ROT WITH ME

xxii - sleep

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

Rafe blinked, ire engulfing his eyes, gaze as dark and hard as coal. "What did you do?" his tone teetered on the brink of desperation as he shoved his trembling fingers down into one of his pockets to hide his fear of losing June.

After gently rejecting Carmen's affections (who'd burst into tears and called him names) by confessing his feelings toward another. Toward June. He'd encountered the hostile stance, felt the tight tension stretching between the two like invisible rope, and found himself lingering and eavesdropping on the conversation at hand.

Rafe seemed to struggle with some internal battle, waiting for an explanation from June that would undo the words he'd just heard, that would make her his June again. But she could only stare ahead.

Ren appeared behind a distressed Wren who'd stood, curling an arm around her waist, while raising a brow at June and Rafe's posture. At their silence.

"Oh, did you meet Wren? Well-" Ren began but Wren clapped a hand over his mouth. Reading the situation, still in fear that June would take out her frustration on Wren and reveal her secrets. Wren drew a muffled Ren away, voice warped behind a palm. Leaving the pair alone.

"Well?" pressed Rafe, dark eyes framed by a thick sweep of lashes, hope glittering in black water.

June's pupils grew.

The delirious girl felt like she'd been struck across the face. Dizzy. It felt like a dream. The coke finally kicking in and smothering away her social awareness.

June found that her dreams would generally begin with a small fear, something that would send her skin crawling had it occurred in real time, but then it would discreetly slip into chaos.

The thing is that the so called chaos would be treated as normalcy in the dream, an eerie sort of calmness to it all, like the man's face before her would start to stretch, but the girl would not comment on it.

The setting behind them would alter from morning to night in an unnatural timespan, but she wouldn't question it. Her tongue would be stuck to the roof of her mouth. She'd grow an extra finger. Fire would lick up her violet dress. Sometimes subtle. Sometimes not. Still she would not speak of its existence. Would not make a peep.

Rafe focused into view again.

Nausea bubbled up her throat. She tamped it down. Hand reaching down into her pocket.

Rafe clasped his hand down onto her wrist. "June."

"I need to talk to Henry," she said in riposte. June shook out of his grasp.

"Rafe!" a voice called out. "Five minutes left, come on," it spoke again. Rafe looked from June, whose eyes were wide and innocent, then back to whoever spoke twice before shaking his head, tousles of brown covering his eyes and leaving. Unaware of the drugs flowing through her system.

June clicked Henry's name as Rafe's figure shrunk.

***

Henry laughed. "And your first instinct was to call me?" he repeated himself for the third time even after being given an answer the first. June had given him the rundown, well, partially, she'd left out the part where she'd frozen up before Rafe.