Page 49 of Shattered
My phone vibrated; the message was from Garrett:Terrariums?
You done with her?I responded.
Yes. Let’s go.
Instead of finding him on the main floor and escorting him to the Terrariums, I met him in the gallery room. This time, he had two long islands ready. He offered me one, but I thought about what Rourke had said about being drugged. Garrett hadn’t shown any signs like that, but you could never be too sure, especially after Jake had fooled me for years. Besides, I didn’t need to add alcohol to my anger management problem. I could play it cool. I had practiced for years. Pretending to be normal.
“I’m fine, thanks,” I said.
I found the cooler hidden under the couch and grabbed an unopened water bottle and downed it. Garrett’s eyes darkened into coal the longer his gaze lingered on me, swallowing the water down as if I was stranded on a deserted island. My blood pressure rose, making my head ache like it was impaled with needles. That stare. As if his judgment of me was swirling inside of him like a damned storm.Just say it.
“You hate me,” I said. “You think I’m a bitch for attacking the new girl.”
“No.”
“You think I deserved it,” I said, motioning to the red splotches on my cheeks. “That I should have been the one to get bruised. Not her. Not the poor little thing.”
“I think you’re taking your anger out on Kendall.”
I met his gaze and stared. Was I that obvious, or did he know more about me than I realized? We had been in the Terrariums a few times, but not many. Was there more to our interactions than what was visible on the surface?
He was right, though. It wasn’t Kendall that had gotten under my skin. It was Rourke, still picking at my damn nerves. He wasn’t even here.
“I’m not judging you,” he said, choosing his words carefully before he continued, “Kendall is an outsider. You were trusting your instincts.”
I waved a dismissive hand. “Sure. Whatever.”
“Your actions were genuine reactions to the situation. You did what you thought was right.”
His word choice gave me pause. What did genuine reactions have to do with this? Did he think that a ‘genuine reaction’ somehow gave me the excuse to give the new server a black eye during one of her first weeks here? To rip her hair out?
Iris had managed to stay away from her; how come I couldn’t control my anger too?
“Genuine?” I asked.
“There’s a certain honesty in our natural reactions.” He sipped his drink. “You knew that you needed to hit her. So you did.”
“You’re saying that like you approve of what I did.” My hands were shaking. How could he approve of something so violent? So uncontrolled? “You do approve, don’t you? You don’t like her either then?”
A grin flitted across his mouth. Those lips, thick as if they could devour me in one gulp.
“I don’t have an opinion about her, one way or the other,” he said, “But I find primal instincts fascinating.”
I shook my head. What was he talking about?
None of this made sense becausehedidn’t make sense. He had searched me out in the Dahlia District before we even met. And I knewnothingabout him.
“Who are you?” I asked. “What do you want from me?”
“Is that the answer you need to know?”
He narrowed his eyes, and those dark coals made me shiver. Was there truly something eerie about him, like Iris had said? Or was that suspicion floating around in my mind right now, because she had mentioned it?
Iris thought everyone was strange. Like Teagen had pointed out. It was a passing thought. A trick of my imagination. Garrett was a club member. He was nothing to be afraid of.
“Go on, Mel,” he said. He lifted his drink. “What’s on your mind?”
I studied the paintings, trying to look anywhere in the room, but him. The flush of colors blending into a sunset above a gray sea. The bleakness of a dark ocean. The moon rippling on stagnant waters, as if a body would come floating up from within it, and no one would notice. A body a killer had put there.
