The Lies He Spoke

SEVEN

BLAKE

Blake jerked awake when his chin slipped off his hand and hit his desk. Wincing, he wiped the drool down the side of his mouth with his shirt and took off his glasses, which were making a dent in his face with the way he had his hand on his cheek.

He tried to refocus his eyes on the screen of his laptop in front of him, where he had a total of twenty nine tabs open in front of him, all on Elijah's trial.

He had known there was something wrong from the very beginning. From the moment Elijah had reassured him that the police banging on their door weren't there because he had been out partying the night before, Blake realized one thing.

Elijah had known that they were there for him.

And that meant that he had known this was going to happen already.

And since he obviously couldn't have killed Marshal Hendricks, that left only one option.

Someone had framed him, and Elijah knew all about it.

And why would Elijah just let this all go? Why didn't he protest his innocence, or announce that he was framed to everyone any chance he got?

They must have had something over him.

And Blake was going to find out, and get his brother out of there.

As he struggled to keep his eyes open, Andy, his roommate, ambled into the room, rubbing his temples. He did a double take on seeing Blake sitting at the kitchen counter. "You're up late," he said.

Blake put his head in his hands. Andy frequently stayed up late because he had all afternoon classes, but Blake himself was usually asleep on time so he could wake up early. Now, it was nearly two in the morning, and he could hardly stay away. 

"Yeah," he said. "Couldn't sleep."

"Couldn't or don't want to?"

"A bit of both, I guess."

Andy knew about the trial - everyone knew about it - but he didn't shy away from Blake. Instead, he had asked Blake when he first came back to the dorm if everything was alright, and when Blake shook his head, he told him, Well, let me know if you need anything.

And since then, Blake hadn't asked for anything, but Andy often went out of his way to make life a little easier for him. Blake would find the trash taken out the day it was his turn to do so, dinner in the fridge when they had decided they were both too tired to do something about it, and the living room vacuumed when before Andy only did it when it was really starting to irritate Blake.

In a way, his silent acts reminded him a bit of Logan.

But truth be told, no one could be the exact mix of foul language and random bouts of gentleness that made him feel that everything would be alright like Logan could.

Blake opened yet another tab and rubbed his eyes. He missed his brother, even if they had yelled at each other the last time they saw each other.

And he missed Olivia. After living with her for nearly nine months, they had become really close. For a sister he hadn't known the whereabouts of just a year ago, they were practically best friends now.

That was part of the reason Blake hadn't wanted to go back to school. Logan's apartment was about two hours from his current one, and with his lazy habits, he would never be able to make the commute there and back to school every day. But he didn't want to live here anymore. He wanted to be with his family.

He wanted to live with Elijah again. He wanted Elijah to yell at him for going to parties and drinking, for failing all his math classes, for leaving his dirty laundry all over his floor.