Page 37 of Mask and the Magnolia

“Yeah. They didn’t have enough… Enough…” He makes eye contact with me briefly before looking away, gnawing on his lower lip nervously.

“Enough what, St. James?”

He inhales sharply, his gaze lowered to his hands as they twist the sheet he’s holding but he doesn’t finish.

I don’t think anyone has talked to him since they’ve been letting us out.

Group isn’t really a social setting.

We share if the docs can get us to, Hawthorne is usually the one most willing to run his mouth, but it’s not like we sit around getting to know each other and shit.

They just started letting us out for short periods of time over the last week or two, and I’m pretty positive Calix hasn’t had any interaction with any of us.

I get it.

He’s a lone fish in a shallow pool full of sharks.

Granted, St. James isn’t a guppie or some shit. He earned his spot on Ward C. Hell, he just admitted to me he tried killing the head nurse. Yeah, he’s not to be overlooked just because he’s smaller than the rest of us.

Calix is like a… Piranha, or electric eel. A barracuda, maybe.

He’s his own brand of dangerous but any one of us could eat him alive with one bite if we were so inclined.

So, yeah. I doubt anyone has talked to him since we’ve been allowed to mingle. His reaction to me using his name while engaging has me wondering when the last time anyone bothered doing more with the beta than what a doctor ordered.

I don’t like that.

“Calix,” I say a little softer, and his eyes snap to mine.

It’s also probably weird for him to hear me talking this much. Like Reynolds. She was surprised, too, but just because I don’t waste my words, doesn’t mean I don’t have any.

“They didn’t have enough, what?”

He swallows hard, his dark brown eyes fixed on my face. ”Guards. Staff in general.”

”On Ward B?”

”Yeah.” Calix nods and starts wringing the sheet in his hands. “I’m underestimated. Everyone underestimates me. Didn’t think they needed to watch the beta. Figured an alpha would get me, on the inside or out there.” He motions to the window behind him. “Makes some shit easy, letting people think I’m weak or incapable. Harmless. Makes some shit hard, though.”

”I can imagine.”

”But that’s why they kept moving me around. Figured it didn’t matter and I’d get mine in the end.”

I nod because I’m listening to every word he’s saying but I’m not looking at him anymore. No, I’m watching Calix’s hands and how the skin has started to split at the knuckles, how his cuticles are ripped and torn. His nails are short, too short as if he bites them and I have a feeling he probably picks at every little thing he sees based on the little scab by his wrist. Which would also account for the burn scars that look far worse than they should considering most of them seem to be made from small flames and hot metal.

I don’t like any of that, either.

For a beta, Calix St. James is big.

Probably about six-foot-one or two, but he’s wider and thicker than any I’ve seen, and I can tell he’s got a fuckton of muscle under his jumpsuit.

Throw in the dark eyes and even darker hair that stops at his shoulders and hangs in his face, I can see where he could pass for menacing.

Right now, though, he looks like a little boy who’s waiting to get hit with a belt because he did something wrong.

I fuckinghatethat.

”How long have you been here?” I ask, interrupting the nervous stream of consciousness that hasn’t stopped for the last few minutes.