Page 80 of The Casualty of Us
I suck in a deep breath, trying to make my brain string together an explanation that’s going to make sense. “Two plus two will always be four, there’s no getting around that. It will never be five or six. It will always be four.” He pulls back a little, arms loosening around me, and I have to fight the urge to chase him. “There’s no room for…interpretation in math. It just is. I both admire and despise it for that, I think.” I catch the way he’s squinting at me with confusion and swallow nervously, trying to surmise what’s left in my head. “I need more freedom than math gives me. It’s too cut and dry. Two plus two will always be four, and while that’s comforting, it’s also boring. It never surprises me.”
He pauses. “And you like to be surprised?”
Something that’s almost a laugh escapes me at the clear note of doubt in his voice, and it has me admitting, “No, but I also need it…because if two plus two was always four, then the bet would’ve been on the raptor to rule us all.”
He stays silent, and I force myself to slowly start loosening the hand I still have wrapped up in his shirt—knowing that I probably shouldn’t even be here at all—when his voice stops me. “What’s it about a pangolin, Freckles?”
The soft question has my heart picking up pace all over again as I call him out. “You’ve been talking to Ollie.”
Because it’s not a guess, my twin has been sharing secrets.
There’s no other reason he’d ask that.
His arms tense around me instantly, like he’s scared I’m about to run, and he’s not entirely wrong there. “I’ve been…” He clears his throat, gaze still holding mine through the darkness. “Struggling, I pushed him.”
And I’m sure he did. In fact, I have no doubt with the way his eyes still track me constantly, but Ollie knows better too. He’s smarter than that and knows it would piss me off to no end.
Which means…he was following his own motivations there.
Whatever they may be.
“If you want to know something about me, then ask me.” I suck in a quick breath, trying not to slide back into the panic. “Don’t go around my back and whine to—”
“I didn’t whine,” he interrupts quickly. “But you also weren’t leaving me a lot of options.” I open my mouth, wanting something to come out, but it’s silence that greets me instead as another quiet rasp fills the space between us. “You barely talk to me most days.”
“You hurt me.” I gasp finally, laying the truth out there in the dark between us in a way that I’d never be able to in the world beyond the door.
His body goes still, heart suddenly thudding hard against my hand. “I know, O.”
“No, you don’t,” I toss back. “You don’t because you don’t know what it was like in there.” That knot in my chest gives a twist that has me barely managing to get out, “The constant fear. The panic that Ollie was dead. The way I wanted to cry at every little noise and hated myself for it a little more each time.” Every word is more uneven than the next, and my face pinches up with another quick gasp before I confess to him, “I couldn’t take it.”
He lifts an arm from my waist, bringing his hand up to cup my cheek. “O…”
“And I started to get so angry,” I choke out. “Right there,” Pushing my hand down where I still have it tangled up in his shirt, I drop my gaze down to the spot. “I could feel it just sitting there, growing as the seconds ticked by, and it just…didn’t end. Not the fear or the panic or the circles in my own head.” My next gasp has a hiccup escaping with it, and I lift my eyes back up to his hazel ones. “So when it started to take over everything else, I let it.” I give him the truth now in a way I haven’t for anyone else. “I needed it. Let it turn into…something, maybe rage, but it was all I felt by the end.” His thumb brushes down my cheek, and it all starts to spill out brokenly, “I needed them to hurt. To hurt as badly as they had hurt me. To lash out. I wanted it. I would have done anything—given anything for—” I catch another hiccup before it turns into a sob, quickly swallowing it down to get out, “And then I had to let that go—I had to find a way to let it go, Hayes.” My bottom lip gives a tremble, and I finish quickly. “I knew it the second I saw Ollie again.”
“The pangolin,” he guesses softly and correctly—because that’s the moment my brain latched onto it.
“The pangolin,” I echo, voice cracking over the creature’s word. “I had been watching some stupid documentary about them before Ollie asked me to go get ice cream that day, and…”
I trail off with silence filling the space between us, and my stomach gives another flip because the truth is…I understand him better than I’ve wanted to admit.
Even to myself.
Ever since the lunch table that day. It’s why I’ve been speaking to him at all.
“You said you don’t even know how to be a person, remember?” I wait until he nods before admitting quietly. “I don’t think I’d like the person I would be if it weren’t for Ollie.” His thumb stills on my cheek, and I try to make my lips lift despite the heaviness hanging in the air. “I wouldn’t…Ollie reminds me of the good in the world.”
That it deserves to be saved.
“Reminds me that despite all evidence from humanity to the contrary, people are also capable of incredible good.”
“That the pangolin survived,” he supplies quietly. “Not its predator.”
Working it out perfectly.
“And it didn’t even have to burn the world down to outlast them.” I snort, remembering something. “They don’t even have vocal cords, actually.”
His eyes hold mine, chest rising with a slow breath that has him tensing. “And then I happened.” He exhales suddenly, voice dropping low with the next guess. “You must hate me.”
