Chapter 9 #3
He dips his face toward me, his shoulders hiding the world from my eyes, and I crane my neck up, not wanting to see anything else in this moment anyway.
“What do you know?” he growls.
“Everything.”
His jaw is hard. “Tempest.”
“I made her,” I tell him hastily. “I forced her to tell me. I saw those files in your car last week. Jackson Builders. And so I called her and practically pried it out of her.”
He bends down even more.
Putting his hand on the tree by the side of my neck, he lowers himself over me, his chest still heaving. “That’s what you do, isn’t it? You pry and pry and stick your nose in things that are none of your business.”
My ballerina toes go up and I stretch myself as much as I can to bridge the gap between our heights. “But it is my business. Because you did it for me. To get me free.”
“I told you —”
“You did, didn’t you?” I cut him off because I’m not letting him deter me. “That game. That championship game, that was so important to you, that you needed to win. That was your last, wasn’t it? That was your last game.”
I’m watching his face. I’m watching all the angry, violent things pass through his features and yet I can tell that he’s digging his fingers into the bark.
I can tell that he’s almost clawing at it.
“That’s what you did,” I continue, my neck still tilted toward him.
“That’s what you had to do to get me free.
You had to give up soccer. You don’t live in New York either, do you?
Because your dad asked you to come back.
Because you work for him now, at his company.
The place where you never wanted to end up at.
But you did. Because of me. I stole your car and you had to give up soccer, something that you loved to —”
“I don’t love soccer.”
“What?”
“Fuck soccer.”
“W-what do you mean?”
“I mean,” he says, his teeth clenched, “I don’t care about soccer. I never did.”
I come down to earth then.
My toes can’t hold my weight and so I have to come down on my heels and press my spine against the tree even more.
“But that’s… that’s not true. All those years of rivalry.
All those fights with Ledger because you wanted to be the best. You wanted to win.
You betrayed me for it. You love soccer. You —”
His harsh chuckle stops me.
Harsh and brutal and full of something that feels like hate.
“I don’t love anything,” he says, his voice guttural, coarse.
“When are you going to get this through your head? I don’t fucking love anything.
Soccer was just a way to fuck with him. My father.
Soccer was just a way to show him that he can’t control me.
That I won’t be the son he wants me to be.
Because he’s a fucking monster. He’s a fucking psychopath.
A shitty husband. A shitty father, and so I wanted to get back at him.
So no, I don’t love soccer. It hurt like a motherfucker to give it up and become my father’s bitch, to let him win two years ago, but I don’t love it.
I don’t love anything. I don’t have space to love anything when I’m so full of hate. ”
His eyes are black by the time he finishes.
Demon-like.
Someone so full of hate that every soft, fragile thing inside of him is gone. Is swallowed by this darkness.
And God, it’s even worse.
It was bad enough that he didn’t love me, that he used me, chose something else over me. But the fact that what he chose — soccer — is not even his love, I don’t know what to do about that.
I don’t know how to cope with that. I don’t know how to cope with the fact that he has no space for love. Because all his spaces, all his corners are taken up by hate.
He may love his sister or a car but not much else.
I believe him now though.
As I look at his fire-breathing demon eyes and his flared nostrils, I do believe that he doesn’t love anything. He’s probably incapable of it.
His chest is not only heartless but it’s barren and there’s no chance of a heart ever growing in it.
That makes me so sad, so miserable. So blue.
Bluer than before.
That I strangely want to cry and hug him.
“You don’t love anything,” I whisper, wondering if maybe that’s why he’s always cold, because he’s so full of hate.
His gorgeous features bunch up for a second. “No.”
“That’s —”
“You should be happy though, shouldn’t you?”
“What?”
“You should be happy that that was my last game,” he explains gutturally, a humorless smile twisting his mouth.
“Soccer is why everything happened, didn’t it?
Soccer is why I betrayed you. I fought with your brothers.
So you should be happy that I’m not playing anymore.
You should be happy that my father got what he wanted.
That I’m his lapdog now. You should be happy that I’m getting punished for breaking your heart.
That the villain in your story is getting his due.
All this time that you’ve been punishing yourself for falling for me, I was already getting put in my place. ”
I have to part my lips then.
I have to breathe through my mouth because my lungs are starving for air.
My body is starving for it too.
I’m starving and dying and writhing in pain.
Because the answer is no.
I’m not happy.
Maybe I should be. Maybe I should laugh and smile but all I want to do is cry.
All this time I thought so many things. I thought he was the one who got me arrested. I thought he was living his life in New York, being a soccer god, being worshipped by people, fulfilling his dreams, doing something he loves.
But as it turns out, he doesn’t love the game that I thought he did and he was just as caged as me.
He is just as caged.
And for the life of me, I can’t be happy. I can’t find joy in his misery.
Maybe this is the curse of a brokenhearted girl.
The curse of falling for a villain.
If you love him once, you hurt for him forever.
I blink my eyes, realizing that they are wet as I whisper, “No. I’m not happy. I can’t be. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done to me. How much you’ve hurt me. Or how much I hate you. I can’t be happy when you’re suffering. I can’t take pleasure in your misery.”
His eyes turn even angrier then.
As if he hates the fact that I don’t like his suffering. That even after everything, I can’t revel in it.
“I may be a villain but you’re just as stupid and na?ve in this white dress as you were when you were almost sixteen,” he rasps.
And before I know it, my hand shoots up and I slap him in the face.
My eyes go wide when I realize what I’ve done.
When I realize that he hardly blinked, hardly even moved his face but my palm is burning. It’s stinging with the force of my slap, with the shock of it. With the violence.
This wildness he invokes in me so easily. This passion.
I thought that after knowing how caged and trapped he’s been because of what I did, all this furious fire would go out. But apparently not.
So when he lowers his face even more and stares into my eyes, as if giving me the go-ahead, telling me to put him in his place, slap him once more, I do it.
I smack his face once more.
And a third time and a fourth and when that’s not enough, I punch his chest. I beat at it with my fists and keep going until he grabs my wrists and pins them on the bark.
Not only that, he pins my entire body to the tree as he moves closer to me.
As his strong chest pushes against my arched one.
As his lean torso presses against my ribs.
“Does that make you happy now?” he asks, his jaw all tight.
No.
No, it doesn’t.
Especially when I realize that I’ve become an animal tonight too. One who can see in the dark like him because I clearly notice my scratch marks on his face. My red fingerprints and where my nails have marked his skin.
“Oh my God, Reed. Y-you’re hurt,” I stammer, knowing my statement is stupid.
I wanted to hurt him and of course he is.
But I don’t like it.
I don’t like that I hurt him and that I’m still angry. But I don’t know what else to be.
God, I’m so screwed up. So tied up in knots. All because of him.
He thinks so too, Reed.
Because he chuckles roughly. “Jesus Christ, Fae, you kill me. You fucking murder me with your goodness.”
I’m ashamed to say that I shift on my feet at his tone, at the fondness in it. At the familiarity, and I struggle against his hold. “Let me go.”
His ruby red lips twitch and his hooded eyes rove over my face and stop at my lips.
That I have to lick because he won’t stop staring.
“What’s this one?” he whispers.
I lick my lips again as a blush fans over my cheeks. “None of your business.”
He looks up and there’s amusement lurking in his gaze. “Are you trying to hide it? The name.”
“No.”
A full-fledged smirk overcomes his lips then. “Fae’s getting shy, isn’t she?”
“Stop…” I struggle against his hold again because my blush is burning my cheeks. “Let me go, Reed.”
He flexes his grip around my hands and I try very hard — as I’ve been doing for the past few minutes —not to feel his grip, feel his skin, the pads of his fingers, the meat of his palm.
The fact that there’s only a sliver of distance between our bodies.
“Not until you tell me.”
I glare at him and he chuckles again.
“Fine,” I say. “Sex and Candy.”
It’s green, dark and pretty, and when I wore it, it felt like the right choice, wearing something green. Because I felt green, all untrained and inexperienced.
But now I don’t think it’s a good thing, feeling so out of depth in my white dress and dark green lipstick.
Especially when the mere name of my lipstick makes him grow heated.
Especially when I can feel that heat running through my own veins. Because I’m trapped now, between him and the tree, and he’s got a hold of my arms as he stares down at me.
All hungry and intense.
“Sex,” he drawls.
“And candy,” I tell him to make a point.
“Because your lips taste like candy?”
“You’ll never know, will you?”
His wolf eyes glow. “I already do, remember?”
Yes.
I do remember.