Page 32 of Quiet Obsession
She looked like a deer caught in the headlights when my three friends ganged up on her. Her fingers trembled, barely peeking from under her baggy jumper, lips thinning, eyes vacant. I don’t know why I grabbed her, why Iorderedher to sit.
It was instinct.
She looked overwhelmed, ready to cover her ears and rock back and forth, so I grounded her the only way I know how.
With control and orders.
It shouldn’t have felt so good when she listened.
What is wrong with you?
She looks soft, delicate, so sweet and innocent. Life has chewed her up and spat her back out smaller at least three times and now I’m here, fuckingenjoyingher following my command?
Bile churns in my stomach, guilt rotting my insides. That dominating nature is a part of me I don’t like... a mirror image to my father’s personality.
You’re just as fucked up as he was.
My hands itch to break something because the scariest part isn’t that she listened. It’s that for a second it made me feel fucking euphoric.
“She’ll be down soon,” Noah informs, joining us outside, a chessboard tucked under his arm.
Hyde’s eyes cut to him, jaw ticking, hands clenching into fists, and that’s enough for Noah to read him like anopen book.
“You going to give me the ‘stay away from my sister’ talk?” he asks, accepting the bottle from Dash.
“I already did,twice,” he shoots back, squaring his shoulders before exhaling a steady breath, his demeanor changing into a caring older brother. “I’m not doing it for her benefit, Noah.”
That makes my brows pinch together. “What?”
Noah spares me a glance, something hard, unreadable, almost hateful in his expression. He masks it, shifting his eyes back to the fire. “He thinks she’s defective.”
“No, I don’t,” Hyde snaps. “But she’s not okay. She’s defensive, she has trust issues, and I think... I think she’ll be taking her trauma out onsomeone. I don’t want that to be you. I can see the way you look at her.”
“You see what you want to see,” Noah deflects.
He might think he’s subtle, but the four of us have been friends since freshman year. We know each other’s defaults, and the way Noah’s acting around Millie isn’t his. Close, but cracks form in his composure, big enough to betray his interest.
“You can hide behind your overprotectiveness,” he continues, leveling Hyde with a dark, cold stare. “Whichever way it swings right now. But the truth is, you don’t understand her and you’re scared.”
Hyde takes the bottle from him, chugging for a few seconds. Looks like he’s in the mood to wipe his memory.
“Can you blame me? They checked her through andthrough and found nothing wrong, yet she barely fucking speaks. She just... exists. She isolates herself, hides in baggy clothes, eats the bare minimum.”
Everything he’s saying is true, but there’s another reason Hyde’s scared...guilt. He wasn’t there when she needed him. He wasn’t there before that, either.
No one was.
Not him, not their parents, who idolized her in all the wrong ways when she got a second chance at life after battling cancer for two years at age seven. Hyde said they called her their miracle baby. They did a one-eighty once she was in remission and instead of raising her, they let her lead, spoiling her rotten because shesurvived.
From what little Hyde let on this past year about their childhood, Millie was an open, happy, and deeply empathetic kid. She trusted everyone until it came back to bite her. After the hell Evan put her through, she flipped herself the other way, building walls so high they seem impenetrable.
Her idyllic worldview lasted much longer than mine, but she’s finally seen what I’ve known since I was five years old: the world is a dark place full of monsters.
“Ever since it happened, she’s been surrounded by people who witnessed her humiliation,” Dash says, uncharacteristically serious. “Now she’s at Gravemont,with us. Different setting, different people. Give her time, Hyde. She’ll be okay.”
He doesn’t speak for a while, eyes on the flames, fingers curled around his glass. Then his gaze sharpens, shifting myway. “What was that earlier?”
Heat prickles my neck.
