Prologue #2
"Who is she?" My fucking math tutor, aka the bane of my existence, is making me feel shit that I don't wanna feel. She's fucking annoying, that's who she is.
"What makes you think it's about a girl?" Fuck, I can't even keep a straight fucking face when it comes to her. I'm full of shit, and he knows it.
"Because it's fucking impulsive, even for you. So it's definitely about a girl. Especially at 1 AM." I frown and huff. Again, Alv isn't wrong, I just hate that he's fucking right.
"She's part of the story." I'm the villain in my past. I've done a fuck ton of unforgivable, unforgettable, and unfair shit to a lot of people. My choices ended up terrorizing my sister. And then I hurt Edison.
"How big's her part?" She could have her own fucking book if there were a series written about my life.
"Fucking big enough." She's got what my sister would call ' main character energy.'
"Yeah, that sounds about right." There's a crack in his voice that he clears away. We both ignore it. Alvi's like my brother; he wears his heart on his fucking sleeve. And I mean literally.
He's got two little broken and bloody hearts on his left arm. One's his and the other's a girl that he won't talk about. Just hearing her name sends him deep into his head. And because she's the social worker at the shelter and he's involved in everyone's business, he hears her name a lot.
I know what that's like. I know what it's like to get stuck in my head and relive the regret. I end up going over every shameful second and re-examining every fucking detail of the fucked up situations that I've had with my math tutor, along with everyone else.
I pick them apart. I lay them all out and obsess over them. Then I brand myself with a permanent fucking reminder. An artful scar. A black inked battle wound.
Once it’s embedded into my skin, I'll shove the leftover bones that I've spent countless hours gnawing on into a box and compartmentalize that shit away. Like down deep into the fucking mosilium of my soul.
This strategy works for me. I'll never be able to rebuild and reinvent myself like my sister did.
Evie has been pretty fucking fearless. She ended up coming here.
She worked through her shit and found someone who loved her through all of it.
She jumped headfirst into the life that she's always wanted.
And from the looks of it, that life's gonna be spent with one of my boys.
I've got no doubt that Max will do right by her. Otherwise, I'll snap his fucking neck.
I don't think that I'm gonna be able to glue myself back together like my brother is currently doing. He's now in therapy and focused on getting healthy again. Plus, he's finally got his girl, Red. She'll help him put the hard-to-reach pieces back into place for him.
So far, avoiding and compartmentalizing have been working out. I've got every fucking finger and toe crossed that it doesn't crap out on me either, because I don't know what else to do, especially now that I've seen her again. I'm talking white-flag waving in the air type shit.
Edison fucking Santos refuses to get outta my head. This tiny ass girl is taking up a tremendous amount of space inside my brain. And after seeing her today, she's already re-invaded other parts of me. It's like she declared war.
She leveled me with one fucking look today.
I didn't stand a chance against those midnight eyes.
Like two black holes, the intense gravitational pull had me caving instantly.
I still don't know how I stood there without falling to my knees.
I've never been taken down like that. It was like fucking sorcery.
I felt this deep ache in my chest the whole time that I was in her presence today.
Me, who doesn't hug anyone, was dying to wrap her in my arms and hold her close to me.
I usually fucking hate hugs. My family and team don't count, but I'm not someone who likes to be touched like that.
And now I'm craving to feel her against me again.
See how fucked up all this is? This shit has gotta stop.
I'm fucking desperate. I'll do anything to make these overwhelming feelings go away. Even if it means tattooing an angry fucking cat on my chest. After that, I'm gonna put her ass in a box and throw it as far down into the pits of my own hell as I can. Then I'll be done.
Alvi wipes the excess ink again while the permanent lines seep deep into my tensed-up skin, leaving only the outline of her.
I grind my teeth together, and it only intensifies the pain as I strain to stay still under the needle.
I need this part to hurt. Where it throbs, and I start to question everything that's ever made me feel anything ever before.
It's fucking fitting that my chest is burning. She's been in that fucking spot since last spring when I showed up for tutoring and she set me ablaze. That's when this shit show started.
I'd been tutored in math since the beginning of sophomore year.
Numbers are fucking dumb. They only make sense to me when I'm scoring and we’re winning.
Otherwise, I could give a shit. I'd rather write a twenty-page essay than do a twenty-question math test any fucking day.
Actually, I'd rather do neither, but I promised my mother that I'd graduate.
And because I fucking hate math and don't want to spend even a second doing it, I've always shown up when I want.
My old tutor and I had an agreement: as long as I showed up within an hour of when I was supposed to be there, it wasn't a problem.
Then he got fucking Covid, developed some irregular heartbeat, and had to leave school.
That's how I got reassigned to Edison fucking Santos.
And that's legit when my fucking life changed.
It was one of those moments that marked me.
I wasn't the same walking out of there as I was before I saw her.
As soon as I opened that heavy ass library door and stepped into the busy lobby, I felt eyes on me like someone was watching.
Waiting. And she was… for forty-five minutes.
I'm used to people staring, especially girls. And I'd say ninety-nine percent of them are usually happy to see me. But not her. She was the one percent, and she was beyond pissed.
This girl hated me before I even met her. She looked like she wanted to set me on fire and watch me fucking burn alive.
Her little hands were moving a mile a fucking minute, and she was hissing up a storm while her black hair swooshed around her shoulders.
She looked like she wanted to claw my eyes out as she swatted at me with that pointy little finger.
I didn't get a chance to say shit. I also realized that I was exactly where I wanted to be.
She got up in my face about how there were only fifteen minutes left, and she cussed my ass out in front of the whole library like a little fucking tyrant.
When the blonde who had just blown me and technically made me late, accused her of being jealous, she fucking growled and bared her teeth like the little savage she is.
She wasn't done, though. She gave zero fucks as she told my ass off in Spanish, before slamming her shoulder into my rib cage. She stomped away, leaving me and Blondie stunned. She was a fucking menace.
I had to take a deep breath to calm the fuck down…
because, what the hell was that?! She handed me my fucking ass on a platter for everyone to see.
The attention wasn't what was crawling all over my skin; it was how easily she tamed me.
She put me in my fucking place, and I let her. Because I liked it.
I was so fucking pissed that she fucking did that. No one did that to me. No one makes me feel fucking anything, and I like it like that. I couldn't stop thinking about those five fucking minutes and what she did. Fucking, tiny ass emotional terrorist.
She was fucking gorgeous in a way that I'd never seen before.
It was those goddamn eyes. They were so angry and dark like twin storms that left me shipwrecked.
I didn't stand a chance of evacuating or being saved.
I just stood there watching this feisty girl call my ass out while taking in all of her wild beauty. I got lost standing in front of her.
Her voice was edgy. Sharp like her words. She was humiliating me, and I was letting her. She cut me up with her black, chipped, and chewed nails as she sliced through the veil that I keep between me and everyone else. She had no fucking mercy, and it was hot as hell.
When I snapped out of the fucking trance that she had me under, I remembered why I had those walls up to begin with. No one talked to me like that. I didn't give a fuck what this pretty ass girl with the big and bad threats said. There was no way that she was gonna do shit to me.
I was one of the team's lead fucking scorers and had NHL scouts coming to see me game after game. Did she really think that me missing a fucking math session was gonna stop me from playing? No fucking way.
That night, I channeled all of that built-up anger into a double hat trick and dominated on the ice. I had an un-fucking-believable game. Coach kept me out there to do my thing, and I was fucking unstoppable.
The crowd was so loud as they cheered me on and shouted, "Hunter, Hunter, Hunter." But all I could think about was the way that her plump pink lips curved around my name when she said my name. I liked how it sounded coming from her sweet little mouth the most, even if she did spit it out at me.
"Are you, Hunter Wilton?" Say my name again, wild-thing. I like it when you say it like that.
"The one and only, sweetheart."
"?Carajo, wey! (What the fuck!) You're fucking late, y no hay nada dulce en mí (and there's nothing sweet about me). You got time to waste? Because I sure as fuck don't." Fucking hell.