Chapter 6 Yara #2
"Are you gonna come to the water?" Ryder suddenly asked from the pool, interrupting whatever it was Xavier was about to say.
I practically jumped away, pushing away from him, remembering where we were. Who we were.
I couldn't do this. I couldn't fucking jeopardize my place when I had nothing to fall onto. I had no backup plan, no trust fund I could access whenever I wanted, and I had no other family that would help me.
I had just a few friends I have only met, none of whom would probably want to help me because they didn't really know me. We cared about each other, but we rarely spoke of the fact that I hated it here and that I was forced to come.
Xavier could fool around. Xavier could fuck me over and leave unscathed because he had the world at the palm of his hand. He could play the games as much as he wanted to, and as much as I wanted to believe his words, his actions said something else.
How could I have forgotten for a second what an asshole he was? How could I have forgotten that most of my anxiety lately was because I had no idea what next insult he would throw my way?
He isolated me in college, sending his little minions after me, and I needed to remember who he was before I completely lost myself to the cruel god sitting here.
As if I'd been burned, I jumped up from the sun lounger, putting some much needed distance between us.
My knees shook, my heart thundered a thousand miles per hour, and as I looked toward the pool, Caleb had a quizzical look on his face, but Ryder—Ryder wore a shit eating grin, just like the one earlier when he kept on teasing Xavier, implicating that he liked me.
He knew what he just did. They would have to be blind not to see the exchange between me and my stepbrother.
Stepbrother.
Stepbrother.
Step-fucking-brother.
Maybe if I repeated it enough my heart would understand that we couldn't do this.
We couldn't fall for the guy with violence in his eyes and sorrow in those words, just because we thought he could perhaps understand how our own mind worked.
"I'll come in in just a second," I said, taking a puff of the smoke, completely ignoring Xavier who kept on sitting on the sunlounger without a care in the world.
This was exactly what I feared; that he would sacrifice me to somehow fuck over his father.
Only a blind man wouldn't have seen the tension between him and William, but I refused to be a pawn in that game.
I refused to be a victim of yet another bored, spoiled man, just because he didn't get his way.
Xavier suddenly got up from the sunlounger, and before I could step away from him, he wrapped his arm around my middle and dropped his voice so that only I could hear. "If you go inside that pool with them, I hope you're ready for the consequences."
"W-What consequences?"
His dark chuckle washed over my ear. "The kind that would make our dear friend Ryder here disappear. The kind that would give him a very unhappy ending. You wouldn't want that, little lamb, would you now?"
I turned around abruptly, pushing away from him, trying to be shocked at what he just said, but I couldn't be, because I knew him. He was telling the truth.
He would kill a man just because I got inside the pool with him. He would make it hurt, but why?
"You're fucking insane." My voice shook, and the moment something dark passed over his features, I knew I shouldn't have said that. Out of all the word choices, that one wasn't the one I had to use.
But I did.
And now I was going to pay.
He advanced toward me, his long legs closing the distance before I could even blink, and instead of trying to run I stood rooted to the spot, throwing my half finished cigarette on the floor and stepping on it with my flip-flops.
He bent down and for a second I thought he would pick up the cigarette bud, but no. Oh no.
His shoulder pressed against my middle, and within seconds I was in the air, held in the fireman's carry, with my ass high up in the air and my face pressed against his back.
"What the fuck!" I shrieked as he started walking, taking us away from the pool and the cackling laughter coming from Ryder.
"I'll see you later, Yara!" Ryder yelled out, to which Xavier grumbled, "Over my dead fucking body."
"Let. Me. Go!" I started hitting him, but it was like trying to hit a brick wall. "Xavier!" But nothing helped.
He didn't flinch when I hit him, he didn't answer when I demanded to let me go, and a few seconds ago I was sure he would drop me into the pool, but then that would've gone against everything he just said.
"You're a fucking psychopath."
"Look who's talking," he grumbled.
Seriously? He thought I was the crazy one here?
"Where are you taking me?" I asked after a second, hoping that whatever fucking broke inside his head momentarily would have repaired itself, because I didn't like this. Not the situation and not the fact that all my blood started getting into my head, making me dizzy.
But did the fucking monkey respond? Of course not.
He just kept walking, keeping me in a tight hold over his shoulder, which made it impossible to see exactly where he was going. Xavier suddenly stopped, lifting me up off of his shoulder as if I weighed nothing, depositing me right in front of him.
"You." He took a step forward, coming closer to me. "Drive." Another fucking step, and I retreated back. "ME," he growled, pushing me back and back and back until my ass pressed against the wall, "insane!" His arms came on each side of my head, caging me in, making me focus only on him.
His nostrils flared, those eyes flashed dangerously, and I couldn't look away even if I wanted to. He was like a bull ready to pounce, and I wasn't sure I wouldn't be his next victim. His earlier words kept on playing in my head, and the way he said them told me he really did mean it.
He thought I was driving him insane? What a fucking joke.
Since the moment I met him, since the moment he looked at me my heart stopped beating for a second, only restarting to beat for him.
For his insults, his fucked up version of caring, for the moments where he didn't look like he hated me but where I thought I was the only girl in the world, made just for him.
I hated him, so fucking much, but I think I hated myself more.
His front pressed against mine, trapping me in the scent of his cologne—something dark and woodsy, a scent that kept on following me throughout the house even when he wasn't home. No matter how many times I told myself that I felt nothing but hatred for him, I knew it wouldn't matter.
Xavier Thornton owned a part of my soul and with each new day that ownership seemed to spread, consuming everything I was.
One day there would be nothing left of me to keep.
One day he would bury his hands into my chest and rip out my heart, laughing at the broken pieces he would no doubt left behind.
"Let me go, Xavier," I said, whispering as if there was anyone else here that would give a fuck about me and the fact that my stepbrother had me pressed against the wall. "You've had your fun," I croaked, "But now it's time to let go."
His brows furrowed, those eyes narrowing at me as if he couldn't understand a single word I have just said. This game of hot and cold was messing with my head, especially when he behaved like he wanted something more from me, like right now and even earlier when I came down.
I couldn't keep up with his mood swings, nor did I want to if I was being honest.
Pressing my palms against his chest, I ignored the little zap that went through my hands the moment I connected with his bare chest, and pushed.
And fucking pushed.
But he wouldn't budge.
"Please," I murmured, looking up at him.
"Just let me go. I'll go inside. I'll stay away, I promise.
" I fucking hated the raw emotion in my words, but I was too tired today.
I was so fucking tired for days now, and I didn't have enough mental power to spar with him.
I didn't have it in me to take whatever he had to dish out and fight back.
I just wanted to crawl into my bed and ignore the rest of the world until tomorrow. I just wanted to stop existing for a moment so that I could take a deep breath and power through this heaviness in my chest.
Lately my mind felt foreign, and my body.
.. My body didn't belong to me, rebelling against me, suffocating me, making it almost impossible to get out of bed in the morning.
Perhaps it was everything that has been happening the last several months, and I could no longer pretend that nothing ever touched me.
My mother hated me.
My father never cared about me.
And the one person who might have been able to understand the mess in my head was my own personal demon, determined to break me.
Didn't he know that you can't break what's already broken?
"Yara." His low voice, the soft way he spoke, it sounded nothing like him in the past couple of situations where he belittled me, making me feel smaller than a pea.
My eyes shuddered closed, because the emotion in his was making my head spin.
The raw need, the desperation, the urge to go on my tiptoes and press my lips to his was overwhelming, too much for my body to handle. "Look at me, Yara." I couldn't.
I was terrified of what I would see there again. But more than that, I was terrified of showing him what lived inside me because I had no doubt he would use it for his own benefit.
Rich boys and their favorite fucking toys. And that's what I was—just another toy.
"Let me leave, Xavier."
"No," he grumbled. "Not until you look at me. Not until you give me those wounded eyes." His hand wrapped slowly around my throat, but there was no pressure.
Not like all those other times where I wasn't sure if he wanted to kill me or simply toy with me.
"Come on, little lamb," he purred, lowering his head so that our noses touched. "Give me your eyes. I want you to look at me."