Page 19 of Lessons In Grey

One corner of his lips flicked up in a smile as he pulled his hands from his pockets. “Your voice carries well.”

He had left his jacket in his room today, his sleeves pushed up to his forearms, my eyes drawn to them, to his hands. I had seen them a lot, the tattoos covering them, but I was never close enough for long enough to really study what they were.

I felt my face heat and averted my gaze as I picked up my notebook. “I’m finding it hard to believe that you aren’t stalking me,” I stated cooly, sliding my notebook back over my lap.

He crouched down, picking up a stray paper that had fallen from it. “Well, it is my lunch hour too. I was wandering, came across a hall you never showed me. A seemingly abandoned one at that.” He smiled, his eyes filling with light. “How could I resist?”

I looked at the paper he was holding, my eyes flicking to his and back before I reached for it. “Nobody is allowed down here,” I explained. “But if you have the app, nobody can really stop you.” Great, he was going to start bringing Remi down here to get a quick fuck in during my lunch hour. I was going to have to find somewhere else to stay.Again.

He stood, leaning back against the edge of the alcove. “Why is nobody allowed down here?”

I tucked the paper away and shrugged, trying not to let off how exhausted I truly was. “Ghost stories.”

“I love a good ghost story.”

I tapped my pen three times, realizing that I wasn’t going to get any work done now that he was here.

With a sigh, I leaned back. “There was an old hospital here back in the day. It was demolished except for this part which was close enough to what they wanted that they just did some touch-ups and called it good, but there were some curious issues thatthey could never quite figure out. People chalked it up as a haunting. Since then, the stories grew, and it was locked for good.” I glanced behind me, staring out the window that overlooked part of the courtyard. It was covered enough by trees that nobody could actually see me, just the shape of someone and only on a good day. “I might have inadvertently kept those rumors alive.”

He glanced towards the windows just as I turned back to him. He was quiet for several seconds before his eyes found mine again, causing mine to fall to my notebook. “Why didn’t you speak up today?”

I kept my cool. So it was a trap. “How did you get that information?”

I could feel his eyes boring into me, searing my skin in a way I wished they wouldn’t. “Why didn’t you speak up?” he asked again, tone soft, as if we were telling secrets he didn’t want even God to know about.

I ran my tongue over my bottom lip and chewed on the inside of my cheek. Because I was tired. Because I didn’t like being the center of attention. Because everyone already mocked me for being so perfect, and I didn’t want to egg them on. “I didn’t know the answer,” I lied, finding his eyes.

His gaze was so intense, I could hardly catch my breath. “You did, Emily.”

God, I wish he wouldn’t say my name like that. Like it meant something.

“I know you knew the answer because I pulled the quotes off of assignments you turned in over the last two weeks,” he revealed, causing my heart to skip. “You reveal things through your work I feel you never would dare speak out loud.”

My cheeks felt far too hot. That was because my writing was supposed to besafeand now he was using it against me. “You should expect nothing more than bland, copy and paste bullshit for the rest of the year,” I explained, and turned back to my work.

“Why are you so afraid of people finding out what goes on in your head?”

Because I’ve already played that game. Over and over andoveragain. I’m too tired to keep playing it. I’m fucking exhausted.

“I’m going to leave,” I warned him, reaching for my bag.

He released a breath. “Tell me the story of this hall then.”

My eyes lifted. “Why?”

“Because you have a voice, and if you don’t want to use it as it was intended, then I will push you to use it for lesser things.”

My chest tightened and I forced myself to meet his eyes, seeing that little flitter of darkness once again, the one that had drawn me in so long ago.

I worked my jaw and looked away, picking at the corner of my notebook before pulling my sleeves down. I honestly would rather sleep, but I very much doubted I’d get the chance now.

“Um,” I released a breath and shrugged, lifting my eyes to his tie. It was a dark, shimmering green today, and it wasn’t fully tightened around his collar. My fingers suddenly itched to fix it, my stomach twisting when I thought about who might have loosened it. “His name is Terry,” I finally began, resigning myself.

Relief pulled his shoulders down if but an inch. It was so miniscule, part of me wondered if I had imagined it. “Terry,” he nodded, gazing down the hall.

“He was a psychiatric patient back in 1932,” I went in, settling into my story telling. “He went crazy, as many do in the psych ward. He started scratching the walls until his nails came off. The story goes that his boyfriend went off to war and died because his war buddies found out that he was gay and couldn’t have the likes of him on their squad. After that, the doctors started running all of these tests on Terry because, well, he was gay, and they wanted to know why. Those tests and the news of his boyfriend drove him to insanity. They say he roams the halls, moaning, calling out for his lost love, looking for his next victim. Usually a homophobic asshole. I guess ghosts can tell thedifferent just by looking at you.”

His throat bobbed, pulling my eyes up from his tie, tracking his adams apple. “And you’ve been coming here for years? He must like you.”