30. Teddy
THIRTY
TEDDY
I’m hopelessly in love. Or addicted. Obsessed? I can’t tell. I’ve never been in love, but I know what it is to love someone. I love my mom, obviously, and I love Cash like a brother. But to love another soul? To feel myself burning from the inside out every time I lay eyes on her? It’s new. It’s beautiful.
It’s fucking terrifying.
Terrifying, because there are so many unknowns about our future, and protecting her from her past and from everything at the circus is going to zap me of energy. I know what’s coming for her on Tuesday, and the voices have already painted such vivid, gory images in my brain of what I’m going to do to the fucker who paid twenty grand for her virginity.
The voices collectively smirk, smug in their satisfaction that it belongs to me for eternity now.
I won’t tell her I know, or how I found out. She will tell me when she’s ready. Daniel is just a fucking idiot who likes to leave his laptop open and unaccompanied while he tries and fails to flirt with the girls who perform. He steers clear of Eden because of Vic, but I know that his resolve is thinning. When Danny boy wants something, his daddy always ensures he gets it.
I can’t wait to fucking end them both.
I wonder if Eden would let me hunt them through the asylum. Daniel would shit his pants in that basement, and Dick would cry in a corner. It would be so cathartic.
Her cold little hand clasped in mine, my little ghost leads me through the dark, ominous woods, a game trail marking our slender path. It’s drizzling, the storm clouds crowding in over St. Ignatius, but the canopy above is so thick with boughs and moss that it doesn’t drip down to us yet. My eyes linger on her form, flip flops on her feet, and my Misfits band tee hanging off her petite frame, the white cloth making her appear even more ghostly.
I say nothing, choosing to instead absorb this moment in all its perfection, her long, black hair still wavy as it cascades down her back. She turns and flashes me a brilliant grin, her cheeks pink, her eyes smudged with her makeup from prom. She is devastating in her beauty. I can’t help but wonder what I did to deserve someone like her.
“Almost there,” she whispers.
I smirk, for I can hear it—the sound of waves crashing on rocks; the ocean is near, the heaviness of salt in the air filling my lungs with life. She knows this place like the back of her hand, and I ponder in awe how she gets out here so much. Poor Cash will be stuck as our driver for the near future I think, because I have plans to fuck her in every room and on every surface of that haunted building.
I tried to seduce her again before we left on this little trek, but she pushed me away with a giggle and told me to wait. I can’t deny this girl anything, even if my cock is still as hard as a fucking steel pipe in my jeans right now. My Eden is a sadist and a masochist, I think, and I can’t wait to play with her, to stoke those desires into full, engulfing flames. The way I know I’d been hurting her last night, but she still begged for more? Fuck. If perfection does exist, it’s in the form of this little gothic sprite, and I’ll never let her go.
She turns back to the path before us, and ahead there’s a slight break in the trees, allowing the heavy, gray morning light to seep through and blot out the darkness. The cacophony of seagulls and wind and waves grows louder with each step until we break through the dense forest. Dark gray rocks jut out from the trees, holding firm against the power of the ocean as it slowly wears them away. We stand upon a cliff that juts out into the air, the tangy breeze potent on my tongue. And on the horizon, stretching as far as the eye can see, is nothing but more gray emptiness—the edge of this world. My heart gives a painful clench at the majestic, dark beauty of it all. An asylum nestled snug in the mountains by the ocean.
The kingdom by the sea.
She turns to grin up at me, her cheeks flushed from the cool wind, her eyes the color of dark purple lilacs, her hair whipping across her features, and my white shirt clinging to her small frame. She wants me to stare at the breathtaking view, to enjoy it with her—something she also finds stunning—but I can’t take my eyes off her right now as our worlds begin to shift and collide in cataclysmic ways.
She is at once both dark and light, yin and yang, life and death, wretched and divine. She is everything to me, an enigma that will satiate the voices in my head until long after my physical body is buried in the ground and my bones are dust. Even then, I’ll never stop hunting her, my reason for existence. For if Eden Clemm goes, then so do I. I made that vow to her, and I intend to keep it.
So I pull her close until our bodies clash, wrap her in my arms, and press a lingering kiss to her cold lips. When I pull away, she’s breathless, blinking up at me with those perfectly round eyes, our foreheads resting against one another.
“Can this be our kingdom by the sea?” I say lowly against the crashing waves. Her eyes glisten at my quoting of the famous tragic love poem by Edgar Allan Poe. Sinking her teeth into her bottom lip, she nods, hugging me back against the chill.
I just hope against all hope that when we’re free of the circus, some semblance of who we are in this moment still lingers in our souls, a drop of peace and happiness amidst chaos and destruction.
“You…said something last night, something…interesting,” Eden says as we meander back to the asylum, still hand in hand. She glances up at me, our arms stretched between us as I allow her to lead the way. It seems she’s walked this path dozens of times, her muscle memory taking over as we talk aimlessly about stupid teenage shit. Shit that makes me feel normal for once in my life. This, however, has taken a sharp turn into what sounds semi-serious.
I quirk my brow.
“I’m sure I said a lot of interesting things,” I tease. She blushes, and I prod further. “Things about how good you taste, how tight your perfect little cunt is?—”
She whirls on me, gasping with shocked laughter, gently shoving my chest with both hands.
“Stop it,” she hisses, embarrassed. My grin flashes widely, and I reach down, ensnaring her hips with my hands.
My balls ache. So does my cock. School is going to be fucking torture this week, watching her flounce around in that little skirt with her knee high socks. I’ll definitely be fucking her under the bleachers during lunch. And every other chance I can get. Cash will have to get over it and get his dick sucked by Brant’s girlfriend some more.
“Fine, what did I say that was so intriguing to you, hmm?”
She can’t contain her grin no matter how hard she tries, and when she blinks up at me like she is, I know she wants something. And I know I’ll have no choice but to give it to her. Cash would call me pussy-whipped, but it’s far more heinous than that. If I could find a way for my soul to bury itself beneath her skin, I would.
“That you’d…hunt me.”
Oh, fuck .
A tremble slithers down my spine. The voices perk up from their slumber, satiated after last night, but only just. Chase her, fuck her bloody, make her scream against you, carve your name into her pretty skin , they all seethe.
“Yes, little ghost,” I say, voice slightly strained. Something flashes in her eyes, some type of understanding that not many would catch onto, but Eden is brilliant, and she sees it in me, how serious I am. “Why?”
Her own coy smirk plays on her lips, a deviousness unearthed before my eyes as the real Eden begins to flourish. Just more proof that we are meant to be, her and I. She can be that child she never got to be with me, and I can give her the protection and care to allow that.
“So… hunt me.”
My eyes widen for a moment as desire flows hotly through my veins, my cock stiffening in my jeans. At this point, the poor fucker is going to fall off, being teased like this. But the logical side wars with that desire, because as much as I want to hurt her, I also don’t want to hurt her. It’s confusing as hell, these two sides of myself, but I know which one will eventually win.
It always does.
“Eden,” I warn in a low tone. She pushes away from me with a giggle, creating space between us that feels simultaneously cold and charged, my body humming the same way it does when I hunt down predators to sink my knives into. “Be careful.”
Pressing her lips together to stem some of her smile, she quirks her brow higher. “Do I get a head start?”
“Fucking hell,” I hiss, dropping my head back to stare at the darkened canopy above me. Every time I think this girl can’t get any more perfect, she goes and does shit like this. The sound of her cheap flip flop dragging over the pine needles and dirt has my eyes snapping back down to her, the killer in me awakening and attuned to every sound around me. Saliva pools in my mouth, and my muscles go tense and rigid. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
My voice is lower, a strained whisper on the breeze.
She crosses her arms and juts her pointed chin up, fighting a wicked smile. She has two little dimples when she does, and I melt at the sight, wanting to trace them with my tongue. Running my hand through my hair, I smooth down all the spikes she created last night while I made her scream my name. An anticipatory chill runs through me, knowing I’m about to make her scream again.
“I know you have secrets I need to earn, too,” she says, a serious glint slithering into her cunning eyes. “And I think this is part of it.”
Crossing my arms, I release a long breath through my nose, eyeing her up and down. Tattered black flip flops, no panties, and my Misfits band tee. She may know these woods like the back of her cute little hand, but the voices in me want to play, a cat chasing down a tiny mouse and forcing it to submit.
My smirk grows as she waits, wavering before me like the ghosts she sees, thunder rumbling over the mountains in the distance.
“One,” I say lowly. Her eyes spark, her body going rigid.
“Two,” I count ominously, taking a threatening step toward her. She backs away a pace, palms open and facing the forest floor.
“What happens if you catch me?” she says, that sultry voice breathless in dark desire. I chuckle, pushing up the sleeves of my hoodie.
“ When I catch you,” I correct, my smile fading, only to be replaced by a stoic, ominous look that I feel taking root in my bones, “then I’m going to fuck you until you beg for me to stop.”
Her eyes round at the edges, showcasing more of that alluring, bruise-like purple. She takes another step back.
“Will you stop?”
Her voice is barely a whisper now. Grinning like the psychotic serial killer I am, I shake my head. “Run, little ghost. It’s time to play.”