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I pick up one of my cookies. “Which one?”
“The front door,” Oliver says.
I bite into my cookie. “No.”
“Why not?”
“She trusted me.”
The room goes quiet long enough for me to take another bite. I can picture the face he’s making even though there’s a door between us.
“Are there spare keys?”
“Maybe.”
“A phone?”
“Not one she left for me.”
“You could look.”
I glance toward the stairs. Heather’s office is somewhere beyond the part of the house she gave me tonight. She made the rule simple enough that I didn’t need to ask whether opening drawers counted. “She trusted me.”
Oliver moves on the other side of the door. I hear the bed creak and wonder if he’s sitting on it. After this morning, the thought makes me smile.
“You have the entire house available to you and you’re sitting on the floor outside my room.”
“So?”
“Did she tell you to sit there?”
“No.”
“Then why are you here?”
I take a drink of soda before answering. “You talk back.”
“I’m beginning to understand why that appeals to you.”
“You don’t know shit about me.”
“No,” Oliver says. “Heather’s had considerably longer to understand you.”
The cookie stops halfway to my mouth. “She trusts me.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because you keep acting like it doesn’t matter.”
“It matters that she only had to lock one of us up.” His answer comes too quickly for me to enjoy winning.
“Maybe if you knew when to shut the fuck up, she would’ve left your door open too.” I look down at the plate balanced beside my thigh.
“She didn’t leave you free, Jamie. She left you responsible.”
Warm satisfaction moves through me before I catch his tone. “Yeah,” I say anyway.
Oliver is quiet.