Page 87 of Take Me (Dark Odyssey 5)

“No!” Christian roars and the sound of his voice stabs through me freezing me in place with immediate fear.

In one swift move he gets up and snatches the glass egg from midair before it falls to the ground preventing it from smashing.

He golds it and Rosie bursts into tears. He looks at her like he doesn’t know what to do with her and I look at him panicked because he scared me too. I would almost believe I was looking at Miguel again, for the tone his voice took. He used to scream at Rosie all the time for crying when she was a baby.

I snap out of the trance and go over to her to comfort her but she just cries harder.

I look to Christian and see him looking on, his face apologetic and that’s the only thing that distinguishes him from Miguel right now.

“I’m…” he begins but doesn’t finish. “I’ll be back in a while.”

I watch him walk away.

That egg got him worked up. I just don’t know why.

I feel terrible about it and like we’ve imposed in the way I hoped we wouldn’t.

He said he’d be back in a while but he doesn’t come back for the rest of the day.

Chapter Thirty

Christian

I stare down at the little golden egg in my hands and feel like a prick for scaring Rosie the way I did.

I know I scared her and Lilly too. I saw how she looked and how her features worsened when Rosie started to cry.

I couldn’t explain that the egg was the only thing I had left that Amelia gave me because I don’t ever talk about Amelia and I never planned to with the woman who reminded me of her.

Amelia gave me the egg for my eighteenth birthday. She used to call me the rich prick who had everything. So she gave me something I didn’t have. A golden glass egg she got from some shit shop on main street from a gypsy. The thing probably cost next to nothing but it’s the meaning it holds for me.

Watching it fall was like watching her fall over the side of the cliff all over again and I couldn’t allow it to break.

I don’t know how Rosie found it, but I keep it locked in one of the drawers in my desk in the library. I can only guess that Vera must have left the drawer open while she was cleaning and Rosie got in there. Vera was whipped out last night so I can imagine she must have been tired.

I stayed away for the day, keeping to myself in the study like some loser watching day turn to night.

My thoughts have been on Amelia more than I’ve allowed since the incident.

I met her when I was sixteen. She was fifteen and the year below me. Super talented and clever. An real ace in everything. Everybody knew her at school. Everybody knew she was the girl to save you if you were flunking anything. literally anything.

That’s how good she was. She’d save you from the shit of being called in at the end of the school term for the dreaded meeting with the principal and your parents.

By the time we met, I was in the height of badness. I wasn’t even going to class anymore. When I had exams I just gave all the answers I knew were wrong even though all the right answers were crystal clear to me.

I played football and that was my thing. If anybody had a problem with it they could fuck right off. And if they didn’t all I’d have to do was get one of my cousins to deal with them. Georgiou was always Mr. goody with his dark side. He’d act like a patron saint with his good grades and level manners to smooth things over by day, by night he’d be charming virgins out of their panties.

No one would ever guess that though about him. When it came to me and the shit I got up he leave me to it.

It wasn’t a problem until it was and the school threatened to kick me off the team if I didn’t shape up. no one could understand what the fuck could have happened to me in the space of eighteen months. That’s how long it took me to damage my rep. I went from the studious student to a nightmare from hell.

It was the coach who arranged for me to have lessons with Amelia.

The first month was hell, the following month she guessed my little plan and called me out on it. I was impressed but I shouldn’t have been surprised. Months later the good girl started dating the bad boy. Months after that the bad boy fell for the good girl and the night I took her virginity I wanted her to be mine forever.

In the summer of the following year her mother remarried. His name was Tobias Carson. I was in my senior year and had down a full three sixty. I was focusing on my work and I think that’s how I missed all the signs that Amelia was being abused at home.

She covered it well. It would have gone on for the whole year by the time I guessed what was happening. I was too late though. Anything I wanted to do would have been too late. she deteriorated in mind and body and started cutting herself. When she found out she was pregnant that destroyed her.

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