Chapter 4
A few weeks later, I was back in the car on the way to Mia’s apartment—the only place I went beyond the theater, the cafe, and occasionally Jules’s house.
Lately, I’d been staying there more often than at my own apartment, mostly because with Mia, it was easier to fall asleep. Easier to pretend that my life wasn’t a cage, that I wasn’t the only bird in there, both lonely and alone.
Mia, the human equivalent of a hummingbird, might not have been in the cage with me, but she was hovering outside of it with all her might, trying to break me out with every glare aimed at the back of Jules’s head while he drove us carefully down the streets, which were alight with holiday glow.
It was a magical time of year, one of my favorite times of year.
And this year, it was even better because I got to perform in a show I’d always wanted to be a part of—even if I was just a snowflake and a flower.
Perhaps next year, if our stern director’s looks were anything to go by, I would be more.
I hoped I would. But hope was a fickle thing in a mind like mine. A ticking clock that would eventually run out of time.
“Not perfect… Not perfect… Not perfect…”
I tried to tear my mind away from the voice, instead turning to Mia, who was miming strangling my brother. I elbowed her to knock it off, and she rolled her eyes like a sullen teenager.
Which made sense considering I felt a lot like a teenager right now, sitting in the back seat of my brother’s car on my way to a sleepover. But in my defense, I was only in the backseat because Elsie was in the front.
Elsie came over for dinner more often than she didn’t, especially when I wasn’t home.
She’d cut off her family long ago, and my parents were off gallivanting around the world, uncaring of what Jules and I were up to.
Jules’s dinners with Elsie were special to him, and he was always a little more lenient with me going to Mia’s when she was coming over.
Just friends, my butt, I thought. I watched through the rearview mirror as my brother’s eyes continued to go to her like a sunflower following the sun.
“All right,” he said, pulling up to Mia’s familiar building. “You’ll call me in the morning to take you back?”
“Yes, Jules,” I huffed. “See you later.”
“Bye, Buzzkill,” Mia sneered under her breath before skipping to the door arm in arm with me. As soon as we stepped inside, I breathed a sigh of relief. I loved my brother, but his overprotectiveness sometimes made me feel like I was suffocating.
“I don’t get where he gets the nerve,” Mia grumbled, waving to her doorman before clicking the elevator button, flipping off my brother’s sports car as he pulled away.
Her glower followed us inside and up to her apartment door. “I mean… is it his ass? Does he shove the audacity clear up there for safekeeping?”
“Mia, be nice. He’s my brother.”
“This is me being nice. Because I’m this close—” She held up her fingers barely a millimeter apart. “—to beating his ass until he lets you behave like a grown ass woman. So, really, me holding myself back is being nice.”
I looked at her while we walked down the hallway. Mia wasn’t going to be fighting anyone, anytime. Especially not my stocky brother with a temper issue. She lost every battle with a Sephora makeup sale. One promise of a brand new eyeshadow palette from him, and she would be toast.
“I mean, if you’re old enough to get a tramp stamp that you later regret, you’re old enough to live without someone constantly surveilling you!”
My brows knitted together. “What’s a tramp stamp?”
Mia froze in the midst of jingling her keys in her lock before sighing and turning. She squeezed my cheeks with a gentle smile. “Oh, you sweet summer child.”
“What is it?”
“Never mind,” she laughed. “Come on.”
I followed her into her apartment, which was decorated with an eclectic assortment of prints, knick-knacks, and far too many throw pillows. Despite our almost laughable salary from the City Ballet Company, Mia always seemed to have enough budget for a little trinket wherever we went.
Not that Jules let us go many places. But sometimes he took us to the mall, so I took that as a win.
I smiled at the view out her floor-to-ceiling windows, the city lit up like a Christmas tree. The world was so wide I could hardly believe it sometimes. My little corner of it felt so small.
Mia flicked on her large television before stalking to her modern kitchen and setting a bag of popcorn in the microwave.
Our dinner on nights like this, when we couldn’t bring ourselves to cook after a performance, nor order takeout that we couldn’t afford.
Mia’s parents might have subsidized her luxury apartment while she danced for the Company, but they weren’t paying for her food delivery fees.
“So,” she began later, flopping onto the couch, a bottle of wine in one hand and a bowl of popcorn in the other. She patted the spot next to her. “I’ve given you a couple of weeks. When are you finally going to tell me why you’ve been acting so weird lately?’
I was in the middle of wrapping myself in a pink fuzzy blanket—one she kept here just for me, knowing they were my favorite—when I stilled, my eyes dragging over to Mia, whose hardened expression told me I wasn’t getting out of it this time.
I’d been putting off her many questions for months, and I knew I would soon be reaching the limits of her patience.
I just wished it had lasted a little longer.
With a sigh, I scooted closer to her, grabbing the bottle from her hands and taking a direct swig.
The sickly sweet taste burned the back of my throat, and I coughed.
Drinking was never really my thing. I was always too focused on dancing to go out with friends, and I hadn’t been twenty-one for long anyway.
Plus, it wasn’t like Jules was offering me his liquor to try.
Needless to say, that was something Mia changed shortly after we met. Now, I still didn’t love drinking—who likes dealing with headaches and regrets in the morning?—but I didn’t abhor every second of the nights she dragged me out to the clubs either.
“Spill, Evangeline.”
“Fine,” I groaned. “But you can’t tell anyone. And you can’t judge me. Or react. Or ever bring this up again.”
“The only one of those I’m actually agreeing to is to never tell anyone. But I will be judging, reacting, and most certainly bringing this up again because you never have secrets, ever, and I plan on taking full advantage of this.”
I tried to glare at her, but she looked at me like I was a wet kitten—angry yet adorable. “Fine. I kissed someone.”
True to her word, Mia did react.
A lot.
First, she threw the popcorn bowl up, kernels launching into the air and landing like snowflakes around us.
Then, she screamed, clapped her hands, did a few laps around the room, sat back down on the couch, squealed and jumped up again, and did a few more laps before wrapping me in a hug and pulling me back down with her, giggling like a madwoman.
“Eva! You kissed someone! You kissed someone! Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. That was your first kiss, right?”
My cheeks burned as I nodded. I didn’t love to be reminded of how inexperienced I was, because it wasn’t like I wanted to be a lame, unkissed virgin with no knowledge of what things like tramp stamps were.
But with my sheltered upbringing, going to a small, women-only boarding school for high school, then dedicating my entire universe to ballet as soon as I was old enough to fully commit to it, there hadn’t been time or space for love to blossom.
Plus, there was no one I ever wanted to make my first kiss.
But I’d kissed Alek twice.
The first time, he caught me off guard. I was too busy staring at his long, black lashes, the dark sapphires they lined, and the way his skin looked like rich caramel under the glowing streetlights.
But the second time, I’d kissed him first because I wanted to kiss him again.
I wanted to taste him, to feel his body pressed against mine, to inhale him until my head spun.
Already, I felt the pull of something I couldn’t name, some dark hunger that seemed to come from him alone.
If I saw him again, I didn’t know if I’d run—or if I’d let him own me entirely.
Because a large part of me was ready to do a lot more than kiss him.
Only the reminder that Jules would kill Alek if he found out we’d even talked pulled me back from our second peck. I’d had to run away before I got tempted again, but if I saw Alek again?
I wasn’t sure what I’d do.
I needed to distance myself from him. For both my sake and Alek’s.
Jules would never allow us to be together, especially since Alek was radiating danger from his expensive suit to the tattoos beneath it to the hardened glint in his eyes.
There was too much in the way, too many rules that a relationship like ours broke.
“Okay, okay,” Mia said. “Tell me everything.”
So I did. I told her about the snowball fight, the collision, Alek’s hands making sure I was okay, the way he looked at me like he’d never wanted anything more, him loaning me the scarf, and our kiss.
And, finally, I told her about the way I ran away like a coward, unwilling to face the idea that Jules wouldn’t let us be together.
“I’m gonna die alone, Mia,” I groaned.
She clicked her tongue. “No, you’re not. Men like that don’t just vanish.”
“You don’t know that.”
“From what you’ve told me, I know enough. You might be convinced he’s your perfect Prince Charming, but it seems pretty clear to me that he’s a starving man, and what he’s craving is you. You know who that sounds like to me? The villain.”
I gaped. “But I don’t want to end up with the villain!”
“Do you?” she raised a brow. “You want a Prince Charming, but would a prince be willing to go against your brother? Would a prince win?”
I frowned because she had a good point. Jules was stubborn like fire—unpredictable, raging, consuming everything in its path once it caught a spark.
He wasn’t the kind of man who cooled down with time or reason.
He burned hotter when challenged, met darkness head-on with his temper blazing until there was nothing left but ash.
Maybe Mia was right. Maybe this wasn’t something that could be soothed with gentleness or patience. You didn’t smother a wildfire with soft words. You either let it burn itself out…
Or you met it with something strong enough to withstand it.
And I didn’t know Alek very well, but I knew this much: he wasn’t fire. He was ice. Cold, relentless, and deadly in its own way. And for me, he would hold his ground until the flames had nothing left to feed on.
If I hadn’t messed things up already.
“No,” I finally replied to Mia, chewing my lip while I tried to think about anything I could do to fix the mess I’d created.
The problem was: I wasn’t sure I could fix it—and even if I could, I needed to slow down and think about not only our last show tomorrow, but our auditions for the spring show, Romeo and Juliet, the day after.
I figured I would be a background dancer, but a part of me hoped I had proven myself in The Nutcracker to get more of a lead role.
I needed to focus on my career, on my dancing, for the next few days. Afterward, I would worry about Alek.
“Exactly. The villain is the one who will do anything for you, who will give you the world if you ask for it. He’ll take everything from you and leave you desperate for more, which is scary and a little hot.
But I guess it fits because the villain is going to be the one to fuck you into oblivion. Not your Prince Charming.”
I was pretty sure that, at that moment, my face resembled a bright red Christmas ornament. “Mia! I-I… um… I mean… ugh! Don’t say things like that!”
“Why?” she grinned knowingly. “Is it because you want him to? You want Alek to shove you against the wall and show you what a good time is?”
“No!” I lied, turning away before I turned into a tomato. God, this was so embarrassing. Why did I even tell her this?
“Uh-huh. Anyway, let me tell you all about protection. Are you on the pill?”
“I am not answering that!” I stood, stomping over to the kitchen while clutching my blanket and one of her pillows shaped like a disco ball. I desperately needed some water.
Was it hot in there? Did I need to turn on the air conditioning?
“Alek and Eva, sitting in a tree. F-U-C-K-I—”
Mia’s song was cut off by the sound of a pillow hitting her in the side of the head.
She lost herself in a fit of laughter, clutching at her stomach while she rolled in pure glee.
Despite her teasing, I couldn’t help but laugh alongside her, some of the heaviness I’d felt since Alek and I met finally alleviating.
My lungs screamed for a reprieve, and my cheeks ached from smiling so hard.
After the laughter faded and the wine dulled to a pleasant warmth in my chest, we curled up together beneath the blankets, the city humming softly beyond the glass. Mia eventually fell asleep with her head on my shoulder, breathing slow and even, like nothing in the world could touch us.
I stared at the ceiling long after, tracing invisible lines between the shadows.
A villain. A man willing to burn the world for me.
The thought should have scared me. Instead, it settled deep in my bones, warm and dangerous yet magnetizing in a way, drawing me closer to something I both feared and craved.
If Alek really was a villain, if he wanted me like Mia said, nothing would stand in his way. I couldn’t hide from him, and the longer I went without him, the more I wasn’t sure I wanted to.