I felt him come even closer, and I clenched my lips together. His hand rested beside my head against the door as my palm shook along the doorknob. My heart raced so quickly I could hear it in my ears.
“I know.”
He knew?
All of a sudden, his hand wrapped around my waist, and he spun me around, backing me up against the door. His arms caged me in, and his chest was moving so fast I felt a small amount of fear seep in. “Don’t you ever go back there. Do you hear me?”
I didn’t answer. Instead, I just kept a hold of his steely gaze, seeing the shadows flicker against the wall behind him. He looked like a villain at that moment. And maybe he was.
He dropped his gaze down to my lips, and I froze. We were both breathing erratically, but there was a sound down at the end of the hallway, and his head dropped before he shoved off the door and growled like a terrorized wolf.
A voice carried through the empty space. “Who’s down there?”
“It’s Isaiah,” he answered, keeping me pinned to my spot. “I was walking Gemma back to her room after tutoring.”
“Tutoring?” The voice grew closer, and it sounded like Mrs. Fitz, but I wasn’t positive. My heart was beating too loudly to hear anything else. “Didn’t you have an away game? Surely you two weren’t studying this late into the night.”
“Get in your room, Gemma. You’re filthy.”
I didn’t miss a beat. The door was opened, and the smell of lavender and chocolate filled my senses immediately. And for the first time all night, I finally felt safe.
I gulped in the air, and Sloane popped up from her bed, holding a Cosmic brownie in her hand as her laptop slid to the side. “Finally! I woke up, and you were gone—”
The second I latched onto her, I cracked. A strangled cry left my lips as the fear and anxiety I’d kept pushing away since the moment I’d taken off toward the forest was back and in full action.
Two warm arms came around me as I sank to the ground and placed my forehead on my knees, letting the tears wash down over my dirty face and clothes. “Shh. You’re okay. You’re okay, Gemma. You’re here. You’re going to be fine.”
Sloane was right. I was going to be fine because I was leaving soon, and the thought of Richard, Bain, Isaiah, his father, and the sickening memory of the Covenant Psychiatric Hospital was going to be in the past.