Chapter 10 #2
I keep my eyes on his beautiful lips, waiting for them to move at any moment. They're too full, too red, too tempting for me not to think about the last time they were on my mouth. The problem is, that memory comes with what happened afterwards.
Still, I can't help the tingling in my body, and as if he can feel it, his right hand lands on my thigh. That tiny space between where my case is sitting and my hip. High. Very high.
"It's a left here."
He follows my direction, then squeezes my thigh gently. "You never replied to my text."
My heart drops because the squeezing might be gentle, but his tone is as cold as the gray of his eyes.
"You—" I scratch my throat, suddenly aware of every single sensation in my body. Specifically, the electricity from his touch on my uniform skirt. "I never gave you my number. I never agreed to open a conversation."
"Ooooh," he says, pretending to finally understand something. "Because that's how it works between us, isn't it? I ask for permission, and once you agree, I proceed. Funny, that’s not how I remember it."
I gulp, lick my lips, and search for the courage I’ve never truly had. As always, it's hidden somewhere too deep for me to dig out, and I hate myself for it. So when I push out my retort, it sounds weak, manufactured, and even I don’t believe it.
"There's no specific way it works, because there's no us." My heart beats in my ears, following the speed of the windshield wipers. "What happened last week… I never want that to happen again."
It was so good and yet so terrible. How could I possibly describe it? The memory burns through me to my core, igniting a whole new craving within me, but it also makes me hate him deeply.
"Nyx, what happened last week," he repeats my exact words, "is going to happen again. Whether you're a willing participant isn’t really my problem."
Even when he sounds serious, there's a taunting superiority in his voice.
Despite struggling to hear him well in this exact moment, I read it so clearly in that faint lift at the corner of his mouth.
In the tip of his tongue coming to rest right at the bottom of his top front teeth for a split second after his last word.
It's completely subconscious, not like the deliberate jabs he's capable of.
No one understands how intimate it feels to read people's lips, even with a man I'm supposed to be wary of.
It's those unintentional little quirks about him that create a storm of feelings I’m not capable of dealing with.
I don't know if I notice them because I've been able to see him so closely in the last week, or because I spent years observing videos and photos of him online, watching his concerts, obsessing over someone I had no idea was the devil.
"I have a boyfriend." The statement sounds like bullshit, even to myself.
Is that my only defense? Fuck. I add one more for good measure.
"And I don't want anything to happen between us. Period. Don't cross a line, Achilles, or I'll be the one escalating this. Turn right here, then take the first left. You can drop me there."
He turns right, his Range Rover disgustingly at odds with our surroundings now that we're on the North Shore. A left, and we're at the entrance of the trailer park. I don't need him to know which mobile home is mine.
A laugh bursts out of him, but I don't care. I want to open the door, ready to get out, but he doesn't slow down.
"Stop the car," I order.
He enters the park and starts driving between the homes. Asphalt turns into gravel and then into dirt.
"Escalate this?" he asks innocently. "What are you going to do, pretty girl?
Go to the police?" His smirk makes me want to jump out of the moving car.
"See, you don't want to do that with me because I have a lot of power over them.
I have a lot of power, period." He imitates my voice, then it switches to something much more chilling.
"Too much power for anyone to stay sane, Nyx, I promise you that.
Don't tempt me to actually show you how much. Which one is yours?"
He asks the last question in the same tone, keeping me in that state of fear, meaning my response comes out automatically without me having any control over it, as if my body considers it the only way out of this situation.
"That one," I blurt out, pointing behind me at the one he just drove past. "Just stop the car, please."
A serene smile replaces the viciousness on his face as he slows down, shifts gears, and puts his forearm on the back of my seat. My fingers dig into my violin case as he looks behind and starts reversing. His strong arm is right next to my face even after he stops.
"You're home," he murmurs tauntingly.
I'm out of breath from the sheer panic, and when my thoughts finally fall back into place, fury explodes in my chest.
"Fuck you," I hiss, opening the door.
I slam the door, my case almost getting caught in it.
The rain has slowed, but it's still tapping against my skull as I walk through the mud in front of my home.
I've turned my back to him, so I don't hear well when his door slams shut.
I only realize he followed me when his hand lands on my shoulder, tearing a surprised gasp from my throat.
"Leave me alone!"
"I preferred you a lot more when you were a groupie.
" He huffs, his eyebrows rising and falling sharply, as if I'm the annoying one here.
"Listen, Nyx. We don't have to make this so hard.
I didn't want you scared today." Which implies that there are moments he does want me scared. "I was trying to be nice."
"That was you being nice?" I snap. "Your version of nice is my version of traumatizing."
"You know," he says with a calmness that makes me shiver. "You have yet to experience what we're really like on our side of town, but I can simplify it for you." He takes a threatening step toward me, and I take one back, feeling the steps to my door pressing against my calves.
"I grew up in a world where there's nothing I don't get. If I want it, it's mine. You couldn't possibly imagine how I've lived my life. People bend to my will because they don't have a choice. It's impossible to refuse anything to people like me."
I'm pretty sure his smile is meant to be reassuring, but it's just plain creepy.
"My suggestion is to give me what I want. Because I enjoy you scared. Do you understand that? I like seeing you helpless and trembling. I loved hearing your little whimpers when I had you in my hands."
Another step, and I sense my muscles locking in place as he gets too close for me to breathe. I can feel it, that I'm in freeze mode. I wince ahead of any dangerous movement he makes, and that makes him pause.
"Oh, Nyx," he growls with need. "See, that’s exactly what's getting you in trouble with me. Your nervous system is stuck in a sympathetic state. You're always in fight-or-flight. Something happened to you, maybe some things, and I'm going to dig so far into your soul to find out what."
The way he reads me so clearly is a much-needed reminder of the fact that he's not only an artistic genius. He's a med-school-attending psycho whose own friends called his future psychiatric patients better off dead.
"Your fear gets me hard, and worse, it gets me creative."
He shrugs casually, and my mouth drops open at his nonchalance.
"It's unfortunate for you, but this is your situation. I’ll have you scared and at my mercy again.
My gesture of kindness to you is that I can try to balance it with moments of care.
" His face twists, and he shakes his head.
"Hm, that's a lie. I’ll try to be as caring as I possibly can.
But let's start this whole thing with honesty: I'm not very caring. I don't know how to be."
I look up at him, blinking, shock rendering me speechless.
"So, should I pick you up and take you to classes on Monday?" he asks.
"You’re certifiable," I whisper, shaking my head. "You're a danger to society. You should be committed."
His eyes narrow, and it crushes my lungs. "I'm losing patience."
"Leave me alone," I rasp weakly as I take a slow step back, up and toward my door. I'm a prey backing away from the predator in front of her. "Don't ever approach me again. Or you'll regret it."
"Are you going to call the police?" he taunts me. "Please, do. I'm dying to see which one of us will end up waiting for someone to bail them out of jail. I can pick you up from there too when your boyfriend doesn't show."
Another step, and my hand feels for the door latch behind me.
"Come on, pretty girl," he insists. "Call them."
A noise resonates somewhere behind him, loud and jarring. And my eyes snap over Achilles's shoulder while his defying stare stays on me.
"We don't call the police here, rich boy," my neighbor, Roberta, calls out, her shotgun—now loaded, as we heard a second ago—pointing at Achilles. A cigarette dangles from her lips, and the bottom step of her trailer is bending under her weight.
My God, I love her so much. She lives opposite me, so when she comes all the way down, she’s right next to Lena's trailer. She bangs on it with her fist, a lot of strength in her gesture despite her old age, and then she goes back to holding her shotgun with both hands.
Lena isn't home; she's working at this time, but someone comes out. Justin, her seventeen-year-old brother, rushes over to us, forcing Achilles to turn around and face him.
"The fuck is happening? Nyx, are you okay?"
"Some pretentious South Bank asshole followed her here," Roberta mumbles. "And apparently, he thinks we use the police to defend ourselves."
I straighten up, feeling some strength coming back. "See, Achilles," I say with more power in my voice. And for the sake of it, I throw his own words back at him. "You have yet to experience what we're really like on our side of town, but I can simplify it for you."
Knowing full-well I'm not in danger anymore with my protective neighbors around, I walk back down to him.
"We get rid of problems by burying them in the woods. You might be powerful when you walk on SFU grounds, but no one has a daddy rich enough to protect them from a bullet to the head. And bullets fly on the North Shore, pretty boy."
"So get the fuck out of here," Justin adds, not without entering his personal space.
Achilles is much, much taller and bigger than him, but it doesn't scare my friend's brother.
He smiles politely at Roberta, then nods at Justin.
"My apologies," he says kindly, but his gaze comes back to me. Those threatening eyes that promise retaliation.
Worse is his smile. His friends were right. Achilles Duval smiles like he has a secret he won't share. Something that truly makes him feel invincible as he slowly enters his car without fearing Roberta's shotgun.
Something that puts him above everyone else without even trying.
And somehow, it keeps me in his hold. I want to rip it from his lips. I want to make it mine. Deep down, I want to ask him to stay, and I think that's what his smile is about.
That secret Achilles keeps isn't his.
It's my shameful secret.
What he knows is that his actions excite me, that the fear he incites makes me feel alive. And that he's the only one who fits with my type of fucked up.