I sigh sharply. “What are you even doing here? I thought this store was too pink for you.”
That’s another one of the things he said to me that night. And shadows move across his features, making me think that he remembers.
He remembers all the things he said to me that night.
All the awful, terrible, true things.
“It is.” He threads his fingers together. “But as I said, I’d like to talk to you. And I’d rather not talk when we have company —”
“She’s not going anywhere,” I tell him, cutting him off. “Whatever you wanna say to me, you can do it in front of her.”
I don’t know why I’m so adamant about that.
I don’t know why I need Wyn here but I do. I do need her to be here.
I need one thing to go my way. One thing.
Because ever since I saw him at the bar last night, I’ve been praying and wishing and hoping.
I’ve been praying that I don’t see him again. That I never see him.
That last night turns out to be a coincidence.
Because I’m still reeling.
I’m still reeling from the fact that I saw him after two years.
That I heard his voice and smelled his scent.
I’m still reeling from the fact that even now he stares at me like he did back at Bardstown High. That even though I had decided that I wouldn’t dance, I did — just to show him that his presence didn’t affect me — and he tracked my every move like I belonged to him.
So I want my friend with me, period.
“If you insist,” he agrees as he sweeps his eyes all over my face, my body — or whatever he can see of it — without saying anything else.
I narrow my eyes at him. “Well, what is it?”
He lifts his eyes and a hint of a smirk appears on his full lips. “Nice skirt, by the way.”
My fisted hands in my lap unfurl and rub against the fabric at his words.
Another perk of going to St. Mary’s.
It follows you everywhere.
Like a scarlet — or rather mustard — letter.
Meaning even though we get to go out and be free for a few hours, we’re not really.
Because we’re only supposed to wear our school uniform: white blouse, mustard-colored skirt and knee high socks with black Mary Janes.
Unless it’s visitation week and you’re accompanied by a parent or a guardian.
So everyone you come across on your outing knows who you are. They know that you’re from St. Mary’s, the all-girls reform school in the woods.
“Is this what you wanted to talk about?” I ask.
“I especially like the color,” he goes on as if he didn’t hear me, his eyes on my skirt, the little portion of it that’s hanging off the side of the seat. “Mustard, is it?”
I jerk the fabric toward me, hiding it away from his predator eyes. “Of course you think that. You’re deranged.”
He doesn’t mind the insult though. “Actually, I like the whole get up. That ribbon in your hair. Your knee highs. Those schoolgirl flats.”
This time, his eyes travel down to rest on my legs.
And I feel my skin heat up.
So much so that I have to curl my toes inside my flats and jerk my legs away from his eyes as well.
Especially because Wyn is here.
She’s watching our exchange with wide, fascinated eyes, and now I’m regretting letting her stay. So I go to rectify that but he doesn’t let me.
Looking back at my face, he speaks before I can. “I have to admit. I’ve dreamed about this.”
“Dreamed about what?”
“About you,” he almost rasps. “In your St. Mary’s skirt. In fact, I had one yesterday. Would you like to know what it was about?”
“No,” I snap, fisting my skirt, squirming in my seat.
As if I’d ever believe that he dreamed about me.
As if I ever crossed his mind in the last two years.
He’s only saying these things to make me uncomfortable and I’m this close to standing up and walking out.
But then he begins to talk and I can’t move.
Because he leans forward and pins me in my place with his heated gaze. “So in my dream, you have this skirt on. It’s short and pleated and so fucking you, all good girl and innocent. It flutters around your thighs every time you move and it drives me so fucking crazy, watching you walk in that thing, watching you smile and look at me with your big blue eyes, that I ask you to dance for me. I ask you to jump and leap and spin on your toes, and you do it. But it’s not enough. I’m fucking greedy. So I tell you to spin faster. And you do that too. You do it so beautifully, so gloriously, like you were made to do this. Like you were put on this earth just to dance for me whenever I want, wherever I want. So I start to feel guilty.”
Don’t ask.
Do not ask, Callie.
“Guilty about what?”
“About the fact that I’m tricking you and you’ve got no clue.”
“Tricking me how?”
His lips twitch with a secret knowledge that I don’t have yet. But his eyes are all grave and intense as he replies, “The only reason I asked you to spin on your toes for me is because I wanted that skirt of yours to flip up. I wanted that skirt of yours to spin with you. Because I wanted to see. I finally wanted to get a peek of what’s under your pleated, good girl skirt.”
By the time he finishes with his story, my legs are all sweaty and sticking to the seat.
My thighs are clenched as well.
They’re all tight and tingly and restless and…
“I think I should go.”
A soft voice breaks my fog.
It’s Wyn.
Who’s been sitting here all this time — at my insistence, no less — and who heard everything. Every single word. Every single dirty word.
Crap.
How did I forget about her?
How did I forget that my friend was sitting right here?
From the looks of it though, he didn’t.
He didn’t forget that she was here.
In fact at Wyn’s words, his mouth tips into a tiny smile as he drawls, “Yeah, I think so too.”
And then without moving his eyes away from me, he stands up and makes way for her to do just that.
As she’s leaving, Wyn presses her lips together — no doubt to keep her smile or laughter or whatever at bay — and mouths good luck before disappearing.
As soon as Reed sits back down, I snap, “You did that on purpose. You said all those… dirty things in front of her on purpose.”
He looks at me calmly and picks up his coffee mug, which I didn’t even notice he had up until now.
He takes a sip of it as if he has all the time in the world, before putting it down and deigning to speak. “I gave you a choice. But you kept insisting.”
I growl, wrapping my fingers around my half-drunk lemonade and thinking about throwing it in his face.
But I won’t.
I’ve already displayed a lot of violence ever since he came back into my life. Which was not even twenty-four hours ago.
“How did you even know I was going to be here?”
As soon as I say it, that question — how he knew — becomes big.
It becomes the question of the hour. Of the day. Of the week even.
How did he know I was going to be at Buttery Blossoms today? And what about Ballad of the Bards? How did he know I was going to be there last night?
I look at him with parted lips. “Are you stalking me? Are you really stalking me? Like, really, really.”
For some reason, my heart starts to pound.
My fingers slip and tremble around the glass and I can’t catch my breath.
I wouldn’t put it past him.
If he can lock me up in closets, he can stalk me too.
He cocks his head to the side, still calm as ever, as h
e asks, “Why, does it make your little ballerina heart spin in your chest? Knowing that I’ve been keeping tabs on you.”
No.
Absolutely not.
It doesn’t make my heart spin in my chest. It shouldn’t.
I’m not that girl anymore. I don’t like to be locked up or chased after.
I don’t.
I’m smarter.
“No,” I tell him, trying to sound all authoritative.
“Maybe it makes you tingle a little bit to find out that even after two years, the first thing I do when I come back to town is to hunt you down and watch your every move.”
“It makes me feel violated.”
He watches me a beat.
Then, “Relax. Stalking isn’t an interest of mine. I hear it’s something crazy ex-girlfriends do. Or girls who fall in love with you even after having been warned. No, wait. I think they steal cars.” He throws me a mock boyish look as he sips his coffee again. “My bad.”
I clutch my glass tightly. “Are you —”
But he continues, “Anyway, you have a bad habit of writing really long emails to my sister. And my sister has a bad habit of blurting it all out.”
“Tempest?”
“The one and only.”
I frown, trying to put all the pieces together. “She told you I was gonna be here?”
“A word of advice: if you want to keep secrets from me, don’t tell them to my sister.”
Tempest.
My best friend from my old life and the sweet little sister of the guy I fell in love with.
I did tell Tempest where I was going to be, yes.
I usually do.
We pretty much email each other every other day.
After the whole car-stealing debacle and him pressing charges against me and me almost landing in juvie, I thought I’d lose Tempest’s friendship as well.
Even though she helped me and stole his keys, she’s still his sister and so I thought she’d inevitably take his side.
But she never abandoned me.
She still came over to my house whenever she was in town; I wasn’t ready to go to her house though. She still visited me, hung out with me.
In fact, she was the one who got me through that last month of school, after the championship game and my dance that I didn’t get to do, and the whole horrible summer before I came to St. Mary’s.
We still see each other.
Although not as often as I’d like because of all the stupid outing rules of reform school, but I love her. Not today though.
Today I want to strangle her.
Because I thought we had a pact.
Like our brothers, we made a pact too after everything happened.
A pact of no brothers.
Meaning our brothers would have no place in our friendship.
We wouldn’t talk about them. We wouldn’t mention them. It would be like we had no brothers.
Although one thing never made sense to me.
I knew why I was making the pact, but I’m not sure why she did.
Why she never wanted to hear about Ledger, whom I know that she liked two years ago, and I never asked; she respected my space and so I respected hers.
So I don’t know why she’d rat my whole schedule out to her brother.
But anyway, right now I need to deal with him and ignore the slight sinking in my chest.
The absurd sinking.
That feels like disappointment.
Because he wasn’t really stalking me as I’d assumed.
See? Absurd.
“So she sent you here?” I ask, confused, my mind going two years back.
To that closet when he came to give me his sister’s birthday invitation. The day he gave me his name, Fae.
“No,” he says with an irritated frown. “No one sends me anywhere. But she does think that I should apologize.”
“For what?”
“She had a long list.”
I look at him for a beat. “I’m sure she did. But apology not accepted.”
“You should probably wait for me to apologize before you say that.” I open my mouth to say something but he goes on. “That’s not why I’m here. I’m here to ask you something.”
I draw back slightly. “What?”
His jaw moves back and forth in annoyance before saying, “Do you sneak out to Blue Madonna every week?”
“That’s none of your business.”
He studies my features for a few moments before sighing sharply. “I’m going to be honest with you, I didn’t want to see you again. It wasn’t my plan when I came back to this fuckhole town. But now I’m assuming you sneak out every week to go to your ballet studio. Like you do to go to that shitty bar with your friends. Is that correct?”
“It’s not a shitty bar,” I say, offended.
That frown on his forehead grows. “You’re joking.”
“I’m not. It’s a great bar.”
“It’s a dance bar, Fae. The only dance bar where when they put on the music, instead of dancing, you want to kill yourself.”
I ignore the flutter in my chest at Fae and say, “You only think that because you have crappy taste in music.”
It’s a lie. He doesn’t.
I like his taste in music.
It’s usually a mix of vintage rock bands and modern hip hop, and well, it’s not a secret that I love it. He knows that too; I’ve danced to it quite a lot, haven’t I?
So before he can make a comment about it — dirty, of course — I continue, “And their whiskey is excellent too, don’t you think? It’s so excellent that people steal it just to have a sip.”
“If you think that then you should probably just stick to your lemonade and leave the hard liquor to the grown-ups,” he says, tipping his chin to my half-drunk glass of lemonade, not taking my bait.
“You’re such a —”
“The point is,” he speaks over me, “that I’m willing to give you a ride to your ballet studio.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Just so you can stop being stupidly reckless and taking the bus at midnight. Where at worst, you could be kidnapped and murdered and at best, robbed and raped.”
I have no words right now.
I don’t.
He’s insane.
“You’re insane,” I tell him.
“And you’re lucky.” He sips his coffee coolly. “That I’m willing to drive you around on your foolish errands.”
“Foolish errands?”
“Yes.”
My fingers claw at the lemonade glass as I say, “The reason I have to run those foolish errands is because I’m stuck at St. Mary’s. And in case you forgot, it’s a reform school. Meaning they don’t have a ballet teacher. Because apparently, ballet doesn’t rank so high when it comes to restoration and reformation of teenage criminals.”
“Well now you know, don’t you?” he says with a harsh jaw. “Next time you’ll think twice before stealing someone’s car with the intent of destroying it. Almost wrecking your future in the process.”
I bite the inside of my cheek at his words. I bite it so hard that I think I taste copper.
I taste the broken pieces of my heart, my foolishness.
My recklessness.
And I gulp it all down with a hard swallow. “Yeah, you’re right. I will. I will think twice about it. At least then I won’t be stuck in a cage, trying to chase my dream. Trying to break into the one place that was supposed to get me there but they kicked me out instead and —”
“What?”
I flinch at his severe tone. “What?”
“They kicked you out.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
I frown at his ticking, angry jaw. “Because I stole your car.”
“So?”
“So… apparently you steal one car and the world suddenly thinks that you’re running a grand theft auto ring,” I
tell him as I grow increasingly confused again.
What is it to him if I got kicked out?
“They said that to you?” he asks then, his voice all low and his features tight.
“I…” I shake my head. “What does it matter what they said to me?”
“What about Juilliard?”
“Again, none of your business. Besides, it’s done. It happened two years ago.”
“Yeah,” he snaps, his fingers digging into his coffee mug. “And I’m wondering how the fuck did I not know about this until now?”
My mouth falls open then.
I do realize that this might be the first time he’s hearing of it.
It’s not as if I told Tempest about it, about being kicked out and my Juilliard plans. I was too embarrassed to tell her. So I get that if his sister didn’t know, he didn’t know either. I mean, how else would he have come to know?
But that tone? How the fuck did he not know?
Who does he think he is?
I lean forward. “You didn’t know, Reed, because I didn’t tell you. Because it’s none of your business. Because when you so completely broke my heart and betrayed my trust, I decided that I wasn’t going to treat you like my whole world and share things with you.”
That jaw of his, clean-shaven this morning and angular as ever, keeps ticking as he stares at me with heated eyes. “Blue Madonna, right?”
I open my mouth to answer him and then close it before saying, “I don’t know what’s going on with you. I don’t know why you think that you can tell me what to do like you did last night or why you think I should share my life story with you. But it’s getting really old and I want you to stop, okay? Oh, and I don’t need a ride from you.”
“You’re taking it regardless.”
I scoff. “What makes you think that I’m going to get inside your car and let you drive me around after everything?”
His nostrils flare. “If I’m willing to let you anywhere near my car, you better get inside it, Fae. And you better smile your good girl smile and say thank you in your sweet voice to show me your gratitude no matter where I decide to drive you. After everything.”
“And if I don’t?”
He smiles then.
A humorless, cold smile as his animal eyes flash. “See, the thing is that I know where you live. I’ve been to your house, remember? And as much as I’ll hate going back there and talking to your brothers, I’ll still do it. For you. I’m sure they’d be very interested to know what you’ve been up to. Behind their backs. Besides I did it once, remember? At the championship game no less. So I could win. I can do it again.”
A Gorgeous Villain Page 20
