”

“You’re a lay they’re marking up.”

A lay they’re marking up… Wishing that Google Translate could translate that for me, I hesitantly asked, “Why would they want that?”

For a second, he scowled at me. “You don’t know what that means, do you?”

I reached for my water bottle and took a small sip. I’d learned that the more I drank, the harder it was to work out. Sometimes, I even had this sharp pain attack my side. Eren called it a stitch, which, as usual, made no sense to me. What did a needle and thread have to do with exercise?

“Well?” he prompted.

It irritated me that I couldn’t deny I had no clue what he was talking about.

“They want to fuck you.”

My eyes widened—thatI understood. “Oh.”

His scowl deepened. “Oh? That’s all you have to say to that?”

“What do you want me to say?” I inquired, aware that my tone was cautious.

“Doesn’t that piss you off?”

Did it?

I wasn’t angry if that had been his intention. I couldn’t say I felt anything.

Women were a temptation, after all. Adam and Eve had been cast out because Eve had fallen into temptation…

Father Bryan had often lamented about the wiles of the women and how it made men act out, do things they wouldn’t ordinarily do.

If Stefan, Nestor, and Eren—I didn’t include Dre in the list because I’dbarely seen him since he’d been released from the medbay and when I had, he always looked at me like he wanted me to disappear—wanted me, then that wasn’t anything new.

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