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She nods and turns out of the room, leaving the door open for me to follow. I peek out into the corridor and am immediately arrested by the sight of what seems to be a normal home. Pale colours decorate the walls, light oak furniture dotted around. “It’s alright, Mrs Tanner. Come along,” she calls back at me. “The other ladies are already eating.”
Others?
I end up following her slowly, intrigue pulling me rather than hunger, and eventually find myself in a room filled with other ladies chattering quietly. Some of them, anyway. Four of them talk, two simply sit quietly at a table, eyes downcast as they pick at food, and one sits off to the side of the room rocking back and forth in a chair.
Frowning at her and her pale fragility, I edge through the room with my arms wrapped tightly around me and take a chair at the table.
“Hello,” one of the chattering women says. I nod and look as a plate is put in front of me by another woman in a blue dress. “Who are you?”
“Hannah,” mumbles from me.
“Pretty. Pretty girls in pretty clothes. Do you like my dress?” I look at the light plate of food and pick up some cutlery to eat, ignoring her as best I can because she’s in the same track pants and hoodie as I am. As are all the rest. No dresses in sight. And I’m not ready for conversing, anyway. Don’t want to. Especially not with these odd people. I preferred the woman’s voice outside, the song she was humming to herself.
“You can’t have him. He’s mine,” someone else says. I side eye her across the table, wondering what that means and who she’s talking to. She looks directly at me, almost through me. “You do know that, don’t you?”
Another one of them stands at that, her drink thrown at the first one's face.
“He’s not yours, he’s mine,” she snarls, gripping the table.
A sudden eruption of dramatics occurs, glasses and plates clattering and women getting up at all angles. I stand and back off away from it, watching as screaming and hysterics begin. Objects fly through the air, noise colliding against surfaces as they crash and bang. The two with their eyes downcast stay perfectly still, as I keep backing away, their mouths still chewing slowly. And then three women in blue hurry into the room, two men in white following them.
What the hell is going on here?
The back of my legs bump into something, and I yelp at the impact, spooked and not ready at all to defend myself in this room full of maniacs. Jesus. Where am I?
“He doesn’t belong to any of them,” a sultry voice says behind me. I swing to look back at the other woman, watching as she keeps rocking back and forth. Dark eyes look up at me slowly, her face a picture of insipid features. “He’s mine.”
Chapter 11
Gray
The view from my desk gives me direct line of sight over to the centre. I glare at it in the distance, as my fingers input more data absently, unable to deny the need to go back there and see how she is. The annoying fact of the matter is, that that is entirely the incorrect thing to do, and I’m entirely incorrect to think about it.
My hands lift from the keyboard and I push the chair sideways to stare some more at things that are not mine, elbows on the desk and chin on my clenched fists. Distance and time – that’s the right way forward from here. It’s the only way. She’s safe there for a while. Contained. Drained of the effects of pills and hedonistic desires, and ready to begin again. She’ll come back to herself over there, find reality and some of those truths she’s been after. Hopefully she’ll retain that evolved version of herself she found. She’ll just do it in lucidity rather than confusion.
I smile at the thought, imagining that evolved state as she walked around my apartment as if she owned it, and me.
“Gray?”
I glance behind me at the sound of Beatrice, watching as she comes up to me. “You asked for the latest notes.” The raft of sheets gets placed on the side table and she hovers, as if thinking about saying something that isn’t in her job description even if it might be within her family responsibility. “Do you mind if I speak candidly?”
A snort comes out of me, a chuckle following it.
Candidly.
I swivel the chair to look at her, wondering what candid words she might have. Candid seems relevant now after Hannah. She’s good at candid, effortless with her tongue when she wants something answering. Effortless with her tongue anyway. Especially around my dick.
Another chuckle, my own tongue licking over my lips. “Why not, Beatrice. Let’s hear it.”
“Why are you still trying?”
There’s a question. “Your expert opinion assumes I shouldn’t be?”
She looks at me over the top of her glasses, picking up one of the files she brought in with her. “This data, along with the previous years’ worth before it, prove that nothing is correlating correctly. It isn’t working.” She throws the particular file on my desk in front of me, taking her glasses off, and backs away to sit in the far chair. “Have you considered that maybe it’s time to let it go?”
Every damn day.
And then I remember how fucking pissed I am.
