Awake (Book 3)

Twenty-Three

            They actually allowed August to visit me the next afternoon. The door to my room opened as I was buttoning up my jeans.

            “Hey,” I greeted, moving to the closet of t-shirts to pick one out. August remained silent, leaning back against the closed door with his arms folded tightly across his chest. His oddness prompted me to ask if something was wrong.

            “No,” he replied, tilting his head. “I just experienced something that raised a few alarms, is all.”

            “Oh? Like what?”

            “Like, you know, going to meet with Liz, awaiting my punishment for defying her authority, and then finding out I’m suddenly off the hook.” He pushed away from the door, frowning severely. “Weird, right?”

            I swallowed hard, yanking a plain blue tee off a hanger. “Y-yeah. Totally weird.”

            “Ellie.” He breathed a long sigh, pinching his nose. “Jeez, I know what you did, okay?”

            “You don’t know what I did.”

            “Seriously? So you didn’t just completely become the government’s bitch to pardon me from my own dickhead moves?”

            I turned to face him, braiding my hair over my shoulder. “When you say it like that, it sounds stupid.”

            He threw his hands up. “That’s because it was stupid! It was stupid, Ellie!”

            “What was I supposed to do? Let them ‘have their way’ with you? From personal experience, that never ends well!”

            “So? It was my fault. My choice to stay and my choice to disobey. You don’t get to be punished for that.”

            I shrugged, securing the end of the braid with a rubber band. “Too late.”

            “Agh.” He squeezed his hands in front of him, like he was choking an invisible person. “You’re really trying to kill me, aren’t you?”

            He seemed irrationally upset, more so than he should be, which I could understand given the circumstances. I wrapped my arms loosely around his hips, peering up at him. “They were going to hurt you,” I murmured. “I can protect you, too.”

            The corner of his mouth twitched upward. “I guess I see who wears the pants in this relationship.”

            It was said jokingly, but even so, I rose to my tiptoes and pressed a kiss to his neck. “No pants. We’re a team,” I said. “Partners. Always.”

            “Damn straight.”

            “Friends, first and foremost, right?”

            His hands snaked into my back pockets, and he reeled me into him in one fluid motion. Our noses pressed together. His lips hovered teasingly over mine. “You are more than my friend,” he whispered, and then kissed me softly, stealing my words. I drank him in, sliding my hands under his shirt and up his taught back, stepping closer and—

            “Ellie.”

            The sharp, unamused voice pierced my brain and drove me away. Liz stood in the open doorway, foot tapping, arms folded, face pinched in that way that implied she didn’t much like what she saw.