Page 57 of Among the Screaming Trees

“I’m sorry, Professor, let me get some ice for your⁠—”

“I’m fine,” he snaps, already opening a storage cupboard on the wall dividing his room from Dr. Bonner’s. He retrieves a charcoal shirt from its hanger and slips it on, forgoing the idea of ice or cool water to soothe his mishap. Maybe the skin is simply flushed, or his pain threshold is incredible. Either way, someone should check his wound.

“Should I get⁠—”

“Out of my office? What a splendid idea.”

The same fingers that maneuvered his pearl buttons with ease manipulate these charcoal ones. All too soon, the golden dips and ridges of torso are covered, along with the ruddy line down his chest and a tattoo on his left pec. One of those blink-and-you-miss-it type skin stains—pale, purple-pink flattened petals surrounding a golden disk. A daisy is known as a composite flower, the center a mass of tube-shaped florets, making what looks like one flower a group of many tiny flowers working together. Elijah Wyldan, the cold, distanced divorcee with a brilliant mind and deplorable social skills, has a tattoo of a delicate Asteraceae over his heart. It’s clear from his mechanical movements that he didn’t aim to share his naked torso with me. Jackson and Lukaz I’ve seen naked before, but never Elijah or Fox. I understand Fox has multiple scars from the frostbite that almost took his life after the car accident. I suspect he has other physical scars on his person, perhaps as a result of the foster system or being bullied because he wasn’t like the other kids at school. When Fox is ready, I hope he will share his scars with me, so I can kiss each and every one of them. But Elijah remains my deepest frustration and most cavernous mystery. A man bereft of empathy who was so kind when cramps crippled me. His persuasions vacillate like a fucking metronome. One moment he’s a roaring flame; the next, he’s reclaimed by frigid morbidity.

“Go, Aspen. Get out.”

“I’m leaving, but before I do, answer me two questions.”

Wyldan pauses, slumped shoulder to hip against the doorframethat offers the safety of his colleague. His extended sigh matches my insides, aching to hear the curious words I know will split the charged air between us until nothing is the same again. Will that change take place once I ask, or upon his answers? My skin feels hot, like the coffee he spilled down his front has clung to every pore of my skin, desperate to penetrate.

“Does Malchoydian Pepperberry grow in the Wyldan Woods?”

He’s silent for a long time. Seconds drag by, his only movement the rise and fall of his ribcage and the sporadic blinking of long, sooty lashes fanning his cheeks.

“Yes.” It’s a whisper. A breath just louder than the lie forming on his tongue.

“And you know where they grow?”

“Is that your second question?”

“Don’t you fucking dare do this,” I seethe, ready to hurl the contents of the cup at his granite-still, demonic, gorgeous face.

“Do what?” His lip curls. It’s a challenge, a dare. He’s baiting me, the bear in the fountain lying in wait on the rocks just as the salmon swims into reach of one herculean paw.

“Why do you have an Asteraceae flower tattooed on your chest, Professor?”

Chapter Thirty-One

Fox

THE HUNT

People foolish enough to underestimate the unpredictable power of nature are often the first to succumb. A babbling stream cascading gently across flat rocks can fast become a tempest of rapids with deadly currents after a rainstorm dumps volumes of new material.

The professor’s lip drips a crimson trail of blood down his chin, his hand cradling the area where I split the skin. Not only did he underestimate Aspen, but also my fierce protective nature for my little tree, who had fled the college into the Wyldan Woods bordering the campus boundary, across the mountain where his family built their home and further east toward the Yukon territories.

“Why?” I roar, the sound hoarse and alien. In the weeks and months since I’ve gotten to connect with her on a deeper level, my verbalization has typically been a form of her name as I stroked myself to completion. Now, all I want to do is pull each of his limbs from sockets and joints because she is fucking missing.

“What… did you don⁠—”

“Nothing,” he thunders, stopping my attempt at the single-syllable accusations.

“Always keep a spare shirt in your office, they said. You’ll never know when you need one, they said. No one ever tells you about needing a third shirt in the same fucking day!”

I couldn’t give a fuck if he taught his classes in a fucking tracksuit. Aspen ran off after her meetings. The last text message she sent me said that she had more questions for the Dean, who had referred her to Wyldan. I went by his office to escort her to lunch only to find him at his desk with his head cradled in his hands. It took two taps of my hand on his elbow to pull him from his spiraling thoughts. He’d been forthcoming enough to tell me they had, in fact, had words, and she’d left over twenty minutes before. When I spotted Tali near the dining hall, it was she who told me she’d seen Aspen sprint off into the woods, moving with such determination that she hadn’t slowed. Not even to the sound of her name being called.

When I retraced my steps back to Wyldan, only then did he tell me what the two had discussed, and only because my hand spanned his throat with him pressed against a cupboard. His hesitation earned him the headbutt, my forehead crashing into his with a satisfying crack. When he corrected himself, smoothing his shirt and standing taller, his confession earned him the right hook.

“She asked about Malchoydian Pepperberry growing in the Wyldan Woods.”

“Does it?” my quirked brow had asked him.

“Yes.”