11. Teddy
ELEVEN
TEDDY
It’s pissing rain today, and all I’ve managed to do since I first spotted Eden at 7:58 sharp is stare at her and try to recreate Saturday night. Just…with my own little fantastical, imaginative flair is all. I was a gentleman through and through, forcing the voices into submission and prolonging my own torture. Someday, I’ll see her breasts. Hopefully someday soon, because if we have to perform again on Saturday, I don’t think I’ll be able to hide how I feel about her.
She’s turned me into a prepubescent boy without even trying.
It’s currently our shared class after gym, AP Literature. Mrs. Simons is droning on about Dracula , and most of the students are fast asleep, the atmosphere calm, the lighting dusky from the storm rolling through. Elbow grinding into the top of my desk, cheek resting angrily against my fist, I stare rather pointedly at Eden, who is staring out the window to her left.
I’d warred with myself on Saturday night, paced up and down the street, tempted to hop on a bus and go knock on her door, but on the chance she would react poorly, I decided to stay put. Better to ensnare someone like her, slowly and calmly, so she doesn’t have time to realize that’s what I’m doing.
Lost in my musings of how exactly I’d like to trap her, I almost miss the flick of her eyes in my direction. Thinking it was nothing more than a trick the voices are playing on me, I tune back in, sitting straighter, raking my hair from my eyes and tugging on the ends. After a few more moments, my patience is rewarded, and those violets clash with my gaze. Her eyes widen briefly, a flare of surprise at being caught, and her cheeks bleed.
Outside, the rain and wind picks up, pelting the window hard enough to drown out our teacher’s voice. And inside, deep in my soul, a different storm rages, one that brings with it a hurricane of unfamiliar emotions and leaves a path of wreckage and destruction in its wake.
Composing my features, I wink at her the next time she glances my way, which has her brows pulling low over her eyes and into a glare. It had been impossible not to see Eden on Saturday, as discreet as I’d tried to be. When you’re concentrating on not murdering someone for once, it’s a little difficult. Her body had been pale and pliant, soft in all the right places, her ribs heaving with every measured breath to ensure she kept still. But the way her pupils had flared to life every time my knife sank into the wood mere millimeters from her precious skin is something I cannot scrub from my mind no matter how hard I try.
It’s like the voices all pitched in and created the perfect human for me, plucked her from my skull, and set her before me, a gift for feeding their bloodlust so thoroughly and viciously.
The bell blares through the classroom, more than a few students jolting awake, Brant one of them. Forced to sit in the front row because he’s failing, he raises his head and blinks away the sleep, drool on his cheek.
Eden flees, and I gather my books, hot on her trail. The slamming of lockers and yammering voices of students is easy to drown out with how focused I am on her, and when she pauses at her locker and spins the dial, I lean against the neighboring one, composing my features as best I can. Slow and steady has been my mantra for a week. A week for me is an eternity when I want something.
She slams her locker closed, having traded her tattered copy of Bram Stoker’s most famed work for her sketchbook. We’re drawing in art currently, and I’ve seen her skill. Brilliant, as would be expected. She jumps when she sees me, closing her eyes and clenching her fist before skirting around me, heading for the basement where all the art rooms reside. I follow, fighting my smile, enjoying the way her ass moves beneath her pleated skirt.
I’ve always loathed these uniforms, but now the thought of her pretending to be a naughty school girl while I spank her ass with a ruler makes me hotter than I care to admit.
“Why were you staring at me, Eden?”
She scoffs, but refuses to look at me.
“Excuse me? You’re the one who can’t keep his eyes to himself,” she growls, shoving her way past a throng of people who give her no notice. No one notices her, and I used to be one of them. I hate myself for it, but vow to make it up to her now. She has my undying attention whether she wants it or not. I’ve wriggled myself beneath her skin like a parasite, and I’m not going anywhere.
“I was trying to assess the storm, don’t flatter yourself.”
She pauses at the top of the stairs, hand on the worn wooden railing, and glances up at me. Her hair is wavy today, framing her face like black curtains in a funeral home, her eyes a deeper shade of violet thanks to the stormy weather. As though she’s come alive with the rain. I can’t help the way my smile grows as our eyes flick between one another’s, the world passing us by noiselessly because we are in our own, and I never want this feeling to go away.
This feeling like I’m home for the first time in my life, my soul safe and warm as long as it’s next to hers.
Jutting her pointed chin up, she says, “Then next time, pick a different window.”
I snort, descending with her into the chilly darkness.
“Wanna ride the bus together tonight?”
“What? Fuck…no, Teddy,” she says, exasperated as we round the corner. The noise from above dies down as everyone settles into their prospective classrooms, the bell about to ring. The only shitty thing about art class is that our batty old teacher, Miss Whitman, doesn’t allow us to talk. By the end of the school day, she’s usually so hungover she can barely function, and being holed up down here, no one aside from myself knows her little secret.
“Why not? We’re going to the same place,” I argue, and we pause outside the door. Chewing her lip, she blinks up at me again, her brow slowly beginning to crinkle, as though she has something she wants to say but isn’t. I quirk my brow, leaning over her, an intimidation tactic that has her pupils dilating.
The bell rings. My heart hammers in my chest, waiting anxiously for her to part those pretty lips and whisper anything to me. I’ll take her hate, and her ire—I’ll gladly take anything this girl gives me. She finally releases a shaky breath and says, “Meet me in the library in thirty minutes.”
Leaving art was surprisingly a breeze. All I had to do was hold my stomach and groan a few times, letting Miss Whitman overhear me whispering about that damn tuna fish sandwich. She slipped a hall pass onto my desk and told me to just stay gone until tomorrow. I’d winked at Eden as I breezed by, and now I’m alone in the library, eyes skating over dusty tomes as wan, gray light filters in from the high windows.
Seattle Preparatory School sucks ass for a lot of reasons, but the one redeeming quality is the architecture. It’s dark academia at its finest, gothic and melancholy and macabre. The library is as massive as one would be at a university, with a second level overlooking all of the work desks below. The rows and rows of shelves jut high into the air, the ceiling a cathedral, the gray stone walls cold. With the deep green carpet and trimmings, along with dark oak wood accents, it’s cozy and foreboding all at once.
My eyes skim the empty space, the old librarian Mrs. Spencer snoozing behind her desk, her aged computer lifeless. She refuses to use it, the luddite, and a few times she’s accused me of not returning books because her check-out system is trash. Frowning, I glance around again, searching for that little ghost, my stomach twisting. For once in my life, I’m on edge, unable to predict what she could possibly want to speak with me about in such a secretive manner.
Something to do with the circus, most likely. Maybe to tell me to fuck right off and never look at her again, but the way she’d held my gaze at the top of the stairs not long ago tells me that’s not the case.
It’s frustrating, the not knowing, and I wonder if this is how normal people feel daily. If so, fuck it, I don’t want it. But if it means getting closer to Eden…I’ll swallow that challenge whole.
A flash of black and ivory peeks around a bookshelf, and the predatory side of me jolts awake, a slow grin curling on my lips as I prowl toward her, to the back of the library where it’s smothered in inky darkness and the scent of old books. She’s chewing her lip as I draw near, and she backs away between the shelves, her shoulders hitting the stone wall behind her when I finally relent my forward momentum, leaning a shoulder casually against the spines and smirking down at her. Those big round eyes blink up at me, a deep, luxurious purple, and I nearly salivate, tempted beyond what I can bear. How did I never really see her before? Probably because I was so wrapped up in my own turmoil, and I’m kicking myself for being such a selfish prick.
“You don’t seem too keen on me, so forgive my confusion as to why we’re all alone where no one can see or hear us.”
She pales a few shades at my subtle threat, throat bobbing as she swallows. My teeth grind together, desire waging a war in my body, the voices screaming and clawing inside my skull, begging for me to sink my teeth into her flesh and draw that precious crimson. At the same time, though, they calm in her presence, a sort of controlled burn simmering through my veins at our proximity.
“It’s not…not like that…umm…” she stutters, fumbling for the words she clearly doesn’t want to say. Cocking my head to the side, I study her, crossing my arms and fighting a grin. It’s adorable, how hesitant she is for whatever reason. When she doesn’t continue but just stares up at me, I quirk my brow, encouraging a more thorough response that I know I won’t get. She’s nervous, and for once in my life, I’m nervous, too.
“Is this about the circus…?” I hedge, and she wags her dainty little hands quickly, her mouth popping open.
“What? No…I mean…just…”
God, she’s cute when she’s flustered. I’ve only slept with a handful of people, none of them wanting a relationship, which suited me just fine. But the thought of making Eden mine, of exploring all of these dirty fantasies I have with her …I doubt I’d ever grow bored. The possibilities with her are somehow endless. I’m not sure how I know, but I just do , and I want her so badly my heart aches.
“Eden. Just spit it out. I threw knives at you while you were in a fucking g-string?—”
Her cold fingers press against my lips, her eyes wide and darting beyond my shoulder to ensure no one heard me. I smile against her frigid skin, warmth curling pleasantly in my stomach like a cat in the sun. I wish she’d slip those fingers past my lips.
Those eyes return to mine, and she yanks her hand away, as if just realizing she willingly touched me. Arms still crossed, my hands curl into fists at my sides as I fight back the urge to touch her in return, to feel her smooth skin, to warm the chill of her ancient soul.
“Okay,” she breathes, shoulders raising comically, her hands twisting together again as she glares at my chest. “Okay…we graduate soon…”
She hesitates, eyes still pinned to my loosened tie.
“Astute observation,” I encourage with sarcasm. Her eyes flit to mine and away just as quickly, like a little minnow darting to and fro in a murky lake, unaware that a bigger fish is watching, waiting.
Ignoring me, she continues.
“And…high school sucked for me, Teddy.” Her eyes find mine with determination this time, round and beautiful and overflowing with an innocent type of vulnerability that has my hackles raising and my brows knitting together. Is this where she asks me why I never stood up for her? Because…fuck, I don’t have an answer for that, and she deserves one. Guilt is an unfamiliar emotion to me, but I feel it now, so potent that it physically hurts. I hate it, but I deserve it. “I just…before we graduate…I want to have a normal…teenage experience.”
Well, that took a sharp turn in a direction I never saw coming. I think I understand what she’s hinting at, but the moment I open my lips to ask, she rushes out a full explanation, and my heart stops beating as those damning words sink in.
“I…will you…will you sleep with me?”