AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Hey, come on, man! Enough with the manhandling,” she spluttered, furiously turning to face him with clenched fists. He looked shocked and contrite at the same time.
“Fuck, that was… shit. Hughes, I didn’t realize…” A dull flush crept up his cheeks and he looked absolutely stricken. “There’s no excuse, that was unforgivable. I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?”
What?
“Uhm, no, I lost my footing. But no more shoving, okay?”
“Honest to God, I meant to give you just the gentlest of nudges.”
“No more nudging either.” He lifted his hands in surrender.
“I promise.”
“So… about Miles Hollingsworth.”
Iris was curious by nature, one of the other reasons she’d believed journalism was the right career choice for her. But she now knew her curiosity wasn’t fueled by the driving need to know all the facts—no, she was just nosy and loved a good gossip.
That nosiness, combined with boredom, along with a deep reluctance to be trapped in this room once again were only a few of the reasons she kept prodding Trystan about Miles Hollingsworth, despite his obvious reluctance to divulge any information to her. Iris purely hoped to keep him talking and to delay her inevitable imprisonment in this awful room.
“No.”
The harshly spoken word foiled her sad—and obvious—delay tactic. He stepped back, slammed the door in her face, and a few seconds later the lock clicked in place.
“Thanks for lunch, you make a great tuna mayo toastie,” Iris said, when Trystan collected the lunchtime tray four hours later. She was so eager for some conversation and companionship that even his company would be preferable to the increasingly horrific claustrophobic confines of this room.
Instead of nodding curtly and leaving, as was his habit, he stared down at the tray for a moment and then lifted his eyes to meet hers.
“My mom’s recipe,” he said, and Iris’s eyebrows shot up at the reluctantly conceded personal information. “You didn’t have to clean the dishes.”
“I didn’t mind,” she said. “Besides, I was bored. It gave me something to do.”
“Did you do those stretches this morning?”
Iris winced at the memory of those painful stretches. She was not as diligent with her daily stretching as she ought to be. She went to yoga only occasionally when Evan dragged her out to a class, but Iris would never be that girl. She was reasonably fit, she walked a lot, and worked out once or twice a week. She did the bare minimum to stay healthy and keep herself in acceptable shape, but she wasn’t religious about it. And leading up to this trip, she’d been so distracted she’d skipped a few gym sessions.
And she’d felt it while stretching this morning. But she’d forced herself to do it, despite the pain, because Trystan had been right, it would help. It had helped, but God it had sucked.
“Yes.”
“And how’s your head?”
It took Iris a moment to figure out why he was asking her that, but when she remembered she rubbed the top of her head ruefully.
“There’s barely even a lump, actually. It throbbed for a while after I returned to the room, but the pain faded not too long after that.”
“Good,” he hovered awkwardly for a few moments, before saying, almost impulsively, “I’m taking Luna out for a walk soon. Would you like to join us? It may help with any residual stiffness you have.”
Would she? What a dumb question.
Iris had spent the morning writing, then reading, then neatening up the already neat suite. Anything to keep it together. But nothing had been able to alleviate her frustration, restlessness, and the fear of losing all control of her emotional and mental stability. Her medication was barely helping her keep it together.
Calls home hadn’t helped. Her parents kept pushing her for answers about where she was. And who could blame them? She’d built it up to be this huge thing, promising them a revelation that would blow their minds, and now she was being secretive about it.
Hunter Quinn had—unsurprisingly—still not responded to any of her messages. Iris had pretty much given up on that front.
Evan had been to yet another party last night and all she’d talked about was how amazing it had been. She’d spent a good deal of time name-dropping, talking about some guy she’d fucked, and then bitching about her boss for another half an hour after that.
She hadn’t once asked Iris how she was doing. Which Iris wouldn’t normally have noticed, only she’d really needed to talk about her increasing doubts about her career choice. That was when she’d recognized that most of their conversations centered around Evan and her life. Iris had picked up on this in the past but had always thought this was because her own life was so dull in comparison, but now that she had so much time with her thoughts, the disparity troubled her.
