Chapter 4
Xavier
I can smell her perfume before I even see her.
I look up from my notebook, my pencil still hovering in my hand, as she waltzes through the classroom doorway. Glitter is splashed across her eyes, lined with kohl, and her lips are stained ombre red, the many earrings dangling in her ears glinting in the light as she locks her dark eyes onto mine.
Oh fuck.
I quickly put my stuff back into my backpack, dropping my pencil in the process. Fuck it, leave it, I don’t care, I have to get out of here before it’s too late.
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
“Where are you going?” Orion asks from two seats down as I throw my bag over my shoulder. “The professor isn’t even here yet. Class is starting in like five minutes.”
“Doctor’s appointment,” I lie. “I forgot.”
But when I turn my head around again, I shriek out loud.
Sunny Reed stands right in front of me.
And everyone in class is looking at me like I’ve lost my mind. Maybe I have.
Her presence swallows the remaining oxygen in this room, and my lungs can barely scrape by.
She tilts her head, eyes glimmering with mischief. “Hi.”
My butt cheeks instantly clench.
She spoke to me.
She actually spoke to me.
This is a dream.
It has to be.
Her sparkling eyes narrow. “I said hi.”
There’s no way she’s talking to me right now.
She. The object of all of my desires. She is talking to me like I exist in her world.
“Hi,” I say, my voice breaking tone from sheer nervousness.
Smiling, she steps closer, and I veer backward like a magnet is repelling me, because her being in my vicinity is absolutely terrifying.
“Sit.”
She leans in so close I gulp as my body instinctively moves down along with her incessant gaze, as if to avoid contact as long as possible, until my ass actually hits the seat I was sitting in.
She holds up a phone. “This is your car, right?”
Shit. She took this picture while I was going back up the mountain again.
“I …” I don’t know what to say that won’t make her kill me.
Would she, though? In the middle of this classroom, with all those people watching?
She tilts her leg sideways, revealing her pantyhose and shorts, along with the knife hiding in an inner pocket. “Answer me.”
Yup, she definitely would.
“Could be,” I reply.
The only way she knows that could be my car is …
My eyes widen.
“Don’t play coy with me. I know what you did …” She leans in so close I can practically feel her breath on my skin, and fuck me, I’d almost lick the air just to get a taste. “Xavier.”
The way she says my name has my skin pricking with heat.
Her finger reaches for my chest, and she taps me, each time a little harder than the one before. “You. Watched. Me.”
She touched me.
God, she actually touched me.
I shake my head vigorously.
“Admit it.” Her finger slowly moves from my chest to my throat, and I can’t fucking breathe. “You’re the masked guy, and you watched me.”
“Watched you what?” I mutter.
The grin that spreads on her face is devilish, and she leans in to whisper into my ear, “Kill.”
Shivers scatter all across my spine, not just from the word, but from her breath so close to my skin.
“No, never,” I lie.
How do I talk my way out of this?
She pulls away, still smiling as her fingers slowly wrap around my throat. “Don’t lie to me, Xavier, that’s rude. And you don’t want to be rude to me, do you?”
I shake my head.
“Good boy.”
Me?
A good boy?
My cheeks heat instantly, and a whimper escapes my mouth when she squeezes my blood vessels so tightly my brain begins to tingle.
“I don’t like people meddling in my business.
Normally, I would delete someone off the face of the earth if they tried,” she whispers.
“But since you’re Aspen’s brother—and my half brother is so very much in love with her—I’ll let you live.
Since I don’t want to ruin his happiness.
” Her right eye hovers close to mine. “For now.”
I am absolutely frozen to the floor.
For now?
“As long as you keep your mouth shut, of course,” she says. “You’ll do that for me, won’t you, Xavier?”
I nod again and again.
“Good boy.”
There it is again. That flutter in my heart, along with that whimper, and my pants are tenting fast.
She chuckles. “You’re practically melting in my claws. Pathetic.”
Her fingers slowly loosen their grip, and I suck in a hampered breath, nearly disappointed that her nails are no longer embedded in my skin.
“Glad we talked,” she says, casually throwing her long hair over her shoulder. “Bye-bye, Xavier.”
She turns around and waltzes back to the only free seat left in the classroom, all the way at the front of the desk, right as our professor walks in.
I’m left completely blindsided by this conversation.
Like a fucking puddle of water on the goddamn floor.
Melted.
Because she touched me.
This is what I’ve dreamed of.
And what has terrified me my entire life.
Years ago
While my sister is shoving dandelions into my hair, my gaze is fixated on the girl pricking the doll she’s roped against the tree behind our house.
Mom and Dad invited the Reeds and the Torreses over for dinner, and the backyard has been taken over by them jumping and running about.
My mini truck has already been stolen from the sandbox, and my collection of stones is strewn all over the grass.
But I still don’t care, because the one girl in that family is busy stabbing her own doll like she’s practicing for later, and I’m fascinated beyond comparison.
Every time the small kitchen knife buries into the stuffing, my skin pricks with both excitement and fear at the thought of one day being the target of her obsession.
“You look so pretty!” my sister says as she tucks another dandelion behind my ear, blocking part of my vision, and I push it out of the way.
“Stop, I’m trying to focus.”
“On what?”
Aspen follows my gaze toward the girl, still unaware that I’m watching, and she laughs. “Who, Sunny? She’s weird.”
Frowning, I grasp all the dandelions from my hair and throw them in her face. “You’re weird.”
She laughs and picks the broken dandelions up from the floor to shove them into my face. “And you’re weird for watching her!”
She giggles and runs off, and I crawl up from the grass to chase her. “I’m not weird. Come back here!”
Orion
Present
My gaze flickers back and forth between Xavier and Sunny as they both try to pay attention to the class we’re attending, though I doubt any of us are getting any proper notes.
It’s far more interesting to see him squirm in his seat from the mere memory of her perfectly manicured nails latched around his throat.
If only …
That could’ve been me.
I sigh out loud.
Why would she give such a gift to him? She doesn’t even know him, doesn’t care about him. Not that she knows me, but she should. She definitely should get to know me just as well as she thinks she knows him.
What were they talking about? Some kind of hush-hush secrets no one else is privy to?
I must find out. But how?
My eyes narrow as I keep my gaze fixated on the two of them, while Xavier tries his best to avoid eye contact with me. I know he sees me staring, and I don’t care in the slightest. I want him to know that I’m invested in this now, and that I won’t let this go.
He knows something about her that she clearly didn’t want anyone to know.
If I want to inject myself into her life, he is the key that will unlock her door.
When class is over, she immediately waltzes off on those knife-shaped heels of hers, and the moment she’s left, the air in the room feels much less … heavy.
Deadly.
I miss her already.
But she won’t grant me a single look until I figure out what it is that makes her tick. And the only way to do that is by grilling Xavier.
He packs up his things without ever looking my way, then slowly saunters out of class. He’s zoomed out of his mind, and it’s gotten me curious beyond belief.
If I don’t end up murdered for interfering, at least I’ll have plenty of inspiration for my poetry.
I drift through class and pass by several students before I finally manage to latch onto him in the hallways. The moment my hands touch his shoulders, he jolts up and down like a scared little puppy.
“Jesus,” he mutters.
I chuckle. “Something’s gotten under your skin. Could it be something fleshy, with nails sharp as knives, a smile equally deadly?” I throw my arm over his shoulder. “Green highlights flittering in her hair … and I am green with envy.”
“What? What are you talking about?” he grumbles, trying to wriggle his way out of my arm, but I won’t let him.
“What? Or who?” I muse, tossing my blond curls over my shoulder. “You’re avoiding my question.”
“Because you’re spouting bullshit,” he retorts.
“You’ve talked with the most exquisite creature on the planet, and all you can say is that my words are manure from male cattle?”
“That’s one way to put it.”
I drag him into an empty hallway so no one can hear us. “We should speak.”
“Let go of me,” he growls, throwing my arm off his shoulder.
“She went to you for a reason. Why?”
He looks up at me with stone-cold brown eyes. “None of your business.”
He’s gotten himself into something he doesn’t know how to deal with, and he’s handling it so very poorly.
“You made it the entire class’s business fumbling that.”
“I didn’t fumble shit. Get out of my way, Navarro.”
“Sounds to me like someone is trying to pretend that didn’t just happen.”
“What? Nothing happened,” he says.
“Nothing?” I slam my hand against the wall to block his way out. “She graced you with a chokehold, and you call that nothing?”
He snorts. “Wow. I almost pity you.”
I tilt my head, curly hair falling gently over my muscular shoulder. “Yet I clearly heard her calling you pathetic.”
“Fuck you, you don’t know shit,” he spits.
“I know she threatened you,” I say.
He freezes and stares at me.
Now I finally have his attention. Good.
“She’s never spoken to you before.”
He grimaces. “How would you know?”
“I know everything.” I swallow and throw my blond hair over my shoulder. “That’s what I do. I watch people. I observe.”
“And? What’s that got to do with me?”
“I want to know what you did that made her come to you like that.”
He rolls his eyes. “I told you, nothing.”
I smile. “You don’t want to tell me, and that’s fine. But I will find out regardless, with or without your help. Now you can either assist me and give me the truth or get in my way and deal with the consequences. Your choice.”
His hands clench into fists. “Or what, pretty boy?”
“Lower your weapons, pup. I’m not interested in fisticuffs. This face and this body are too priceless to be damaged.”
He chuckles and shakes his head. “Now that is pathetic.”
“Whatever you say. I’m just saying you and I have a mutual interest.”
“In what? I never said I was into her.”
I blink and then burst out into laughter, but pause when he doesn’t laugh with me. “Oh wait, you’re actually serious? Oh my God… You are such an unwilling simp.”
“A what now?” he snarls.
I roll my eyes. “Never mind. The point of this conversation is that you have something she wants.”
“I doubt that,” he responds.
My eyes narrow. “Or do you have something she doesn’t want you to have?”
“Stop fishing,” he says as he attempts to leave.
“No wait, you know something … you’ve seen her do something, haven’t you?” I walk in his footsteps. “She doesn’t want you to tell anyone. That’s why she threatened you.”
“I’m done here. This conversation is over,” he mutters. “Bye.”
“You … you watched her kill.”
The moment the word leaves my lips, he immediately spins around and smashes his hand against my mouth. “Don’t. Don’t ever say those words again.”
A wretched smile forms on my lips when he removes his fingers.
I know their fucking secret now, and I didn’t even have to snoop in either of their rooms to find out. Villainous.
“Don’t talk about her. As a matter of fact, don’t ever talk to her.”
I snort. “You think you dictate who I talk to?”
He narrows his eyes at me. “If you value your life.”
Is that a threat?
The filthy smirk on my face only deepens.
Now that is what I call a proper challenge.