The Misfit

“Shit,” I muttered, and I glanced around for somewhere to hide her. Explaining what she was doing in my room, in the middle of a very friendly conversation, would have been a terrible fucking idea. I needed to pretend she had never been here in the first place.

“Under the bed,” I urged her.

“Are you kidding?” she hissed back. “I’m not going under—”

“Now!” I ordered her. I didn’t have time for her to get prissy with me – I needed her safe, and this was the only way I could think to do it.

She got to her feet and scrambled as quickly as she could underneath the bed. I made my way over to the door, calling out to the person on the other side.

“Sorry, I’m just out of the shower, give me a second...”

I hoped it had been enough to buy me the time, and when I opened the door and saw who was standing on the other side, I felt a dose of panic hit me hard. Arnold. Had he seen her come in here? It was clear he had made some decisions on what he thought he wanted from her, and he would be more than a little pissed if I had been able to get there first.

“Hi,” I greeted him, trying to sound as surprised as I could that he was right there in front of me. “Everything good?”

“Yeah, all good,” he replied, and he glanced past me and into the room. I stiffened, praying that there was no small detail of her left here – if he worked this out, both of us could be done for. No way would I let that happen, not when I had just found her again.

“Can I help you with something?” I asked.

“Have you seen Arianna?” he asked. I paused, trying to read his tone – did he know she had been here? Had someone spotted her coming in? If they had, I was already fucked.

“No, not recently,” I replied. “I was just catching up with you and then I came up here to take a shower.”

He didn’t reply. He might have played at being the nicer one of the two Schwindels, but I knew better than to fall for it. The ones who were kind were usually the people who had no need to prove themselves, because they had already done it a million times over. A guy like this? No fucking way he hadn’t already made his mark on this gang.

“I see,” he replied. “And you didn’t see her around before that, either?”

“No, not at all.”

“Not around the house or anything?”

I shook my head.

“Nowhere,” I replied.

“I see,” he muttered. I wasn’t sure he believed me. I held my breath as I waited for him to say something else, waited for him to make it damn clear he could see right through me and that he didn’t buy a word coming out of my mouth. I needed, now more than ever, to stay calm – I couldn’t let any of this get the better of me. I had to stay cool...

“Well, if you see her, let her know I’m looking for her,” he remarked, and I nodded at once, letting out a breath.

“I will,” I promised him. And with that, with one last peer into the room behind me, he turned, and headed off down the corridor.

I pretended to close the door, but in reality, I had it propped open just far enough that I could see him walk all the way to the end of the hall and down the stairs. He might have been trying to catch us out, hang outside the door and catch her sneaking out of my room, and I wasn’t going to let it happen. This was day one, and I intended to at least last a little longer before I allowed my true feelings to become clear.

I watched as he vanished down the stairs, and I pulled the door shut and locked it. I wasn’t going to let anyone else in here for now, not until I had managed to sneak her out. I wasn’t going to do anything this fucking stupid again. Whatever we’d had, for that brief moment, was out of our systems, and we were moving on.

Fuck, I hoped so. I waited a few more seconds, and then turned to speak to her again.

“You can come out now. He’s gone.”