''Tell me how it feels,'' he whispers.
"Good," I gasp, my entire body trembling. Deeper. Harder. Perfect -- like we've been doing this for years.
His hand finds my jaw, fingers firm as he tilts my head up, making me look at him. And that's it.
Wav...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
ᖴO᙭
I blink away remnants of sleep, lifting my face from the pillow. Why am I awake?
Then I hear the kitchen phone ringing. Fuck.
I scramble up before it can wake the whole apartment. Chris needs sleep—we've been going to classes almost daily this week, then fucking every other night, and while I'm used to lack of sleep, she's exhausted.
And now Camila's trying to throw together a bonfire for the lot of us at the conservation area outside the city. Fucking golly gee.
I jog from my room to the kitchen and swipe the receiver, pressing it to my ear as I lean on the kitchen counter.
"Yeah?" I mutter, keeping my voice low.
"Fox. Thank fuck. I'm taking this summer class—fuck if I remember what it's called, don't ask."
Gwenevere Wilder. My kid sister.
What the fuck?
"I need your brain." She launches into something about school—something intense, something fast. "I need to know how bad IED can get. For my class project."
"Wait—class?" The last I heard about this was from Faro. He got her to admit she was trying to get into Goldwen's engineering program. That was... fuck. A year ago. "You got into Goldwen?"
"Obviously. I just finished my first year. You pissed I'm smarter than you?"
Fuck, I haven't talked to her in months. And now she's calling me about a class?
I grip the phone tighter, feeling the cold plastic against my ear. "Gwen, are you okay?"
"Look, I don't have time for a check-in. Just tell me how people get diagnosed and admitted to a psych facility with IED?"
I shift on my feet, turning around to face the hall, half expecting Chris, Cam or Jed to materialize. "Are you talking about Intermittent Explosive Disorder?"
"Yes."
Anger, violence, irritability. It's a behavioural disorder. "You're doing a project on IED?"
"I'm going to reach through the phone and punch you in your motherfucking—"
"Gwen, what's going on? Where are you? Are you in Goldwen?"
"I don't have time to sift through all the diagnostics and stats on mental disorders. It's too many books. Help me."
I start muttering everything I learned about anger disorders from third-year psych. I explain what I can, piecing together fragments from memory, telling her how diagnoses usually work, who does them, when admission to a hospital is necessary, the steps people take, and the criteria.
