Page 200 of The Casualty of Us
Plus, I dislike it just as much as he does honestly.
Not being able to reach out and comfort him.
It has this sense of wrongness blooming with my next step that hasn’t been there since last year and makes me want to tear at the papers tucked away in my backpack. Absolutely shred them until they wink out of existence right along with the psychopath, hopefully. The note that came with them stating that his favorite color is blue and that the answer to the next part should keep me busy for a while.
That’s putting it freaking mildly.
I’ve been reading through pages of the thick stack of code in every minute of my spare time and trying to make sense of it, but even after having it for over a week, it still seems like utter nonsense.
The rest of our break outside of the code having been spent watching movies and taking ridiculously long baths and listening to him work out some melody on the guitar while I got ahead in school. Soaking up every brush of his skin and nights of being wrapped around each other with a happy warmth in my chest. With absolutely no word from Ollie or Marley besides that first call except to confirm that they were alive.
He pulls open the door of the dorms, and I stop long enough to look up at him while whispering. “Come to mine first?”
Not wanting us to start the semester off on this note.
He gives me a tight nod, and I run a couple of my fingers across his while heading for the door. I swipe my keycard across the pad before pulling it open and start to trudge up the stairs with him behind me. We pass Kennedy and Bethany along the way and smile politely at their curious looks just like we’ve been doing all year so far. Acting like nothing has changed since mending fences freshman year and hating it.
I blow out a deep breath when we come to my dorm door, swiping the card again and pushing it open before stopping instantly. One foot over the threshold and the other still behind me as the breath leaves my lungs. A warning shoots down my spine next that has my stomach plunging and my eyes frantically searching for the cause.
“Freckles?” Hayes’s hand goes to my hip, immediately picking up on the tension. “What is it?”
I run my eyes over everything again, finding nothing out of place and forcing myself to choke out. “I don’t know.” My brows fall as that sick feeling refuses to leave, and my heart starts torace with it, suddenly out of air and gasping with the knowledge that— “Something’s wrong.”
He pulls me back before the words are even finished leaving my mouth, quickly stepping around me while ordering tightly, “Stay here.”
“But—”
He shoots me a warning look over his shoulder, biting out this time, “Stay. Here.”
“Fine,” I snap, trying to argue with myself that I’m overreacting as he turns back to the room and starts to walk slowly through the kitchen. He pauses there to look between mine and Marley’s doors once before continuing toward mine with my heart refusing to settle the entire time. Some instinctual part of me screaming for him to never open my door even as he comes to a stop, staring for a beat before pushing it open and stepping back.
His eyes start to move rapidly, and his face fills with a look like he’s just been hit.
“What is it?”
His gaze stills on something, brows shooting down with a sharp exhale leaving him. “Call Talan.”
“Hayes.” I take another step into the room, panic taking over in the span of a neuron firing. “What is it?”
“Ophelia.” His head snaps my way, hazel instantly making me still as it locks with the blue. “Talan.Now.”
The rage there has bile shooting up the back of my throat even as I shake my head with each step that comes next. I close the distance between us as he moves in front of the doorway, trying to block my room from view and making me have to duck down under his arm. Finagling my head through quickly before he can stop me, I fight to get my shoulders in for a split second as well. Right up until what I’m seeing registers, and my body goes still as Hayes curses harshly.
“Goddammit, O.”
He moves to the side and grabs my hand, trying to pull me away, but my feet can’t move. My eyes are too busy running over the walls that are covered in pictures of me. Not one inch of the original deep green color is left in sight. Only shots of me from what has to be at least the past two years, if not the one before that too.
All candids.
Some of me leaving the house over the summer with one of the bodyguards in tow. Some of Ollie and I out and about, running errands around town. Some of me grabbing lunch with my mom.
Me. Me. Me. Everywhere I look. A close-up of a smile or my neck.
Some of my breasts and the curve of my back.
But the wall behind the bed…
The wall behind the bed is reserved entirely for that day with Hayes in the library. The first time he had ever gone down on me all laid out frame by frame like the film to a movie. The angle telling me someone was hiding around the other corner and watching every second of—
