“You can have a seat wherever you’re comfortable.”
Mr. Hayes moved past me, and I watched him round his desk and sit carefully into a large, leather chair. It creaked when he sat and he folded his hands on top of his desk… waiting.
I surveyed my options. There was a single seat in front of his desk. It looked comfortable enough, albeit a little old, but it was too close to him.
My eyes found a small, plaid sofa. The cushions swayed when I sat, and I immediately brought my knees into my chest and wrapped my arms around them. I felt his eyes on me, but the weight they carried was much lighter than those in the hallway.
“You can call me Roman, if that’s more comfortable for you.”
Nothing about this was comfortable for me.
“We are going to be seeing a lot of each other over the next couple of months. I don’t believe it'd be fair of me to ask you to open up if I weren’t willing to do the same in some capacity. I’d like our sessions to be conversations but I won’t expect you to answer any questions that make you feel uneasy or uncomfortable.”
That isnothow I expected this to go, and I wasn’t so certain I believed him. I thought maybe I’d walked into the wrong office. I couldn’t believe the headmaster would send me to a counselor that’d show me even a measure of kindness.
Headmaster Arthur was a pitiless human. He often confused strength with cruelty and sympathy with hatred. He possessed not even an inch of warmth, and no one knew that better than me.His son.
“Maybe today we could start with you asking me some questions.”
I lifted my chin. Our eyes touched for the first time and though his were dark, they were warm. His features were lost beneath a dark beard, shaved close to skin. A polite smile rested softly beneath his nose, and there was a faint scar on the curve of his jaw. His hair was more gray than it was brown but he didn’t look old.
He looked… distinguished.
The room fell still as he waited for me to say something.Anything.
I wanted to ask him how he ended up here, and if his broken bird had anything to do with the places he’d come from.
My jaw quivered, and I sucked my bottom lip into my mouth, biting down. Blood danced across my tongue, saturating all the words I couldn’t say.
My eyes were low as they wandered, tracing the outer edges of his desk. They paused on a thin brown folder, resting carefully in the center. I felt my lungs constrict and breathing became somewhat of a chore as I stared at that file.
Myfile.
Dread crawled beneath my skin, and I wanted to destroy that thing as much as I wanted to hide from it.
I could only imagine all the lies it held—all the rumors and accusations that so carefully altered my reality into one where I was the villain.
My new moniker was painted across those pages.
Vicious.
CHAPTERTHREE
ROMAN
Fragilewas stamped across Sebastian’s body, the letters bold and painted in red. His anxiety was palpable enough that I could taste it against my lips and feel it quiver on the tips of my fingers. It made this pea-sized room feel even smaller, and Sebastian looked as though he was drowning in his own uncertainty.
His eyes were hidden behind a mop of curly black hair, but through those locks, I saw the way they darted from wall to wall, looking for an escape. Slim, pale fingers were knotted together, and they tugged anxiously at the denim that covered his legs.
He appeared much younger than his nineteen years, and nothing like the label his fellow students had christened him with.
Vicious.
It’d been scrawled across his file in various degrees, penned between the margins of his tragic story. I questioned which lines were true and which ones were falsified for the sake of the school’s reputation.
Sebastian couldn’t stop staring at it, and something in his wide gaze told me he wondered the same thing.
His eyes were big, almost too big for his face. Long lashes swept the tops of his cheeks when he squeezed them shut, and it was several moments before he opened them again.