Page 35 of Dark Knight

"I'm fucking happy in my room. I'm happy playing my bass and figuring shit out for you. I don't need a fucking girl and definitely not her." His tone turned vicious toward the end, and I scurried away knowing that something was about to erupt out of that office that I didn't want any part of. I had just rounded the corner when I heard the door bang open. I also her what I assumed was Theo's stomping footsteps as he stomped down the hallway. Fortunately, in the opposite direction.

I turned and made my way to the gym, figuring it was best to at least know where it was. When I made it to the gym, I found that it was small and mostly white. There weren't any fancy machines like there were at the gym at Welhurst, just free weights, a treadmill, an elliptical, and a bunch of boxing bags of various kinds. I started to walk on the treadmill. Just something to get my heart rate up, but my head was swimming with the information that I just overheard.

It was only when I stumbled for the third time that I decided to give up and go back to my room. I didn't encounter anybody on the way there. When I shut the door behind myself, I just went and flopped on the bed.

There was so much going on under the surface with Dylan…so many things he was thinking about that I didn't understand. I wasn't sure how I could ever hope to be anything other than a bargaining chip or how I could ever hope to actually regain my freedom.

Part of me wondered if I was just destined to be a prisoner for the rest of my life, whether it was Dylan's or somebody else's. It seemed like I had gone from one cage to another and then to another. I mentally shook myself. That was something I couldn't accept. I would fight tooth and nail to gain my freedom, even if that meant hurting Dylan and Hud.

17

Evie

I spent the next day pretty much alone in my room. I snuck out occasionally to get food, but I made sure that I didn’t run into anybody on the way to the kitchen and back.

Conversation with the men in this house was more than I could handle right now, not when I was still trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Sure, I could ask them, but that would clue them in on the fact that I had been eavesdropping. Plus, there was no guarantee they would tell me the truth.

Finally, when it felt like my brain was about to melt out of my ears because I was thinking about everything too much, I decided to take a shower and then go to the gym. It seemed backward to do it that way, but after just lazing around in bed for the last day, I felt kind of gross. After having been denied the opportunity to be clean for the last few weeks before falling in with Dylan, I wasn't about to miss the opportunity to feel clean again. Even if I was just going to get sweaty again.

When I got out of the shower, I reached for the towel to wrap my hair up. As I flipped my head back over after securing the tail of the towel underneath the band I made around my head, I saw the mirror. In the steam, a shape had been revealed, one that I hadn't put there.

It was a heart with an arrow heading toward it, as though I was about to be lovestruck, shot by Cupid's arrow. Either that or I was about to be killed and just, you know, shot with an actual arrow. Either way, it sent a chill down my spine even in the steamy, hot air of the bathroom.

I stood, head and body wrapped in towels, staring at it and trying to figure out where the hell it had come from. There was no way for me to find out, not without telling the guys. Between this and the stuff being out of place in my bedroom, I was officially freaked out. As quickly and calmly as I could, I got dressed, pulling on some random shorts, a sports bra, and a t-shirt.

I didn't know who was watching me, but it seemed like somebody knew where I was and what I was doing. Especially if they managed to put a heart on the mirror while I wasn't in the room.

Unless they did it while I was sleeping, and that scared me even more.

As soon as I was ready, I left my room and I went in search of Theo. I didn't want to particularly seek him out, but he was the only one who could help me if Hud didn't want to teach me self-defense. I assumed all of our rooms were in the same hallway, with Dylan's at the very end, but I didn't know which one was actually Theo's. In fact, I didn't actually know that his bedroom was in this hallway.

I tried a few of the doors around my room, but they were locked. If Dylan's room was at the end of the hallway, that ruled out pretty much everything on this side of the staircase, so I went in the opposite direction.

At the top of the stairs, there was the option to turn right or left. Dylan's room and mine were toward the left, and I hoped that Theo's room was toward the right. If it wasn't, I didn't know where I would start looking. I didn't particularly want to have to hunt through every corner of this mansion just to find him, but I would.

As I headed down the hallway, the twang of some guitar strings stopped me in my tracks. I listened and followed the sound toward a door. I knocked, but there was no answer. When I knocked again and there was still no answer, I wasn't sure what to do. The last thing I wanted to do was to just barge in, but if this was Theo's room…Well, I really wanted to talk to him.

After another few moments of indecision, I finally placed my hand on the door handle and twisted. The door swung open silently, and I saw Theo sitting in front of a bank of computer monitors with his bass in his lap and his headphones plugged in as he strummed away.

I couldn't deny that he actually looked like he fit perfectly in this place. His thinner frame, at least in comparison to Dylan and Hudson, and bleached hair somehow made him look alternative and kind of nerdy at the same time.

It wasn't a bad look on him, which was a thought that surprised me.

A quick glance around the room made me stop and stare. The place was huge and couldn't have just been a bedroom. It was more like a suite, with a living area and a bedroom area as well. On one side of his desk, textbooks littered the floor. Music stuff crowded the other side. A couch rested against the wall by the door and art decorated the wall above it. There was so much personality to the space that it was almost overwhelming.

The primary thing that separated the bedroom and living area was a massive floor-to-ceiling fish tank. A faint blue light emanated from the tank while brightly colored fish swam about. Orange, green, red, and purple rocks and plants made up a structure in the center of the tank that some of the fish were swimming about in.

It was the craziest thing I'd ever seen, and I couldn't get enough. I could have spent hours looking at the fish tank and not been bored. To me, this kind of thing only existed in actual aquariums, like the big professional ones. I had no idea that people could have something like this in their home.

I took a step forward, and he must have seen my reflection in one of his monitor screens because he said, "You guys know better than to interrupt me when I'm practicing. Get out."

He seemed to still be in a lovely mood after his talk with Dylan the other day. It made me want to leave and go find Hud, but I knew Hud would be annoyed if I didn't at least try to ask Theo about self-defense training, so I stood my ground.

"Theo?" I called.

He spun in his chair. The cord for his headphones ripped out of the amp, and I heard the dying music as the bass quieted itself.

"The fuck are you doing in here?" he demanded.

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