There were more voices. Some raised in anger, one low and controlled. But I couldn’t hear what they were saying, couldn’t grasp onto the different sounds.
Hands touched me, and I curled up tighter, desperate to protect the core of me—the one part of myself that wasn’t broken yet. If I lost that, there would be nothing left.
“I’ve got you, Tal. I’ve got you.”
The low murmur near my ear was a dream. It must’ve been.
Because it sounded like Mason.
My muscles ached.
There was a dull pain in my left side, in the ribs right next to my heart.
My eyelids were puffy and swollen, and it felt like my eyeballs scraped against the backs of my closed lids when I moved them.
I felt a little nauseated, and a sick feeling permeated my entire body, like my blood had been tainted somehow.
A low groan fell from my lips as I shifted under the covers, realizing as I did that I was in my bed.
In my dorm.
In Prentice Hall.
Jumbled memories assaulted me, and for a second, I squeezed my eyes more tightly shut, shoving the worst of them away.
My dad hadn’t pushed me down the stairs again. He was dead, gone for over a year now. Adena had been the one to push me, and I’d fallen down the front steps of Craydon Hall. The fall hadn’t broken anything, I didn’t think, unless I was on some amazing painkillers—but then why the fuck did my head hurt so bad, with the throbbing ache I usually got after crying?
I groaned again and blinked my scratchy eyes open…
Only to find myself staring into a pair of emerald green irises.
Mason had pulled the chair away from my desk and was sitting two feet from the bed, his elbows braced on his knees and his unwavering stare fixed on me. Unlike the softness that had taught me to fear cruelty from him, his gaze at the moment was hard, angry.
“Why the fuck are you doing this, Talia?” he demanded.
I blinked, pressing against the mattress to sit up. I was still wearing my school uniform, although someone had taken off my shoes and dragged the covers over me.
“I didn’t do anything.” My voice was scratchy too, and I wondered if I’d been crying. When the world had seemed to go silent, had I really been screaming? “Adena—”
“I know what she did.” Mason’s voice was sharp as a razor, an edge to it that I’d never heard before.
“Well, there you go then.” I swallowed. My mouth was dry, my lips chapped. “If you’re so fucking pissed about it, go talk to her.”
“Believe me, I will.” If anything, his voice grew darker, and I had a fleeting thought that I’d just found one more reason to be glad I wasn’t Adena.
“Good.”
I could feel the panic attack I’d had hovering at the edge of my consciousness, the memories and flashbacks lying in wait like rabbit holes hidden in a dark forest. I couldn’t let myself fall into them again, so I forced myself to throw the covers off and crawled toward the foot of the bed.
Mason rose as I reached the end of the mattress, coming to stand near me as I stepped onto the floor on unsteady legs. The entire left side of my body was sore, but the fact that I could take a full breath told me no ribs were broken.
“No, it’s not ‘good’, Talia. Nothing about any of this is ‘good’.”
He was standing close to me, like he might help me if I started to fall, but he didn’t touch me as I found my balance.
“Fine,” I muttered. “Whatever you say.”
My head still throbbed, and even though this gruff, irritable version of Mason was easier to deal with than the one who had murmured so tenderly in my ear just before I blacked out, that didn’t mean I wanted to deal with any version of him at all.