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I was tired, that’s all it was, but I was convinced if I fell asleep alone, I wasn’t going to wake up. I would break apart, atom by atom, and disintegrate into the atmosphere.
“Hey, I have an idea,” I said, taking Harlow’s hand and pulling her around to look at me. She raised an eyebrow in query, and she really did look so much better than she had earlier in the night. Alexander’s energy had brought back a light blush to her dusky cheeks, and her eyes brightened as she waited for me to finish. “Why don’t you spend the night with me? That way, you don’t have to risk being caught by your building guard. And if anybody finds out, we can say we were studying late for a test.”
“We do always have a test on the horizon,” she said, pondering my proposal carefully. “And I am terrified of our ancient hall monitor.”
“We don’t have one,” I said, repeating the idea to reassure her, but I realized it just made me come off as kind of a jerk. “I mean, they do on the lower floors but not where I’m at.”
I’d spotted the elderly ladies on the first floor before, hobbling back and forth and taking immense pleasure in catching girls doing things they weren’t supposed to be doing. They served a function, but none of them had the power to touch me, even if they were supposed to be in charge. As Alexander’s fiancée, I was untouchable. And it was about fucking time I used it to my advantage.
“Okay, I’m in,” Harlow said with a sly smile. “But only because your bed must be exquisite.”
“I can’t even lie about it,” I replied. “It really is.”
We giggled and kept walking, took the elevator to my floor, and I held my finger up to quiet Harlow. Not for any sort of monitoring, but so she didn’t wake Victoria. Although by the voices and sounds of physical exertion coming from her room when we got off the lift, it was clear she was already up and definitely had a guy over. Maybe two, or even three.
The moment we were inside my room and had shut my door, we looked at each other and exploded into laughter.
“Oh my god, I think we need hall monitors up here from the sounds of her room,” I said, raising my eyebrows.
“I think she needs a chastity belt from what I heard,” Harlow said with a crooked grin.
We kept on like that, back and forth, and I ignored the glaring fact that I was fooling around with three different men myself. Anything to mock Victoria and ignore my own shortcomings was human nature. I lent Harlow a nightgown, and she changed in the bathroom. We climbed under the covers together, and it was almost two in the morning by the time I leaned over and shut off the light.
It was good to have Harlow with me, just as I thought it would be. The bed was large enough that we didn’t have to touch if we didn’t want to, and when we fell asleep, we didn’t want to.
I was just starting to drift off when Harlow spoke to me, though. Her voice slashed through the dark like a ray of light, and she said, “What’s up with you being from somewhere else?”
I froze, and my mind went blank. I didn’t know how to respond to that question because I simply didn’t know the answer. Harlow seemed so nonchalant when I was experiencing my disconnect, and she’d seen me going through some rough times. She’d seen me losing control of my own physical form more than once and had never mentioned it. I had hoped this was where we were at, where we didn’t have to talk about the oddities of my post-coma experiences.
Fuck.
Finally, I took a deep breath and said, “I have no idea. You know weird shit happens to me sometimes, and I don’t know why. Doctor Norris said the pills would help me maintain control of myself, and I forgot to take them tonight.”
“The handful you gulped down the moment we got in here?” she asked.
“The very ones,” I replied. “I’ve tried not taking them before, but that makes me feel so sick and out of my head. I can’t stand it for more than a day or so.”
“What happened when you were in the Pit?”
“I think they dosed my gruel,” I replied. “They fed me at the same time every day from what I could tell, and when I didn’t eat it, the guard would force me.”
“You got gruel?” she scoffed with derision. “They gave me nothing but watered-down broth, but I didn’t think it was every day. I lost track of time, but it felt like it was happening every few days at most.”
“Fuck, I’m sorry,” I said after a moment or two. “I don’t know if I’ve told you enough, but I’m sorry. If I could have dragged your ass into the medical building and used the machines myself, you know I would have.”
“The Lower doctor helped me a lot,” she said, and I heard her draw in a long breath. “It feels weird, though, knowing Alexander gave me his energy.”
“I think Uppers have more than enough to share,” I reassured her. “I’m positive he’s on the top of the pile in energy consumption just because he’s a Remington.”
She laughed and said, “I don’t think that’s how it works. Women tend to get treatments done, not the men until they’re much older.”
“How do you know more about all of this than I do?” I asked.
“That’s what I’m saying. It’s fucking weird. You’re weird.”
“Thanks,” I scoffed. I wasn’t offended, though. I felt weird. I had since the moment I’d woken up in the hospital room months ago.
“We still need to figure this all out,” she said. “I don’t like being the only one in the know. I feel like I’m your tour guide or something.”
