A Study in Charlotte (Charlotte Holmes, #1)(50)

A lie, of course, but I was baiting my trap. Holmes taught me that: people would much rather correct you than answer a straightforward question. Randall wasn’t an exception to the rule.

“Dude, you weren’t that important to him,” he said. “No, I heard that he was poisoned. I don’t know which one’s true.”

“Poisoned? From the dining hall food?”

“Maybe.” Randall shrugged. “But other people would probably be sick then too. I don’t know, he’d been eating these cookies his sister sent him, and they looked nasty. Maybe it was in those. Or that weird protein powder he had. That stuff was the wrong color. He said it was from Germany and expensive, but I didn’t buy it. Maybe your little friend slipped something into it.”

“Out on the pitch,” Kline hollered.

“All right,” Randall said, “later.” The venom was gone from his voice. I was happy about that, at least.

“You good?” Kline asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Hey, so, he said something about protein powder? Do you . . . do you know a good brand?” I bent to lace a cleat so he couldn’t see my face. I wasn’t sure I could pull that one off: I wore cable-knit jumpers and read Vonnegut novels and had a girl for a best friend. I was about as likely to build up giant biceps as to build a colony on the moon.

“Talk to Nurse Bryony at the infirmary,” he said. “She has some prescription stuff she gets from Europe.”

I reached in my bag, ostensibly for my water bottle, and sent Holmes an urgent text. I just hoped her phone was on this time, and not pickled in formaldehyde or in pieces across her chemistry table.

Practice crawled by at a snail’s pace, especially once we began running plays. When Kline announced the last of them, I gritted my teeth and waited for my opportunity. Then I threw myself up for a catch in the most insane possible position, sprawling out like a diver going into water. I let myself go limp. My head bounced once, twice, three times against the frozen ground.

No one could say I wasn’t dedicated to my game.

I heard Kline holler, “That’s it! Watson! Watson!” and the rest of the team roaring.

Things went black.

When I woke, I found myself blinking up into fluorescent lights. Holmes’s tear-streaked face was hovering over mine. She seemed genuinely upset, and for a second, I thought there’d been another murder. I struggled to sit up on my elbows.

“Oh, baby,” she sniffed, shoving me back down on the bed with a touch more force than was necessary. “I thought you’d never wake up!”

I completely failed to catch on, at first. But then again, I had hit my head. “Where am I?” I tried to ask, but it came out more like a woof.

Holmes burst into tears, putting a hand to her mouth. Her nails were painted a bright red, and she smelled like Forever Ever Cotton Candy. Then I noticed she was in a polka-dot sweater. With a bow in her hair.

Apparently, she’d been working on her caring-girlfriend routine.

I thought I was going to be sick, but then, it might’ve been the concussion; I was fairly sure I had one. Everything was out of focus, in a doubled sort of way, and the only solution I could think of was to sleep. I shut my eyes, satisfied that I’d fulfilled my end of our makeshift plan. I had an injury that was bound to keep me in the infirmary for at least a day. Enough time for Holmes to poke around.

Somewhere across the room, a voice said, “Oh, you two are too much,” and I snapped my eyes open again. From the little supply station, Nurse Bryony beamed at us. “Do you know she hasn’t left your side for the past three hours? You blacked out for a bit, and then you were drifting between asleep and awake, and the whole time she just sat and held your hand, fretting. Poor thing.”

The accent was American, but the cadences were faintly, unmistakably English. I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed it before. Or was it in my head? This time, if I ignored the halos I saw around all the lights and the soft little hum in my head, I could almost pay attention.

“How long will he be here?” Holmes asked, laying her hand against my cheek. “We have dinner reservations for tomorrow in town. It’s our two-month anniversary.”

Her fingers were cool and soft against my face, and I found myself leaning into her touch. Then I froze. “Sorry,” I whispered to her, mortified.

“What are you apologizing for?” she asked, her voice surprisingly rough-edged. With her other hand, she brushed my hair back from my face.

The nurse cleared her throat, cutting into my confusion. “I’ll keep a close eye on him. It’s not bad enough to send him to the hospital, but I still don’t want to take chances. You might have to reschedule your plans, just to be safe.”

Holmes smiled down at me. She wasn’t Hailey. She was something much more insidious. Charlotte Holmes without the edges, all combed and clean, well loved and loving in return. I knew it would be gone tomorrow, all of it—the gentle way she touched me, the glitter of her undivided attention, the bows and the perfume. It would all go back into her costume box, and she would be the real Holmes again.

Because this wasn’t real, even if she spoke to me in what sounded like her real voice. “Do you hear that? You should be fine,” she said.

I shouldn’t have wanted it the way I did.

I was beginning to go, I could tell, and I knew I would wake up back into our old life. The lights winked at me; they liked the secrets I told them. But silently, I reminded myself, secrets are best when kept to oneself. They began blowing out, one by one, like candles. “Good night,” I told Holmes, pulling her hand to my chest, and then I was awash in sleep.