Page 197 of Ominous: Part 1
I stiffen as my thumbs hover over my phone screen. He couldn’t be more wrong. When I look into Eli’s eyes, I see intensity. It startles me, sometimes, howmuchI see. Never how little.
But then I think of the balcony when I asked him about his mom, the first time I stayed the night. My scalp prickles.
“Get out of my room.”
Sebastian cracks a soft laugh but doesn’t move.
Me: I mean it. I want you to do it again.Fear is linked with lust in my head, and I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be that way, but while I know logically things could go wrong with the stuff we play around with, it’s exactly the risk that gets me off.
Sebastian sits up then, sighing as he cradles his head in his hands, his back hunched over. I take in the spiky points of his shoulder blades, the knobs of his spine visible underneath his T-shirt.
I think he’s falling apart, and I think no one is going to do anything about it.
This conversation is so oddly normal, despite the subject matter and maybe because of Seb’s needling, that I almost want to put my phone away and hold onto it.
Almost.
Eli: Risky words, baby girl. Like a permission slip for me to do whatever I want with you?
I smile at his question mark. He wants me to sign the slip.
“Fuck his eyes, then. Let’s talk about the facts. If he saw her last, did he watch her go?” Sebastian picks his head up, stretching as he does, arms veering away from each other in the air while he twists one way, then the other. Finally, he drops his hands to his knees and stands, exhaustion in his posture, drooping like a wilted, strung out flower. “Being complicit is still evil, E.” He doesn’t wait for me to respond, and instead, he crosses my room, opens the door, and closes it softly behind him. A few seconds later, I hear his own door close and imagine him collapsing into his dirty sheets.
I look back at my phone, and I don’t think Sebastian meant to really leave an impression with his last comment, but the words seem to ring in my head as I text Eli back before I know I need to get up and shower for the day.
Me: Permission granted. Do whatever you want to me.
When I springout the front door an hour later, calling goodbyes to Mom over my shoulder, closing and locking up behind me, I’m focused on Winslet again.
Eli opens the passenger door for me, but he grabs me by my collar before I can slip into his car and kisses me deep. I’m wondering if he knows. If he’s seen the news, or if someone told him. Maybe his dad? Maybe he found out before I did.
He seems to be in an unusually good mood, though. As I watch his hand on the shifter, I hope it’s from what we did in this car last night, which still smells faintly of sex beneath the usual scent of leather and coconut.
I talk a lot. About books and the weather—gray skies—and how I want a Maserati one day—he laughs and says he’ll help me get one. He asks what time I went to bed. I lie and say early.
I don’t say anything about Winslet. I’m not sure I could say why. It’s not fear, is it?
He doesn’t even bat an eye when we pull up to Trafalgar and see camera crews strewn about the lawn, a police presence, too.
He grabs my hand tight in his as we walk toward the red front door, and I don’t know if anyone looks at us funny, with suspicion or not, as we head down the halls together, hand-in-hand.
But I’m not really focused, as he gives head nods to people in the hallway, verbal greetings to others.
Finally, I can’t hold it in anymore, and I look at Eli before we walk into Latin. “Did you hear?” I ask him, my voice low. “About Winslet?”
His eyes study mine.Dead eyes,my brother said, but it’s not true. Right now, they’re not dead. But they’re not other things either. Sad, surprised, shocked.
He just lifts a brow, tilting his head. “Yeah,” he says, no emotion in his words. “I heard.”
After we find our seats, Eli twisted in his to look at me, I’m still thinking about Sebastian’s words, and I wish I could scrub them from my brain.
“Being complicit is still evil, E.”
32
Eli
“Invite Dom over tonight,”Dad says before he smacks his palm over his mouth, swallowing vitamins from his hand. He grabs his glass of orange juice, chasing it all down with a pinched expression on his face. “You guys can watch a movie or something.”
