Bleeding Heart

chapter four

August's school had almost cleared out by the time I parked my car haphazardly along one of the teacher parking spots and rushed inside past the open gates. The guard eyed me but I didn't hear him stop me as I ran inside, barely being able to notice the otherwise empty parking lot over the sense of impending doom.

This was bad. If I don't find anyone in there, I thought, then maybe I wouldn't find where August was--and that, that was a thought that I couldn't even truly comprehend right then.

"Who are we so angry at?" Blake drawled right behind me, although his gait was a polar opposite of mine; nonchalant where I wasn't. "The principal? I'm rather fond of holding knives over authority figures."

I didn't bother giving him a response to that. He was right behind me now and I could feel him walking too close. He--his mere presence was grating on my nerves. The whole ride here, feeling him sitting on the passenger seat right beside me, where he'd only been a big distraction, was a torture of its own. I wasn't in my right mind right now. I couldn't handle him.

"Not killing the principal," I gritted out anyway. Blake let out a delighted huff behind me, almost as if he'd seen me struggling to ignore him--avoid him, get rid of him--and had ended up responding to him anyway.

It had been that way for as long as I could remember. Maybe he remembers that too, a stupid, pathetic voice that sounded so godawfully hopeful resounded in my head. And maybe he did remember, but did any of it matter when he always forgot it all the moment it came for him to run?

Shaking my head out of it, I rounded the familiar school hallway and entered the reception area just a little before the doors to the principal's and the counselor's office--both of which were closed shut. Ava Greenley was here though--the assistant receptionist.

"Not a clue, dear." She told me when I asked her if August had contacted her, or if she'd seen August anywhere (I knew she made rounds around the school property most of the time). "He did show up for the counselor's office, but that was yesterday."

"And what was young Mr. Montgomery seeing the counselor for?" It was Blake putting his nose into business that didn't fucking concern him. Again.

The receptionist didn't seem fazed in the slightest, not because she was used to strange boys intruding on her conversations, but probably because--and I didn't like noticing it--she seemed to like what Blake was. A tall, muscled blond. A fucking eye candy, wasn't he?

"Oh." She giggled--she giggled when Blake flashed her a charming grin. My stupid heart seemed to give a pang at the sight of it, because I knew that smile wasn't real, I knew it wasn't, and wasn't he just made up of layers and layers of intricately woven facades?

"I think he'd been missing out on homework for more than a few days now," she continued. "Is something the matter at home, Alexis dear? Maybe that's why August isn't able to concentrate on his studies?"

"No." I stated out flatly, then I took a final glance around the office. "Thank you for your time."

It was momentary, but an intense rush of numbness still. A deep hollowed-out numbness that overtook me, from the deep confines of my heart to the tips of my fingers. It was a shock of alarming reality.

August wasn't here.

Where was I if he wasn't here?

"Hey." Blake gave a sharp tug on my hair, because he was right behind me, like he'd been since the past fucking hour, and I whirled around in rage. He frowned, letting my hair spill from between his fingers. "Trying a new hairdo?"

He was staring at the unruly hair I'd chopped off just last night in a frenzied haze, in a moment of panic. But it fairly didn't concern him, especially not him, and I was mad furious at that point. It was like he'd clicked that final trigger inside me.