Page 65 of 56 Days
Oliver pulls her into the bathroom and shuts the door.
The siren, mercifully, drops a few decibels. She can hear him when he speaks, but there’s a distant buzzing sound that feels as if it’s coming from inside her own ears.
“It’ll go off in a second,” he says, putting his hands on her shoulders. “It’s a false alarm. Happens all the time. Every time someone burns their dinner. Relax.”
But his touch doesn’t match this sentiment. It feels different.
Not reassuring, but holding in place.
She says, “Who’s making dinner at four a.m.?”
“Or someone comes home drunk and lights up in the lift.”
“Comes home from where? There’s a lockdown.”
His response to this is a shrug. He’s standing with his back against the door.
“Oliver,” she says evenly, “there could be a fire. I want to go outside.”
“But there’s noneed.”
“Oliver,” she says again, this time in the exhale of a nervous laugh, because this situation is at once completely absurd and increasingly unsettling.
What the hell is he doing?
Her mind runs toward dark places. He’s a foot taller than her, stronger than her, and he’s preventing her from leaving a small room in the middle of the night during a potential fire. Physically holding her in place. She has her phone but...
She can see him snatching it from her hand, throwing it against the tiled wall. They’re in the smallest space of the apartment, at the end of the hall, while a deafening siren wails. Even if she screamed—
She pulls herself back.No. She’s just overreacting.
Tohisoverreacting.
“I need to not hear this noise,” she says, breaking away from him and reaching an arm around his side to get to the door handle.
“It’ll stop in a second.” He repositions his body, blocking her path again.
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. Happens all the time.”
“You just moved here.”
“And since I did, it’s been happening all the time.”
“Well, until then...”
She reaches again, ducking a little, and grabs a hold of the handle.
Oliver grabs her wrist.
She looks down at his fingers pinched around her skin and then up, very slowly, into his face.
“What are you doing?”
A tense beat passes.
Then he lets go.
