The Ranking System (BoyxBoy)✔

⚜Chapter 21: Don't Trust Anyone

A/N: Oct. 14th. 2021

A NEW UPDATE HOMIES 🌟

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Q/A: What's your favorite snack/dessert?

I'm in love with almonds and pistachios. As for dessert I'd probably say ice cream?? 🤩

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I swallowed hard. I wasn't shocked at the news that I was "dead", but I was taken aback by the fact that Adam knew. He knew I shouldn't be alive, which only meant one thing: he came back for me. Or at least, he searched for me, at least once, after he had left the orphanage. 

I forced myself to speak, hoping the expression on my face wouldn't reveal my true feelings.

"What do you mean?"

His jaw tensed as he stepped away from me and Adam looked away. If there was a hint of emotion in his eyes, it vanished completely after he blinked. His cold, pale eyes returned to mine, masking any vulnerabilities with an unreadable look he had mastered flawlessly. 

"He died in a fire six years ago."

He spoke in a calm, regulated voice, but his knuckles were white. 

He knew. 

"Who was Eric anyway?" I asked. 

"A friend." He paused, then shook his head, laughing in a fatalistic way. "No, he was more than a friend. He was everything to me."

The jarring sincerity in his voice caught me off guard. 

"What happened between you two?" 

"Nothing," he murmured. "Nothing happened between us, and I think that was the worst part."

He ran a hand through his hair. 

"We grew up in the same orphanage. He arrived a few years after I did, after he was removed from his previous one." He laughed emptily. "Knowing him, it wasn't a surprise. Trouble followed him everywhere, and if it didn't follow him, he'd go look for it himself."

Adam paused. 

"I was adopted and left before he did, but something happened when I was gone. One of the kids set the kitchen on fire. The reports say it was an accident, but it wasn't. The kid was probably angry and sad. I mean, who could blame him? You don't know how depressing it was behind those bleak walls."

Oh, I did. I'd been through it all. The fake smiles, the loneliness, the emptiness... 

"The orphanage burned down in flames. Eric wasn't among the list of survivors." Adam took in a shaky breath, pain etching his voice. "When I heard he had died, I wished I had gone with him."

When the caretakers told me that Adam had been adopted, I was petrified. I was torn with grief. I thought he'd gone for a trial session and would come back within a week, like he'd always done.

When a family adopted an orphan, they first had to pass what we called a trial session. They took the child home for a short period of time, and if something went wrong, the child would return.