Chapter 9 #2
He told me that once and all the time we were together, I never broke it. But I’m going to break it now and he can’t stop me.
“Fine.” He throws me a short nod of his own. “You can eat your fucking cupcake in my car.”
So I finally get inside his car and open the box of cupcakes. When he closes the door, I hear him mutter, That rule was never for you anyway.
Again, I try not to dwell on those nearly silent words. I try not to let any warmth invade my chest.
But as I said, on nights like this, it becomes hard.
It becomes hard to ignore that for all his asshole ways, he did get me off the hook and he did apologize to me.
And one Thursday, a week later, it becomes almost impossible to ignore.
Because first, he comes to pick me up at midnight, wearing a suit.
A legit suit with a tie.
His jacket is off, but he’s wearing a dress shirt that stretches really nicely over his chest, and a loosened tie.
For a few seconds I can only watch him with wide eyes. Because he looks so… dashing. So freaking handsome and gorgeous and worldly.
Like the rich, arrogant boy he is.
A man actually.
And the second thing happens when I get inside his Mustang and my eyes fall on some papers and files scattered on his backseat. It’s not the files themselves that trip me up, it’s the black logo on them, Jackson Builders.
His dad’s company.
The company that Reed has sworn never to work at even though that’s what his dad has always wanted for him.
That’s what pushes me over the edge.
That file and his suit.
That’s what makes me break the pact. The pact that I’d made with Tempest of no brothers and no seeking out information about Reed.
About the last two years.
About what really happened and what he did to get me free.
He’s waiting for me by his car.
Like he always does.
Leaning against it, his arms crossed over his chest, his ankles crossed as well.
I can see him through the woods, his tall form, his dark jeans.
Tonight there’s no light in him, no softness. Nothing to sand down the beautiful, reckless edges.
Because tonight he’s forgone his hoodie that he usually wears. He doesn’t have his suit on either, which I only saw for the first time last Thursday, which made him look all old and mature and so experienced.
Tonight, he has that leather jacket on.
The one that I hate because he wore it when he broke my heart, looking so gorgeous while doing it.
I watch him in that without making my presence known.
I watch and notice and analyze him.
His hair is grown out even more in the past month. If he didn’t need a haircut before, he definitely needs one now.
I look at his body.
His big shoulders, broad and strong. His lean, cut torso.
Then I move down to his thighs.
They bulge under his jeans when he shifts on his feet, showing me how powerful they are. His thighs, his calves.
I have to admit that I’ve always been so fascinated by them, by his legs. By his footwork.
I’m a ballerina, right?
I see footwork in my dreams. I’ve seen his footwork in my dreams too.
I’ve seen him stealing the ball, dribbling it across the field, sending it flying across the field so many, many times. Both in real life and in dreams.
I also have to admit that when I decided to never seek out any information about him, cut all the ties, I was sad that I’d never see him play.
I was sad that I’d never get to witness his breathtaking footwork, his majestic skills on the field.
I was sad.
I am sad tonight too.
Sad and miserable and so melancholic. So blue and gray.
As gray as the smoke coming out of his mouth. Because he’s got a cigarette clenched between his teeth.
He hardly ever smokes, this villain. The one who blackmails and locks me up in closets and chases after me when I run. But if he’s smoking tonight, then that means he’s cold.
Even though the October weather isn’t all that chilly. Not yet.
But I know him.
I know that he gets cold easily. That’s why I made him that sweater. The night before everything happened.
The night he kissed me.
I wonder what he did with it. I wonder if he threw it away.
I don’t have the courage to ask him though.
Besides, I’m going to need my courage for other things tonight.
So I walk toward him, coming out of my hiding place. My feet crunch on the leaves and the gravel, alerting him to my presence, and he looks up.
His gaze homing in on me as always.
His gaze roving all over me as always.
Like he has every right to do that. He has every right to watch me, take me in, take me apart, turn me inside out and cast me aside when he’s done. And tonight, his wolf eyes are even hungrier.
Because I’m wearing his favorite color.
White.
An ivory dress with a lacy overlay and a zipper in the back. My flats are white too. With my blonde hair in a braid snaking down one side of my shoulder, I’m dressed up as his favorite meal.
All dewy-eyed and daisy fresh.
And when he pulls the cigarette out of his mouth to lick his lower lip, I feel like one too.
A meal.
“You’re wearing white,” he murmurs, and I fist my hands at my side.
“I am.”
His forest-thick eyelashes flutter as he takes me in again. “Why?”
“Because I felt like it.”
And because it’s your favorite color…
I haven’t worn white ever since I saw him at the bar. I’ve actually been going out of my way not to wear it. To wear something completely opposite of white every Thursday, black, blue, orange, anything other than white.
Just because it’s his favorite color and because I didn’t want to dress myself up in something he likes.
Not tonight though.
Tonight things are different.
The air is different too. The moon, the sky, these woods, everything.
“It suits you,” he says, looking me over a third time. “Innocence.”
I look at his jacket again and the cigarette clutched between his fingers. “And villainy suits you.”
His lips tip up in a smirk and he takes another drag before letting it out. “Is that why you’re standing all the way over there? Because I’m a cigarette-smoking villain and you’re afraid to get closer?”
“I’m not afraid of you,” I reply from where I stand by the tree, and his wolf eyes glow. His vampire skin sparkles as if in challenge. As if he can make me afraid if he wants to.
But that’s the thing, I’ve never been afraid of him. And that turned out to be my doom in the end.
His doom too.
Isn’t it?
“Are you cold?” I ask him then. “Because you smoke when you’re cold.”
He continues to watch me for a couple of seconds before he flicks his cigarette away and crushes it under his boots like it’s a love-filled heart and he’s bored of it. “You know me, don’t you? Yes, I’m cold.”
“Where’s your hoodie?”
His eyes narrow. “I’ve got a jacket.”
“I hate your jacket.”
“You hate my jacket.”
I nod. “Yes. Because this is the jacket you wore that night.”
“What night?”
“The night of the game. The night you won that contest against Ledger.” I shake my head then. “For the longest time I saw that jacket in my dreams. I saw it so many times. So many, many times that I thought bad things happen when you wear that jacket. I know it’s a silly thought but I just —”
I stop talking when he straightens up from his car.
When he grabs his jacket and rolls his shoulders, his dense thick shoulders, and takes it off. He takes his jacket off as he stares at me, letting it fall on the ground.
Just like that.
“There. It’s gone,” he says, his jacket lying at his feet, his biceps corded and naked in his V-neck light-colored t-shirt. “Are you going to come here so we can go?”
“But you’re cold.”
"I’m fine.”
With parted lips and a heart that won’t stop pounding, I watch the veins on his wrists, on the back of his hand, thick and beautiful. I watch the arms that he uses to pick me up as I practice.
To help me.
I watch them and ask, “What about your practice?”
“What?”
I look at his face then. “It must be brutal now, right? At college level.” His eyes narrow.
“Ledger can barely come home these days. He’s always at the gym, always on the field, practicing.
He wants to be like Shep. Who got picked in the first round of the draft.
You know that, right? That Shep got picked.
Stellan would’ve been too but he never wanted to go pro. Not like you.”
His chest is moving up and down, pushing at the fabric of his thin t-shirt. “Get in the car.”
I shake my head, standing my ground. “So is it? Is it brutal? Is your coach riding you hard?”
“Get in the car.”
“You’d easily be picked up in the first round too,” I say and almost lose my courage but I have to keep going. “J-January, right?”
The next breath he takes pushes out the fabric so much that I think it’s going to get torn apart. Reed is going to tear apart his t-shirt in one long breath and God, I can’t stand it.
I can’t stand his agitation. I can’t stand what he did.
What he had to do.
To get me free.
“Are you fucking getting in the car or not?” he growls.
“No.”
“What?”
I shake my head as my eyes sting. “I’m not going with you.”
“You’re not going with me.”
I shake my head again. “No. Not until you tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“What you did,” I say, fisting my dress. “Not until you tell me what you did to save me from your father.”
As expected, the word save triggers him.
It makes him shift on his feet, assume a battle stance, as a thunderous expression crosses his features. “Are we back at that again?”
“Yes.” I swallow. “Tell me. Tell me what you did, Reed.”
He begins to walk toward me then.
Stride over to me.
And as always, I stay put. My legs won’t move.
I watch him, his thighs, rippling, shifting under his jeans, dripping with power. I watch them in all their majestic beauty and my heart twists.
It wrenches and pulses and cries out for him.
When he reaches me, he backs me up.
He crowds me with his body and makes me walk backward, his shoes clashing with my flats, until my spine bumps into something. A tree, rough and edgy.
Like him.