The Rules They Broke

Chapter 33: More Rules

OLIVIA

"Olivia, do you want waffles? Elijah's making waffles, so better tell me now before he makes me another waffle and finishes all the batter."

Olivia struggled to peel her eyes open, completely unable to comprehend a single thing Blake was saying.

"Wha-"

"Waffles. Do you want?"

She squinted through sleep sticky eyes to see Blake's nose inches away from her face, his chin and forearms up on the bed, his mouth drawn into a frown.

"Also, I think maybe the first one he made me was undercooked. Do you think that's food poisoning? I was eating the thing and it kind of was squishy in places, but I poured so much syrup on there I couldn't tell if it was squishy because of the syrup or squishy because the batter was raw."

Olivia groaned and pulled the blanket up over her head. "Elijah knows how to cook," she grumbled. "It wasn't undercooked. Now let me sleep."

The blanket was pulled down from her head and Olivia's protests died away when Blake leaned forward and planted a sloppy kiss on her cheek. "Come on, your bus is coming in fifteen minutes," he said, taking her by the arms and pulling her from the bed.

Blake overestimated how awake Olivia was and she went stumbling into him. "Blake," Olivia whined when he stepped on her foot. "You're so fat."

"Who's so fat?" Elijah's voice came from behind Blake.

Blake gasped dramatically. "You left the waffles with Logan? You might as well have just thrown them out the window!" He dropped Olivia into Elijah's arms, snatched the tongs from Elijah's hand, and hurried down the hall.

Olivia managed to open her eyes enough to see that Elijah's eyes were red rimmed and had deep bags beneath them. Even his mouth looked too tired to hold up a smile. "Are you okay?" she asked.

Elijah gently smoothed down her bedhead. "I'm fine," he said. "I called the FBI office this morning and left them a message. They should get back to me within twenty four hours, but until they send someone, I don't want you to go anywhere alone, or be out after dark, alright? And no more taking public transportation or walking anywhere."

In the past twelve months, Olivia had never imagined that it would ever get this far, that someone would find out and help her in the way she needed to be helped. Now that it was actually happening, she found herself scared to follow the rules.

"Okay," she said, but Elijah must have heard something in her voice because he put his hands on her face and forced her to look him in the eye.

"Olivia, I need to help you, and this is all going to turn out fine, but only if you help me out here too, okay? You have to do what I say, or I won't be able to control what's going on. Promise?"

Olivia crossed her fingers behind her back. Just in case.

"I promise."

*****

By the time she managed to escape Elijah's stare, put on clean clothes, and make it to the kitchen, she had only four minutes left.

She was so intent on catching the bus that she didn't notice that there were two people in the kitchen until she was already halfway to the stove.

She stopped dead on seeing Logan sitting at the dining table with Blake, stuffing his face with whip cream covered waffles, a splotch of white cream on his cheek and a smear on his nose.

What was he doing there? Hadn't he left just yesterday?

"Olivia, your waffle's in the iron, so you can just take it out-" Blake began, drawing Logan's eyes away from his plate and up to Olivia.