Page 102 of Unspoken Lies

My intent is to get her blood pumping, and wake her up. The alarm goes off in my pocket, reminding me of the bombs I need to detonate. Pulling out my phone, I smirk.

“Don’t stop, Rachelle,” I murmur. “I need to blow up an asylum.”

While it’s an antiquated term, it still fits.

“What?” she asks, wide eyed.

“I already warned them I was going to,” I say, hushing her as I text the agent we’ve been working with to see if they’re all out.

Agent Tavers:

Green light.

I lovea man of few words.

“Boom is one of my favorite words,” I grunt, entering the code into a box that’ll trip the chargers. We wanted to make sure it wouldn’t accidentally go off if one of us sat on our phones.

That would be pretty unfortunate.

“That’s it?” Rachelle asks as I put my phone down, away from the water.

“Elijah put charges in all the major areas of the hospital on his last day,” I explain. “We planned for this. The FBI is making arrests, working through the patients to ensure they get proper care. No one will go through the nightmare that is the Oxnard Facility for Mental Health.”

She appears overwhelmed as I gaze at her. At least now she’s less worried about the water. I need her to keep going while she’s distracted.

“How are your push ups, kitten?” I ask her, surprising myself with the nickname. I have had her claw marks enough times on my skin that she’s earned it, I suppose.

“They’re shit,” she gasps, already out of breath. Fuck.

“Well, I suppose we should change that, huh?” I ask, standing as I pull off my shirt and kicking off my shoes. I’m wearing a pair of shorts, I suppose they’ll do. “Let’s do them together. Try to keep up.”

Stepping onto the ledge I drop into the pool, my head going under for a second before I settle next to her, shaking my hair out as she turns away from the water.

“If I’m a kitten, you’re a wet dog,” she complains as I bare my teeth at her.

“Woof,” I tease her, enjoying the way she looks at me. It’s as if she can’t figure me out. I completely understand that, since this is new for me too. It’s a more playful side I don’t get to indulge in. It’s as if my childhood sucked that away and left a very different person behind.

One that’s analytical and uncaring. That’s the only version of me that she’s really seen, so this can’t feel real to her. However, this is the version I want to be for her. I want to stick around.

“Come on, now. Don’t slack off now,” I say.

“And there’s Coach Ken,” she mutters as I grin.

I get a good forty minutes out of her before she really begins to flag. The pool is definitely where we’ll be doing this for a while to build up her stamina and muscles, but we’re done for today.

Sometimes, pivoting isn’t a terrible option.

“You did so good,” I praise, pulling her out of the water. Her eyes are surprised, her hair soaked as I wrap the towel around her and begin to dry her off as if she’s my own private doll.

In another time, that’s how I’d treat her. My personal fuck toy. I no longer feel that way, and I even dry her feet before standing again. I don’t really know what she is to me at the moment, just that I want all of her.

I have private thoughts I don’t deserve to know, but it gives me an insight I need to struggle to remember when I interact with her.

“Did the warm water help?” I ask. She didn’t fall asleep in the temperature controlled pool, and I think it’s only because she was moving her body so much.

“Yes. What is this, Theo?” she asks warily, her gorgeous blue-green eyes on me as I tug on her short hair affectionately.

She hasn’t been well enough to go out to get it fixed, but I think Liliana has been watching videos to see if she can cut it in layers in the front. I understand why Rachelle is wary, I simply don’t know how to put her at ease except by making her more uncomfortable by showing her a different side of me.