Chapter Three #2
He wanted to spoil her, and Heather wanted to be spoiled.
The entire pool area was transformed for them. Cabana set up with lavish fruit trays, glorious flower displays, various grottoes for them to take pictures to put up on social media.
Everything was going well, until Romeo prowled to the pool area, wearing an open white shirt.
At seventeen, his body was more muscular than it had been when she had first met him.
She despised herself for noticing. She despised herself for still finding him beautiful at all, because certainly his behavior should have transformed him into precisely what he was.
Someone who was dark and ugly on the inside.
And yet he remained stubbornly beautiful.
“Good afternoon,” he said, resting his forearms on the gate that separated the pool from the rest of the estate.
Her friends exchanged glances, and giggles.
They knew that the official stance was that they hated Romeo, but they also weren’t blind.
The trouble with Romeo was that he was charming.
He had a reputation for being an exceptionally good kisser, and she suspected more.
Though, no one was foolish enough to breathe such a thing in front of her.
“What is it that you want?”
“Shocking, cara. I come to say hello and you greet me with venom.”
“I don’t think you find that shocking at all,” she said, standing up from where she was on her lounge chair, wearing the bright pink bikini that she had just bought for the occasion. And that was when she saw it. His eyes flickered over her body, and his reaction wasn’t neutral.
He had made a mistake. He had just made a mistake.
He’d noticed her.
He noticed her body, the same way that she noticed his.
And he had let her see it.
He might hate her—she believed fully that he did—but he was not immune to her. And that was an incredibly interesting piece of information. She walked closer to him, not looking away from his gaze. “What is it exactly that you wish to offer?”
“Oh, I live to serve,” he said, not breaking eye contact.
“Do you? Are you here to play the part of pool boy?”
“Oh no, cara, only one of us is from the servant class.”
“What a pity that I will never serve you,” she said.
His eyes flickered over her again. “Someday perhaps I will have you on your knees.” He didn’t say it loudly enough for anyone else to hear, only her.
That first time he had looked at her that gaze had been lethal.
Cutting. This cut her somewhere different.
And didn’t leave her feeling cold. Rather she felt altogether too warm.
“I think you should leave,” she said.
He grinned. “If you need me to.”
That left her questioning everything. Perhaps nothing that he’d said had been real, but all designed to antagonize her. But the interaction echoed inside of her.
Finally, in her senior year, she was free of him.
He graduated, and went on to university, and was never at home, never at school.
Being an Accardi—even if by marriage—had made her essentially the most popular girl in school.
And the only regret that she had was that Romeo wasn’t there to witness the ascent.
And maybe that was because his absence was necessary.
Without his influence, no one knew they were supposed to dislike her.
They forgot. As if it had never happened.
For graduation, Giuseppe and her mom were allowing her to use their London estate for a party.
The money and detail that had gone into it was extraordinary, and Heather distantly remembered the girl that she was, grateful for everything—even for a tangerine in the corner of the kitchen—and she wondered if she had lost herself somewhere.
What was wrong with enjoying all of this? Surely nothing.
She did pause to feel gratitude, rather than entitlement.
But the entitlement was what buoyed her, often.
Because Romeo was so intent on acting like she didn’t deserve it, radicalizing those around her into believing she didn’t deserve it either, so she had begun to walk around with armor suggesting that she did.
But she had to remember that she wasn’t one of them.
Not really. Because that actually gave her an advantage over Romeo.
It did. He had nothing at stake. He was cruel for the sake of it.
She was fighting for a place in a life that she knew she deserved.
Having Romeo away was almost enough to help her forget about him, honestly.
She had actually gotten herself a date to the party.
Which was something she never managed to do when Romeo was around.
She found herself obsessing about him in strange and irritating ways, and while she would never say she had a crush on him—you could not have a crush on somebody that you hated—she couldn’t lie about the effects that he had on her body.
She was eighteen now, and much more aware of why she couldn’t take her eyes off his chest. Much more aware of what he might mean by having her on her knees.
Making fun of her, no doubt, and yet it was a mental image she couldn’t quite get out of her head.
He was sexy; that was the problem. And there was no denying that. Every girl thought so. It was only that he wasn’t a vile, cruel monster to every girl. Only to her.
I guess that makes you special.
Well, that was the most twisted thought she’d ever had. But it didn’t matter. She was with Damien tonight, and she fully intended to lose her virginity, which was a ridiculous albatross to be carrying around her neck out of high school and into university.
All she needed was a little bit of liquid courage to loosen up.
Which, with the intensity of the party, didn’t take long.
The music was loud, the mood electric, and she was pleasantly buzzed after the first hour, which Damien seemed to notice and appreciate as her nerves faded and she became looser and more affectionate.
Soon they were kissing on the couch, and if she thought of Romeo’s sensual mouth as Damien kissed his way down her collarbone, it was only because it was a habit.
After a few moments of being on display, Damien took her hand and led her up the stairs, the two of them making their way into the bedroom.
As far as exorcising demons went, she felt like she was about to do it in a big way.
Until the door to the bedroom crashed open like an entire police brigade had broken it down.
“What is going on?”
She looked up from her position on the bed to see Romeo standing there, his black hair disheveled, his face fixed into a mask of fury, his hands clenched into fists.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“The better question is what the hell are you doing?” She thought he was talking to her until he crossed the room, grabbed Damien by the neck and pulled him up off the bed. “She’s drunk,” Romeo said.
“I’m not drunk,” she slurred.
“You are,” he said. “She can’t consent to this—you get out of here before I call the police.”
“I consented,” she said.
“No,” Romeo said. “You’re being an idiot because you’re out of your head, and this party is a disaster. Clear everyone out.”
“I have permission to have this party,” she said.
“Because your mother is a fool and my father never tells you no. You need to be told no, Heather Gray. And I am telling you no now.”
“You,” she said, getting up off the bed, and trying to insert herself between Romeo and Damien, “are a nightmare. You can’t tell me that you weren’t doing far worse than this when you were in school, and now you want to come here and act like an authoritarian when you’ve never followed a rule in your entire life.
You were probably snorting cocaine off of ski bunnies’ asses when you were fifteen. ”
“What’s good for me is not good for you.”
“And since when do you care what’s good for me?”
“Since this asshole was about to take you when you were drunk. I care about that.”
“Romeo—”
“Get out,” he growled at Damien, who did not argue.
Romeo towered over him, and was broader and far more muscular.
The man had filled out in the past several years, leaving the rangy boy behind.
He was still devastatingly beautiful, with cheeks that could cut glass, but he could no longer be called pretty.
And she especially wouldn’t call him that now, while she was standing there with her heart pounding hard, with fury, with embarrassment.
And then he walked out of the room, leaving her alone, shouting about how the party was over.
“You can’t!” she yelled, trailing behind him.
“I can. I came here to sleep, and I’m not doing it with this bullshit going on.”
“I’ve been planning this party,” she said. “And you don’t have the right—”
But it was too late; everyone was leaving. Everyone was listening to him like his was the only voice that mattered.
“I hate you,” she said, standing in the middle of the now-empty town house.
“Of one thing you can always be certain, cara,” he said, moving his face close to hers, so close that she could smell him, that spicy, masculine scent, so close that she could see the dark stubble on his jawline.
So close she thought about reaching out and touching him, just for a second. “I hate you too.”