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I’ll be so completely alone.
It’s too much and the large, crushing weight in my chest grows further. I have to get out of here.
“I have to go.” I stand slowly, and all three of them move as if to follow. “No. I…I think it’s best if we stay away from each other for a little while.”
“Emma…” Caspian’s voice aches like the inside of my chest, but I can’t bring myself to look at them. I know if I do, I will crumble and a few minutes of comfort won’t be worth what could happen if anyone else saw us together.
“I’m sorry. I just…until things calm down, we shouldn’t see each other. It’s for the best.”
My head agrees while my heart crumbles in my chest.
28
ASHER
Exam time is one of the strangest moments of the year. The campus is equally busy and empty at the same time; classes are half on pause, and most teachers like myself are just hanging around waiting to answer any last-minute questions to help those few students scrape by on a pass.
Some days, it’s a great distraction. On other days I sit by the phone waiting on the call from the dean to tell me I’m out of a job. The call doesn’t come, but it makes the days without Emma drag on much longer.
With two beers in hand, I knock on the door to Caspian’s somewhat reconstructed studio and head inside. Caspian sits by the window with reams of paper at his feet. His head is forward, hair hiding his face from view, and there’s a line of tension across his bare shoulders while he works.
“Casp?” Approaching, I glimpse a few paints dotted around him and when he leans up, he seems to be trying to repair a canvas that was destroyed when his studio was ransacked.
“Hey Ash. Oh, thanks.” His eyes fall to the beers and he holds out one hand.
I give him the drink, then settle down onto an upturned box.
“Thought you’d be home by now,” Caspian says, dragging one hand through his long hair and pushing it away from his forehead.
“Emma has an exam today,” I reply. “Guess I was just…hanging around.”
“Hoping she’ll change her mind and want to see us?” He lifts one brow as he twists off the beer cap.
“Something like that. I know I shouldn’t but I can’t help myself.”
“You gotta respect her decision.” Caspian drinks deeply for a few moments while I nod.
“I do. It’s not that. Her dad called me.”
Caspian pauses and darkness flashes through his eyes. “What did he say?”
“He won’t report the pictures if I stay away from her. He says I have to choose. Emma or my job.”
“Fuck, man. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not. I told him straight that I choose her, and that’s when he threatened me with the pictures. I almost told him to do it, dared him to, but I stopped myself.” My attention drops to my own beer. “It wouldn’t just hurt me. It would hurt all of us.”
“And her,” Caspian murmurs. “She puts on a strong face but you saw how she was. Her mother hits her, and she shuts down. I keep thinking we should have done more that day. I don’t know what, exactly. Just…more.”
“I know that feeling. That’s probably why Finn is hanging around the exam hall. Keeping an eye from a distance.” I drink slowly and cast an eye around the studio. The carnage is lesser than it was the first time I saw it all, but it still pains me to see so much of Caspian’s work destroyed. “Did security get any leads on who did this?”
“Nope.” Caspian pops the P and sighs deeply. “There was barely anything on the cameras. A leg, maybe an arm. Whoever it was, they were good at hiding. Same for the dark room and whoever stole the pictures.”
“What are you thinking?” I stare at him, seeing a slight nervous tick at his jaw.
“I think it was a student. Or another teacher. No one else would know to dodge the cameras like that, y’know?”
“Have you pissed someone off?”
