Several minutes passed by as I sketched her on the thick paper with entirely too much charcoal smeared over it. I had no idea what I was doing, and it had nothing to do with the fact that I was totally distracted by Gemma and the smallest of dips over her body. Halfway through staring at her, I decided to just draw a stick figure to make her laugh again, but when I looked up at her once more, her eyes were closed, and all the breath was sucked from my lungs. Beautiful.
Her tiny chest was rising and falling slowly, her leg that was twisted to the side had fallen more relaxed, and her hand that was sitting nicely over her hip was sprawled out as her eyes remained closed. Gemma was so damn beautiful that it stole my breath. I couldn’t stop looking at her. And I meant, really look at her. Not a fleeting glance, not a quick look down at her lips before I had to take a step back so I didn’t accidentally kiss her in front of the faculty. No. I mean truly stare at her without any holdbacks. It was world-stopping. She wasn’t just hot or someone I’d like to fuck because I was attracted to her…she was more. She radiated beauty, and it honestly made me feel a little uneasy.
Was this what Cade felt when he saw Journey? If so, I regretted every single thing I’d ever said to him about the situation. Everything.
Placing the charcoal down on the easel, I wiped my hands on my pants and started toward her. It was nearing midnight, everyone likely tucked away in their beds since curfew had started hours ago. Cade had texted once more that Bain had gone back to his room and that his roommate had confirmed that he was asleep in his bed—not that I cared at the moment. I was having an even harder time staying on task than usual. Some of that had to do with the brown-haired girl lying in front of me, and some of that had to do with the anger still simmering over my father leaving Jack. What was the point in it all if my father wasn’t staying true to his word? If he wasn’t watching over Jack like we’d bargained for? I was still so angry about Monday.
Looking down at Gemma once more, feeling the anger drain, I silently cursed because I knew the night needed to come to an end. We both needed to get back to our rooms before the duty teacher became suspicious over our tutoring session lasting this late if we had a little run-in walking back to our rooms. But the longer I stared at her, the more blood rushed to my dick. Don’t do it. Don’t cross the line again.
Just as my hand shot out to wake her, listening to the faint sound of rational thinking in the back of my head, she twitched, rooting me in place. Her head flopped to the side, falling slowly before her eyes squinted as if she were flinching. I waited as my hand stayed stretched out. A few pieces of hair stuck to the side of her face, and that was when I realized that her hairline had a bead of sweat covering it.
Her breathing had picked up as I moved closer to her, and she grew tense. The soft way her hand was lying just a few moments ago sprung open fast, and my spine stiffened. She jostled a little bit, and I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I reached out to steady her, to wake her up, but then all of a sudden, Gemma started to pull at her wrists. Both of them, back and forth her hands would move. The left would rub the right, and the right would rub the left. She made a little whimper as I took the last step over to her, and then I froze as she pushed her white sleeves up, the button on the side of the uniform top popping from her aggressively pulling and tugging, and that was when I caught sight of something.
What the hell was that?
My eyes stayed glued to the pink, raised skin circling her wrists. I wanted to pin her hands to the desk to inspect them further, wondering what they were, but another noise came from her, and it snapped me out of my confusion. I reached for her. One of my arms went underneath her legs, and the other went underneath the small of her back. One second she was lying on the hard surface, and the next she was crashing onto my chest as I slid down the front of the desk and cradled her in my arms. Her eyes sprung open, her hand ruffling my shirt tightly in a firm grip.
“You’re okay,” I said, pulling her in tighter. “You fell asleep.”
Her head snapped down to her wrists, and I watched as her expression went from confused to mortified. Her eyes grew wide, her cheeks hollowing out. She knew I saw what she had been hiding, and her entire body tensed.
There was a hot burn that whipped through me. I was angry over the fact that I’d just now noticed her wrists. The pieces clicked together, and I was infuriated that I hadn’t thought to question the way she pulled her sleeves down when I grew too close or the reason why she was in her school uniform most of the time, and if not, she was weari
ng long sleeves. I remembered being frustrated over the fact that she was wearing a sweater at the last claiming, because I wanted to see more of her skin like the rest of the girls. Shit. What were those?
Gemma moved to get off my lap, and I pulled her in closer. “No.” My words were as cold as I felt on the inside. “Don’t you dare climb off me.” Her shoulders sagged, her chest heaving with ragged breath that did nothing but spin shit up in me that shouldn’t have been spinning.
I felt the shift of Gemma’s head over my chest, and I peered down at her, catching the look in her eye. I wasn’t sure what she was thinking, but I planned to demolish every last negative thought in her head. “Don’t try to hide from me. I saw them, and even though it’s ripping me to pieces not knowing what you were dreaming about so intently that you felt the need to scratch at those scars, I won’t ask.”
Gemma sucked in a shaky breath and swallowed. I leaned in close, my lips touching the softness of her ear. “But if I find out who put those there, I will fucking kill them. I promise.”
And for once, I didn’t even care that saying those dark words made me sound just like my father. I was beginning to see that there was no limit I wouldn’t go to for her, and that in itself was a total game changer.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Gemma
I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to kiss him and drink in his promise like it was the only thing that would keep me alive, which was fitting because, with Richard still breathing, death wasn’t such a distant thought.
Isaiah’s hands were planted firmly on my body, and they were doing nothing but enticing me further. It was the way he said it. The way he looked down at me like he wanted to burn the world to ash instead of looking at me with pity or asking questions that I wasn’t ready to answer.
My body was humming. I was angry and desperate in my nightmare—the same one that had been reoccurring since Monday after my phone call with Richard, and maybe even because of what Isaiah and I had done during the bonfire. There was the nagging voice in the back of my head that told me it was wrong that I had let Isaiah do things to me that I knew Richard would kill him for. Even kill me for. If he knew that Isaiah had even touched me with the tip of his finger, he would lose it, just like he had lost it on my mother when a man had looked at her for too long.
I remembered that.
It was one of the only memories I had left of her.
Why did the bad memories always stick out more than the good? I never understood that, and to be honest, it really wasn’t fair.
My body was wound up. Like I was seconds from exploding. The nightmares always felt so damn real, and I was usually left shaking afterwards, but being in Isaiah’s arms was doing something else to me. Something that was so much bigger and scarier.
The room was warm around us, the moon still streaming through the window behind the desk as the warm glow from the lamp fell upon our heads. Isaiah’s thick eyelashes were lowered as he took in my face, his grip on me only growing tighter as his words soothed the goosebumps on my skin.
“Did my promise scare you, Gemma?” The roughness of his voice was like a match lighting me on the inside. It didn’t scare me at all. In fact, it…it was hot. And I didn’t care if that was wrong. “Does it scare you when I say things like that? Because if there is anything I’m willing to give up my humanity for, it may be you.”
My heart skipped as his admission floated around me. The drop in my stomach turned to intense fluttering, and I couldn’t stop myself from falling. I felt it. I felt the fall as if I had been pushed over the ledge of a tall cliff.
Isaiah.