Page 12 of Savage Torment

“You… fixed it for me?” she repeats, the words foreign on her tongue, and I sigh.

“You were unhappy with his prior… circumstances. I made a deal and rectified it.”

“Why?”

She knows why, we can both feel it in the air. It makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

“It doesn’t matter why,” I start, but she scoffs.

“It does.”

I shake my head. “You just want to gloat.”

“There is nothing to gloat about in a moment like this, and if you truly think that’s what I want then you don’t know me at all.”

“I know enough. You have five minutes,” I state, nostrils flared as my hands ball at my sides. I need to cut the conversation now, my body is flushed, overheating with her closeness, and I don’t like the lack of control that comes with it.

Before either of them can say a word, I storm from the room, letting the door slam shut behind me and leaning against the wall beside it.

Silence echoes around me for a beat until I hear Polaris on the other side. “Hey, B.” My eyelids fall closed and I imagine it playing out as I hear footsteps, and I know a moment later they’re embraced in a hug. “I’m not sure what you know, B, sorry, Ben… Benjamin… uh, what are you happy with?”

“Ben sounds nice.”

“Well, Ben, I’m not sure what you know, but I literally know nothing when it comes to you and what’s been going on,” she states, and although I should really give them some privacy, I can’t.

The things she does to my mind, my body, my fucking soul, yet I know so little about her. I’m desperately foraging for any crumbs I can gather from her. Including this.

“Blaze caught me up to speed,” Ben states, and all I hear is my vulnerabilities being spread bare.

“He did?” Polaris probably doesn’t believe him. Good. That suits me better.

“Yeah. I remember where we are, but I never actually made it to my dorm room after the assembly took place when we first arrived.”

I can imagine her gaping in horror as I hear her heart lurching in her chest. “I’m so sorry, Ben,” she rasps.

“It’s not your fault I’m simply a human with the wrong kind of blood, and it’s not your fault that it leads me to be an easy victim for… vampires.”

“We need to speak to someone about this, Ben. We need to get you out of here.”

“I can’t leave, not right now at least.”

“Why?”

“Your friend, he explained it better than me, but I’ve been marked as a… I don’t remember what the fancy word is that he used, but it basically means I’ve been marked as a fucking fruity cocktail for the vampires on campus. If I start walkingaround, I just up the chase for their thirst, but he said if I wait it out here while he gets everything under control, I’ll be safer.”

I hear her gulp. None of this likely makes any sense, not a single ounce, and she’ll hate it. But as much as she won’t want that fact to be true, the honesty and vulnerability will only confirm it.

She heaves a heavy sigh, the predictable helplessness taking over.

“I wish there was something more I could do, Ben,” she admits.

“Are you joking? I’m sitting here because of you, and before you try and deny it, that guy saved me because of you. I’m not completely out of it and clinging to life in a dark pit of Hell because he cares enough to do something like this for you.”

That’s it. That’s enough. He’s going to make me look like a fool to her, or worse, give me a hero complex when I’m always the fucking villain.

Prying the door open a moment later, I fill the doorway. “Time’s up.”

It’s on the tip of her tongue to protest, I can see it, but Ben rises from his seat, stepping toward me with his hand extended. “Thank you.”

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