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“Y-Yes?” I stammer, tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth, gaze dropping to my lap, I squeeze my fingers harder, circling them around my thin wrists, letting my nails carve into the inside of them.
“Did you hear anything I just said?” he asks cautiously, hesitantly.
My brows knit together, fingers biting deeper, nails gouging further.
I didn't hear anything he said. I didn't hear anything. Was he even speaking when I was staring at his pretty face, ignoring his soul sucking eyes. Admiring hisears. I flinch at myself, the desire to reach up and make sure my own ears are covered is excruciating. It tingles all the way down to my toes, the urge to spring up out of my chair and get the fuck out of here. Hide away in my room.
But then I think of Lynx and pain bursts inside my chest like I'm having a goddamn heart attack.
Panic swoops through me, knocking the air from my lungs because I blacked out again without actually blacking out. I zoned out, didn't hear anything he said and I scare myself when I get like that, everything goes dark.
I can't go back in the dark.
“Poppy?”
Fingers beneath my chin have me catapulting from the leather chair, my feet clumsily trying to get beneath me, and they're not going to and I'm going to fucking fall. I'm going to fall on my arse in front of a faculty member and make a fool out of myself when I've been trying so hard to be normal.
Why the fuck can't I be fucking normal?
A firm grasp on my elbow stops me from falling, but rather than only steadying me, Mr Marshall pulls me towards him, his fingertips singeing my skin, but I let him reel me in like a proverbial dying fish on a hook. That's when I notice he's on the wrong side of the desk.
His huge, broad body towers over me like he's eclipsing the sun, and even though I'm steady on my feet now, he doesn't let me go. In fact his grip only tightens, and he yanks me closer so hard it feels like my arm is going to rip out of its socket.
Drawing in a ragged inhale, I finally find the courage to glance up at him, a frown creasing my brow because his deep sapphire eyes aren't looking at me, instead, they're gazing down, and his other hand is grabbing my own, bringing it up so close to his face, I can feel his warm breath on my skin. His long, thick fingers grasp my hand so delicately, handling me like fine china as he flips my hand, smoothing out my fingers and stroking over my palm.
My face heats, eyes locked on him, studying the look of concentration on his own, the purse of his lips, the scrunch of his brow, lines wrinkling his forehead.
“You usually make yourself bleed when you're upset about something?” he rumbles in some semblance of a whisper, but it's enough to freeze me to the spot, my entire body stiffening.
Slowly, I stare down at my blanched fingers, quickly realising with no small amount of horror that I have, in fact, made myself bleed.
Shame fills my belly like lead, nausea swirling in my gut as bile rushes up the back of my throat.
“Poppy?” Mr Marshall's voice rings like pots and pans crashing inside my head, banging and clanging and- “Angel,” he coos, smoothing the rough pad of his thumb over the bloody crescents in my wrist. “Look at me.”
I try to snatch my hand back, tugging sharply, but his hold only tightens, bruising grip crushing my elbow. Air knocks out of me with an oomph as I suddenly drop backwards into the chair, a big hand planted on my chest, finger and thumb pinching savagely at my chin.
I can't not look at him then,seehim.
Because his face is almost flush with mine, nothing between us but my ragged breaths, his slow, measured ones.
“Let me go,” my lip trembles, but he doesn't, he doesn't stop staring either, he only grips me harder, my hand, my chin. “Let me go,” it's a weak demand, an order without backbone.
And a man like Mr Marshall is clearly not someone to take an order from anyone, let alone some silly little girl like me.
“Poppy,” he growls my name like it personally offends him, with bared teeth, gritted and caged. “Do you always do shit like this to yourself?”
I'm hot. So hot. Flushing all over like a volcano is going to erupt inside of me and I've got no way of stopping it. My vision blurs at the edges and I feel it, the swaying of my body, the cold, empty feeling in my legs.
“Angel,” I hear it, but I see nothing.
Falling, falling, falling, swallowed by the black abyss, a cold sweat washes over me and I sink into the feeling of being heavy then light.
Sharp pain surges through my bruised cheek, head knocking to the side, but then someone stops it, massaging along my jaw, my eyes blink open.
I'm on the floor, my back against the leather armchair, my jean-clad legs flopped open, arms heavy. I think I might be sick. I swallow,hard.
“Mr Marshall, I'm-”
