BEAUTIFUL FLOWER | MATTHEO RIDDLE

CHAPTER TWENTY

My fingers, I remembered as my eyes moved wisply to them, my face scrunching up in disgust at the shriveled tips, brown and coated with dry blood. My nails broken, skin peeled away; I could feel the small pieces of loose splintered wood underneath the skin that was there.

"Shit," I whispered aloud, shaking my head with a frown on my face. Mattheo turned back around, eyeing my hands.

"You'll be fine," he walked over to the door, turning back to look at me still on the floor. "Get up, wouldn't want to be late to breakfast would you?"

I scoffed, standing up. "I'm not going to breakfast, not after everything that happened last night. Do you even have the slightest bit of concern in you about how many people were hurt?" I walked past him, moving toward the door, but he grabbed my arm and stopped me.

"No, I don't," he shook his head, his piercing brown eyes peering into me. "Everyone I wish to be is taken care of," he paused, looking me up and down, his eyes staying stuck on my busted fingertips, I looked away in embarrassment. "I couldn't give a rat's ass about anyone else."

"Why are you being like this," I narrowed my eyes, staring up at him with a nasty frown.

"Be yourself, Mattheo,'" he mocked me, making me look away from him in sheer embarrassment. He wasn't wrong, though. But, when I'd told him to be himself, this was not what I was expecting. I guess it is my fault, truth be told. "Is that not what you said?" he laughed at me, making me look down at my feet. "I'm being myself, just like you told me to."

"Can you just apparate us back to Hogwarts, please, I would like to go now." I ignored his rudeness, trying not to show the sting of his words as I picked at the hem of the shirt I'd thrown over myself hours before.

"I will take us back when I'm ready to." he tucked a piece of my hair behind my ear and my eyes fluttered shut. I was weakened again. Was he serious? Only seconds ago he seemed to be hurrying me up to go back, and now he was acting completely different.

"Then I'll walk," My eyes snapped open and I walked past him, yanking my arm out from his hold.

"No the hell you won't," his hand slammed the door shut just as I had opened it, his arm above my head. I jumped back from the loudness of the door, worriedly looking up to him, though angry.

"I am not waiting for you to choose when you want to bring me back to Hogwarts, I will walk if I have to. Now, please, for the last time, move."

He laughed, shaking his head with bright eyes. "Over my dead fucking body will you walk, Calantha. It's the start of Winter, go take a look for your damn self and see the snow outside. You are not walking to Hogwarts by yourself, do you understand?"

"I'm afraid I don't understand, because like I said, I am not waiting for your goddamn dimwitted ego to app--,"

Deja vu was the only way to describe his hand curled around my neck. This was, as I thought it to be, the third time.

Just like last night, my back collided with the wall again and a strained whimper stayed muffled in my throat. I looked up at him with dowey eyes, ever hopeful in the implication of pure impunity from which I might have not subdued under his hold. But I knew all too well that he was angry and that I'd upset him, there was nothing less gratifying than impunification to Mattheo in this moment.

"You think because of what you saw last night that I am weak," he pulled me off of the wall, only to slam me into it again, even harder. The back of my head stung and I grew faintly dizzy, my eyes fluttered open and shut, and I struggled to fight with the streak of light casting itself upon my face.