Page 95 of The Casualty of Us (Philosophies of the Heart Duet #1)

Chapter Forty-Seven

“I’m just saying.” I scowl up at Hayes with a little pout as we walk back to the dorm. “This heart present is taking an awfully long time.”

“It’s almost done.” He laughs, reaching for me before stopping as his face falls. “Soon, Freckles.”

“So you keep saying,” I sigh, heart clenching at the way he immediately slides back into brooding at not being able to openly touch me and bumping him with my shoulder. “Can’t wait, Dimples.”

And I know that things can’t keep up like this for much longer. Not after Christmas. It’ll tear him apart, and I can’t have that.

Plus, I dislike it just as much as he does honestly.

Not being able to reach out and comfort him.

It has this sense of wrongness blooming with my next step that hasn’t been there since last year and makes me want to tear at the papers tucked away in my backpack.

Absolutely shred them until they wink out of existence right along with the psychopath, hopefully.

The note that came with them stating that his favorite color is blue and that the answer to the next part should keep me busy for a while.

That’s putting it freaking mildly.

I’ve been reading through pages of the thick stack of code in every minute of my spare time and trying to make sense of it, but even after having it for over a week, it still seems like utter nonsense.

The rest of our break outside of the code having been spent watching movies and taking ridiculously long baths and listening to him work out some melody on the guitar while I got ahead in school.

Soaking up every brush of his skin and nights of being wrapped around each other with a happy warmth in my chest. With absolutely no word from Ollie or Marley besides that first call except to confirm that they were alive.

He pulls open the door of the dorms, and I stop long enough to look up at him while whispering. “Come to mine first?”

Not wanting us to start the semester off on this note.

He gives me a tight nod, and I run a couple of my fingers across his while heading for the door.

I swipe my keycard across the pad before pulling it open and start to trudge up the stairs with him behind me.

We pass Kennedy and Bethany along the way and smile politely at their curious looks just like we’ve been doing all year so far.

Acting like nothing has changed since mending fences freshman year and hating it.

I blow out a deep breath when we come to my dorm door, swiping the card again and pushing it open before stopping instantly.

One foot over the threshold and the other still behind me as the breath leaves my lungs.

A warning shoots down my spine next that has my stomach plunging and my eyes frantically searching for the cause.

“Freckles?” Hayes’s hand goes to my hip, immediately picking up on the tension. “What is it?”

I run my eyes over everything again, finding nothing out of place and forcing myself to choke out. “I don’t know.” My brows fall as that sick feeling refuses to leave, and my heart starts to race with it, suddenly out of air and gasping with the knowledge that— “Something’s wrong.”

He pulls me back before the words are even finished leaving my mouth, quickly stepping around me while ordering tightly, “Stay here.”

“But—”

He shoots me a warning look over his shoulder, biting out this time, “Stay. Here.”

“Fine,” I snap, trying to argue with myself that I’m overreacting as he turns back to the room and starts to walk slowly through the kitchen.

He pauses there to look between mine and Marley’s doors once before continuing toward mine with my heart refusing to settle the entire time.

Some instinctual part of me screaming for him to never open my door even as he comes to a stop, staring for a beat before pushing it open and stepping back.

His eyes start to move rapidly, and his face fills with a look like he’s just been hit.

“What is it?”

His gaze stills on something, brows shooting down with a sharp exhale leaving him. “Call Talan.”

“Hayes.” I take another step into the room, panic taking over in the span of a neuron firing. “What is it?”

“ Ophelia .” His head snaps my way, hazel instantly making me still as it locks with the blue. “Talan. Now .”

The rage there has bile shooting up the back of my throat even as I shake my head with each step that comes next.

I close the distance between us as he moves in front of the doorway, trying to block my room from view and making me have to duck down under his arm.

Finagling my head through quickly before he can stop me, I fight to get my shoulders in for a split second as well.

Right up until what I’m seeing registers, and my body goes still as Hayes curses harshly.

“Goddammit, O.”

He moves to the side and grabs my hand, trying to pull me away, but my feet can’t move.

My eyes are too busy running over the walls that are covered in pictures of me.

Not one inch of the original deep green color is left in sight.

Only shots of me from what has to be at least the past two years, if not the one before that too.

All candids.

Some of me leaving the house over the summer with one of the bodyguards in tow. Some of Ollie and I out and about, running errands around town. Some of me grabbing lunch with my mom.

Me. Me. Me. Everywhere I look. A close-up of a smile or my neck.

Some of my breasts and the curve of my back.

But the wall behind the bed…

The wall behind the bed is reserved entirely for that day with Hayes in the library. The first time he had ever gone down on me all laid out frame by frame like the film to a movie. The angle telling me someone was hiding around the other corner and watching every second of—

“Wha—” The bile surges at my attempt to make a sound, and I heave.

“I’m going to be sick.” My eyes drop to the bed where a laptop that’s definitely not mine is sitting open with the snapshots all pulled together to play out in real time.

Hayes’s hand over my mouth and my skirt pushed up around my hips, all in all, not letting the viewer see much with his head there, but the little green check at the top shows some kind of upload is complete.

“What is that?” I gasp frantically, my chest rising and falling rapidly with panic tunneling my sight as words start to flash over the screen.

“What the fuck is—” Having to stop and swallow past another heave when my eyes find the two pretty purple columbines on the keyboard before jerking them back up to read:

Liar, liar,

Little liar like her namesake

There have to be consequences, don’t you think?

I can’t wait to play without rules.

Here we go in…1, 2, 3—

The screen changes in a blink, and Hayes curses sharply, giving me a hard tug. “He’s fucking watching.”

But the image there holds me in place like nothing else ever could: the video of the town car at a stoplight that I recognize from a city right by the nearest airport.

“What is that?!”

“Ophelia—” Hayes wraps an arm around my waist, trying to lift me. “Baby, please, come on—”

“Stop!” I kick at the air, watching as the stoplight the car is waiting on turns green before it should.

The Suburban barreling toward it on the side street hidden from view as it moves into the intersection and— “No!” A scream leaves me at the moment of collision, and my cells know that it’s my twin in that car.

“No! Ollie! Ol—” A sob escapes me as it spins like a top, and Hayes drops me to the ground, walking straight for the computer as I shout. “No! Don’t!”

The screen goes black, making the words obsolete when he slams the top shut a second later.

And it sends me to my knees, unable to get enough breath and needing to throw up all at once but only being able to whimper. “Ollie.”

Not understanding how this happened.

We were supposed to be safe here. Even knowing how stupid that day was…I hadn’t—not in the moment—we were supposed to be safe here.

“ Ollie ,” I sob, chest cracking with the keening as Hayes falls to his knees in front of me and starts to tug the backpack off my back.

“Hold on, baby.” He drops it next to us, unzipping it quickly to pull my phone out and enter the password before scooting forward. His arms go around me as another sob cracks through my chest and he whispers roughly, “Just hold on, we’ll get him.”

But the sound of Talan answering a second later was the least of the fallout coming our way, and what was about to happen over the next few months would still be reaching for me even years later.

Only then, when the note came, there was no one by my side to help me bear it.

I guess that’s my fault too, though. For not missing it and still damning us all anyway. Columbines are for foolishness, after all—but whether it was his or mine…I never got the chance to ask before one of us took our last breath.

Hating the flowers on the graves both days.

All because Adam just couldn’t let go of his metaphorical Eve.