Page 4 of Lovely Deceit

I follow his gaze and spy a steering wheel and windshield. “You’re driving…”

He shakes his head before reaching over to place his cold hand on my foot. “I’ll never understand the way your mind works, Eden Astor.”

I’m cocooned in the passenger seat, several blankets pulled tightly around me, and I burrow further into their warmth, leaving only my head sticking out. “What do you mean?” I croak.

Throat raw, I swallow several times, but it doesn’t help the scratchy feeling, like I haven’t talked in days.

Ollie swallows. “Of all the things—” His voice cracks, and he growls. The sound echoes in my chest like the beat of a drum against a flurry of high-pitched string instruments. “Of all the things to say when you’ve been through so much.”

This time, it isn’t the swinging from a rope or the plunging into the icy depths of the Saint Lawrence River that crashes into me like a tidal wave. It’s the aftermath. It’s Prince Oliver, my friend for life, jumping into the water after me. It’s the powerful band of his arms around me, and the way he yanked me to the surface so I could see the world again. It’s the way he dragged me out of that water and held me to his chest, pure terror in his eyes.

It’s too much. Squeezing my eyes closed, I try not to focus on the pain in his or the way he was soaked from head to toe, his brown hair flat against his forehead. I’ve never seen him look less like his proud ancestry. He was just another hurting soul, paired with mine in that very moment.

“You saved me,” I squeeze out.

He slams his hand into the steering wheel with hammer-like swings. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

I pull the blankets tighter, eyes widening as he loses it. Tears streak down his cheeks. His rumpled shirt pulls tight over his biceps. There’s a hardness to him that wasn’t there before. “Ollie…”

“No, just fucking no. I didn’t save you, Eden. If I was going to save you, I’d have taken you away from Carnegie before you even set foot on campus. Iletthat happen to you. Don’t you dare say I saved you.”

Pressing my lips together, I watch the words come out of his mouth before it sets into a scowl. He’s wrong. He did save me. But Number Five is as stubborn as they come. “Hey.” I give him a swift kick in the thigh, then, immediately rear back in pain, hissing as agony shoots up my leg. “Fuck!”

“Jesus, Edie. Your ankle is most likely broken.” He swerves toward the side of the road, only in typical Brit fashion, he goes to the wrong side on instinct. A long, angry horn sounds before he yanks the car back. “Christ.” He puts on his blinker, pulling gently over to the correct side and easing us to a stop.

His nostrils flare for one hard second before he shifts the car into park and then turns in his seat. Gently, he takes my foot and moves it in its original resting place. “I’m going to take care of it, okay? I’m just getting us someplace safe. Someplace far away from those fucking bastards.”

I peer out the window earnestly. “Where are we?”

“I don’t even know. What’s south of New York?”

Surprise rings though me. “Pennsylvania? Ollie, are we in fucking Pennsylvania?”

“Maybe,” he exclaims. “I don’t fucking know. I was just driving somewhere; anywhere.”

He glances over his left shoulder, throws the car in drive again, and then pulls back onto the main road.

I take a deep breath, calming myself. Ollie’s so freaked out, he ran. That’s okay. That’s fine. I get it. Squeezing my eyes closed again, I wince. Every time my mind tries to go back to what happened, I resist, placing an impenetrable barrier between me and that.

Several minutes go by as I watch Oliver. So tense. So…distraught. “We should find some place to stay. You look tired.”

“I’m not tired. I’m getting you away from there.”

“Ollie…”

“Don’t fuckingOllieme.”

I match his growl with one of my own. “Please. I need a warm bath, some ice for my ankle, and…you,” I whisper.

He shakes his head. “I’m not giving in again. I’m doing what’s right, and one day, you’ll see it, too.”

“By doing what? We’re in fucking Pennsylvania! No one’s going to get us here.”

“So you think. You were passed out when I outran that fucking tattooed punk. I’m going to kill him.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, remembering the way Leo just stood on the sidelines, watching. The way the Knights taunted me with his presence.

She wants you to help her, young Jarvis.

---