Page 20

Della

“We’re here.” Mr. Vincent pulls up to a stark white and black-accented mid-century style house.

It’s tucked down a quiet road in a part of the city I didn’t know existed until now. The only reason I know it’s mid-century is because of a magazine I once flipped through, otherwise, I’d have no fucking clue.

Getting here was an experience.

I eye the house curiously as my math professor opens my door and motions for me to get out. “Was there a reason you kept doubling back on yourself when we could have made this drive in under thirty minutes?”

Instead, it took closer to an hour.

“You noticed.”

I look at my tweed-wearing math teacher, and I have questions about behavior better suited to a cop or a spy. “Was I not supposed to?”

He gives me a long look. “Come on.”

I shiver when a wind whips through the trees.

Suddenly, I am the proud wearer of the tweed jacket he drapes over my shoulders. I don’t understand why until I remember I’m still in my hospital gown. My backless hospital gown.

“So, this is your house?” I trail him, holding the gaping lower back closed.

“For now.”

Jeez. This guy treats every question like it's kryptonite.

“This doesn’t look like a math professor kind of house.” I watch him enter a code in the keypad beside the very modern front door. “It’s fancy.”

“And math professors aren’t fancy?”

He says fancy in a way that makes me think he’s laughing at me. I know that can’t be possible because he has the conversational skills of a ferret. A man like this doesn’t have a sense of humor.

He swings the door open, and I follow him inside, asking myself what I’m doing.

The interior is as modern as the exterior. There are bright white walls, exposed wooden beams on the ceilings, and a black metal balustrade leading to the second floor. It is so achingly modern that I expect to bump into someone from Architectural Digest snapping pictures.

Then I look at my math professor, who has a coffee stain on the front of his shirt.

I turn to close the door. “How much do they pay you at the academy?”

I’m not sure what happens next.

I was closing the door while calculating the monthly pay needed to afford such fancy digs. The next moment, I’m on the floor with my math professor glaring at me. “Why didn’t you say you were dizzy?”

“I’m fine.”

I’m not fine. My head is woozy, and there are two Professor Vincent’s standing in front of me. He’s hot, so it wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing if he weren’t glaring at me like he thinks I have a chicken brain.

He scoops me up. “Do you know how to ask for help?”

I snort. “About as well as you know how to answer a question.”

His face is granite as he stalks up the staircase with me in his arms.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Your room.”

“ My room?”

“Yes.”

I look at him.

Nothing. I get absolutely nothing. “Why?”

“Because.”

I grind my molars together, ready to snap at him until he walks into a bedroom the size of an Olympic swimming pool with a wall of glass that overlooks what looks like a rainforest. Trees as far as the eye can see. It is stunning .

He puts me down in a large white bed while I’m still distracted and glares down at me. “Chicken or vegetable.”

I blink at him.

“You need to eat something. Chicken or vegetable soup.”

“You’re making me soup.” This is weird.

I tell myself this isn’t as weird as I think it is, but it is, right?

“Or potato,” he adds. “Anything else, and it has to be from a can.”

My math professor is getting ready to make me homemade soup.

This is definitely weird.

“Chicken,” I eventually say, if only to end this unreal moment.

He spins around and stalks out of my room. “Stay there. I’ll bring up a tray.”

I take a good long look around me while processing my new reality.

I’m still absorbing my all white, pristine surroundings when something sticks in my throat, and I have a sudden and overwhelming sense that I’m going to die. Right this second, I’m going to die, and someone is going to find my body in this bed and take me to the morgue.

I startle when a door slams against the wall.

Professor Vincent walks in carrying a black tray with a large white bowl and a big glass of water on it.

That’s it? He was gone for two seconds and he’s back with homemade soup?

But if it’s been two seconds, why has the light changed? Why is it darker in my room than it was a moment before?

He pauses, eyes lingering on my face. “What is it?”

I open my mouth to tell him I’m dying. But I shake my head and look away, whispering, “Nothing.”

After a long pause, he walks over to me and places the tray in my lap. “Eat.”

I’d tell him to stop speaking to me like a chihuahua, but I need him to leave.

Two seconds stretch out for eternity, and his footsteps move away from me.

The door snicks closed, and I slide the tray off my lap and onto the bed beside me.

It shakes. I spill water from the glass onto the soup and my lap.

The steaming soup splashes me on my thigh, but I barely feel the sting of something that looks hot enough to burn.

And I close my eyes, breathing hard, still envisioning my dead body being stretchered into an ambulance, where a guy in the morgue will cut me open to figure out what killed me.

I see it all so clearly that when I peel my eyes open and my room is pitch black, I tell myself that I’m in a coffin.

But I’m not.

I’m sitting in the dark with a bowl of stone-cold soup on the bed beside me, and I don’t know what’s wrong with me.

My knees tremble when I climb off the bed and slowly walk over to turn the light on.

It’s night outside. Or maybe late evening. There’s a hint of dark blue in the distance, a sign the sun set not all that long ago.

I return to my bed and pick up the tray of soup.

My belly is tight and hollow, grumbling slightly when I sniff the delicate fragrance of onions, garlic, and savory chicken soup.

I pick up the spoon. Nothing in me wants to eat even a spoonful.

I put the spoon down, set the tray on the bed, and get up.

There are four doors in my room. A door leads to the hallway, another to the balcony, an empty walk-in closet, and the bathroom, which is all hard edges, glass, and white marble.

When I glimpse my hollow cheeks and ashen skin, I turn away from my reflection in the mirror and return to my bed to pick up the tray. I feel like I’ve aged twenty years.

The soup goes down the toilet. I flush and wait for everything to disappear.

For a brief moment, I see my face in the water’s reflection and it’s like I’m drowning along with the pieces of chicken, diced carrots, and celery.

I pour the water down the sink, and when I’ve finished emptying both, I carry the tray back through my room and leave it on the floor outside my door, locking it behind me.

I’d kill anyone who tried to get into my room, and I don’t think Professor Vincent would, but I’m not stupid. Spontaneous at times, reckless more than I’d like to admit, but I’m not stupid. I lock my damn door because I’m sharing a house with a stranger.

Professor Vincent is here. I could sneak into Haven Academy and convince the omegas to leave, and he wouldn’t be there to stop me. But I slide into bed, pulling the covers over myself and turning to stare out through the wall of glass.

I never want to move from this bed ever again.