Recover: Book 2 of the Magic Mutations Series | ✓

65: Bitter Bites and Worried Words

When we emerged from the facility not long later, stepping out onto the foliage under the bright midday sun, I couldn't help but notice that Olivia was still keeping quite a distance from me.

She didn't say a word as we walked back through the forest in the direction of our car, keeping her head turned to the ground, crease worrying between her brows as she seemed lost in a deep thought.

After endless moments of only the crunching of the twigs beneath our feet and the wind rustling the leaves overhead breaking our silence, I caved and finally asked her, "Are you okay?"

Her head whipped up, a distant look in her emerald gaze as she muttered, "I'm fine."

"You don't seem fine," I responded, pointing out the obvious.

She opened and closed her mouth several times before finally uttering, "Your father came up with some of those..."

I heaved an inward sigh as the explanation for her silence was finally in the open. The horrors of the facility and the truth of what I come from is haunting her...

My past and my family... this Ollie dislikes it.

"He's better than my uncle... If you would believe it," I muttered, shrinking into myself as I started to feel the hope that Olivia would ever understand me again fade into the distance.

Nonetheless, I couldn't help but plead, "I'm not like them."

She came to a stop, eyes unreadable as they searched my face.

When I finally turned around, meeting her gaze, she then said, "I know. You're not your parents, Lukas."

But her tone lacked conviction. Something was off... and maybe it was that she didn't want to hurt me with the truth of how she now feared me.

Though, after a few moments of my silence, she went on. "You escaped this life. You didn't deserve the treatment they gave you, but you learned from the horrors they inflicted. I'm proud of the person you became." This time, I could hear the genuity in her voice.

My heart softened at her words as I realised that her silence all this time must have been because she felt sorry for me, not because she was scared of me.

Unable to stop myself, I took a small step closer to her, reaching a hand up to her face as I breathed, "Thank you, Ollie."

Though just before my fingers could brush against her cheek, she flinched away, taking a sizeable backwards step. "I want to get back to Ben," she then forcibly said, avoiding my eyes.

At once, my heart faltered, threatening to tear the muscle walls.

And as she continued to look everywhere but me, a nervous gleam to her eyes and a constant glance over my shoulder at the path that would take us away from here... that tear grew wider and wider, letting the self-doubt come pouring in.

Something was different with her.

Something was wrong.

And it was probably that she realised, after all she saw, whatever feelings she had for me would never be worth putting up with someone who comes from a family of people who can create what she saw in the facility.

· · ───── ∘ ☽༓☾∘ ───── · ·

She fidgeted in the seat beside me the whole way back to Stephen's house... Almost as if being alone with me made her skin crawl.

Another fissure broke open in my heart.

And the second the car came to a stop in Stephen's driveway, she couldn't leap out of the vehicle fast enough.