Lina 47
I think Robin healed more of Telor’s injuries than she’d let on. The deepest of his cuts, the one just above his left eyebrow, was almost completely gone after only three weeks. Only the faintest pink line remained of what should have been a pretty nasty scar.
"Do you want to get married?" Telor asked from beside me on the couch.
"Are you proposing?” I nudged his arm playfully. “If so, your presentation needs some work.”
“You’re funny. But no, I’m not proposing. Yet,” he said, rolling over onto me. “Just getting a feel for what your answer would be for when I do ask.”
I bit my lip and tapped my finger to it, pretending to think. “I mean, I guess so. You’re kinda cute, so our kids wouldn’t be hideous.”
Telor laughed, shaking his head down at me. “We’ll talk about that subject later.”
“Hey, it wasn’t a suggestion. It was simply a statement,” I answered. I wasn’t against the idea of kids, later. Much, much later.
The lobby buzzer rang, letting us know that our Chinese was here. While Telor might have been happy to live off of cereal for three meals a day, I required some type of actual food at least once a day. Especially since we were having guests tonight.
Telor rolled into a sitting position on the edge of the bed, grudgingly putting his pants back on.
“Stay, I’ll get it,” I told him. His apprehensive glance was hard to miss. “It’s just the lobby. There will be other people there, and I may even catch Gavin and Jilsey on their way up. I doubt someone will try to do me in with so many witnesses.”
While he didn’t look altogether convinced, he kissed the ring on my hand and let me leave. Since the incident with Tori, I’ve been staying with Telor. Until we get things figured out, we both thought it was best to stay together as much as possible. Not that I was complaining too much. It didn’t change the fact that I really missed seeing Gavin and Jils. When I extended the invitation for dinner, I had braced myself for Gavin to politely decline, not that I would have blamed him. The fact that he accepted without hesitation was a true show of his character; he really was a good guy. He deserved to be happy, happy with someone who loved him the way he deserved to be loved.
The lobby was just as busy as I thought it would be for around dinnertime. We were apparently not the only ones who ordered out. I didn’t see the Chinese delivery guy right away and thought maybe they buzzed the wrong apartment.
“Is it Conway now? Or is it still Franklin?” said a male voice behind me.
I knew that voice; I heard it in every good childhood memory I had, and I heard it in my dreams and my nightmares. I kept my eyes glued to the painting in front of me, focusing on remembering to breathe. One, two, three. No, this wasn’t happening. My nails had dug into my palms so hard I could feel tiny rivulets of blood pooling around my fingertips.
“Ollie,” I whispered around the tightness of my throat.
My teeth started to go tingly, and every breath I took echoed in my head. My legs moved without my consent until my back hit a wall. What was he doing here? How was he here?
He looked just like I remembered, with subtle differences. Rather than look the seventeen years that he was, he looked my age maybe even a little older. The softness of his face was marred by his clenched jaw. His shoulders were so tense that he seemed on the verge of shaking.
“Hey, baby sister,” he said through gritted teeth. “Miss me?”
I couldn’t breathe. My chest had gotten tight around my lungs. I couldn’t make myself turn away from him. Oliver stood there, looking at me, his eyes dimmer than I remembered them. He looked a little worse for the wear. While his clothes were clean, every inch of his face told me he was ready to crumble from exhaustion.
“What are you doing here?” I asked him. “How are you here?”
“I needed to see you,” he said, dropping our bag of food next to his feet. Each word he said sounded forced, like it physically pained him to say them. “I heard things about you and needed to make sure you were okay.”
“Ollie…” I reached out for his hand and he jerked away from me, his gaze becoming sharper and a cruel smile appearing on his lips, causing me to take a step backward, away from him.
“Death is a cruel mistress, Kit-Cat, and you’ve done pissed her off. Now you’ve made two very powerful enemies,” he said in a cold, hard voice.
“Who are you?” I whispered.
A shudder racked his body, his jaw clenching so tightly that blood welled from his lip.
“They’re coming for you, Lina,” Oliver said, my Oliver, not the monster that was just using his voice to speak.
“Who?” I dared a step toward him and he held up his hand, warning me to stay back.
“Them,” was all he said, before he turned and ran from the lobby, leaving me to stare after him in bewilderment.
I watched him retreat until he was swallowed up by the crowd that had just entered the building. The pain on his face was almost too much for me. Whoever he was talking about, they seemed to have some type of control over him. The real Oliver, my brother whom I loved and adored, was there, and then there was this monster inside of him.
Whoever Oliver had warned me about, whoever was coming for us and controlling him, I would be ready for them.
I was all in.