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“And.”
His jaw flexes. “Your thing.”
“And you?”
“No.”
I take his face in my hand and squeeze. “You?”
He stops wasting strength against my hand. The surrender never reaches his eyes. “Your thing.”
“Louder.”
His eyes stay murderous. “Your fucking thing.”
“We’ll clean up your language tomorrow.” I raise my voice toward the door without looking away from Simon. “Jamie. In.”
The handle turns. Jamie stops on the threshold and takes in the pile near my feet and Simon still on his knees.
“Get this out of my room. The drawer too.”
Jamie glances at Simon.
“Don’t look at him. Take this mess downstairs.”
Jamie drops to a crouch and starts gathering the pile. He keeps his eyes on the broken plastic.
I look down at Simon. “Get up. Get your filthy ass in the shower.”
Simon’s mouth opens.
“I didn’t ask you to speak. After you clean yourself, fold the clothes you dumped out and get in that bed and stay in it. Tomorrow you will sit at my table and eat breakfast with your mouth shut until I tell you what to say. If you break one more thing tonight, I’ll keep you on this floor until morning.”
Jamie waits with the wreckage in his arms until I tell him to go. Simon stays on his knees after the door closes, staring at the place where Jamie was.
“Is there anything else I need to know?”
His eyes come back to mine. “No.”
I give him enough time to change his answer. He doesn’t.
“Get in the shower, Simon.”
I leave him with the lie.
CHAPTER 31
Oliver
Heather leaves me at the table and heads back upstairs for Ben.
Jamie is in the kitchen watching breakfast. Heather left him with full access to knives, pans and several other objects that would be considerably more useful as weapons than the wooden ruler she carries in her pocket.
He doesn’t touch any of them.
I can still taste the bitterness of my morning pill. Heather stood over me while I swallowed it, then checked beneath my tongue before bringing me downstairs. Jamie moves a pan off the heat. I wonder whether he still takes a pill. I don’t get to consider it for long.
Footsteps sound on the stairs, and Heather appears with Ben. After what I heard through the wall last night, I wasn’t expecting a man so large.
