A Gorgeous Villain

by Saffron A Kent

  Because I’m wearing his favorite color.

  White.

  An ivory dress with a lacy overlay and a zipper in the back. My flats are white too. With my blonde hair in a braid snaking down one side of my shoulder, I’m dressed up as his favorite meal.

  All dewy-eyed and daisy fresh.

  And when he pulls the cigarette out of his mouth to lick his lower lip, I feel like one too.

  A meal.

  “You’re wearing white,” he murmurs, and I fist my hands at my side.

  “I am.”

  His forest-thick eyelashes flutter as he takes me in again. “Why?”

  “Because I felt like it.”

  And because it’s your favorite color…

  I haven’t worn white ever since I saw him at the bar. I’ve actually been going out of my way not to wear it. To wear something completely opposite of white every Thursday, black, blue, orange, anything other than white.

  Just because it’s his favorite color and because I didn’t want to dress myself up in something he likes.

  Not tonight though.

  Tonight things are different.

  The air is different too. The moon, the sky, these woods, everything.

  “It suits you,” he says, looking me over a third time. “Innocence.”

  I look at his jacket again and the cigarette clutched between his fingers. “And villainy suits you.”

  His lips tip up in a smirk and he takes another drag before letting it out. “Is that why you’re standing all the way over there? Because I’m a cigarette-smoking villain and you’re afraid to get closer?”

  “I’m not afraid of you,” I reply from where I stand by the tree, and his wolf eyes glow. His vampire skin sparkles as if in challenge. As if he can make me afraid if he wants to.

  But that’s the thing, I’ve never been afraid of him. And that turned out to be my doom in the end.

  His doom too.

  Isn’t it?

  “Are you cold?” I ask him then. “Because you smoke when you’re cold.”

  He continues to watch me for a couple of seconds before he flicks his cigarette away and crushes it under his boots like it’s a love-filled heart and he’s bored of it. “You know me, don’t you? Yes, I’m cold.”

  “Where’s your hoodie?”

  His eyes narrow. “I’ve got a jacket.”

  “I hate your jacket.”

  “You hate my jacket.”

  I nod. “Yes. Because this is the jacket you wore that night.”

  “What night?”

  “The night of the game. The night you won that contest against Ledger.” I shake my head then. “For the longest time I saw that jacket in my dreams. I saw it so many times. So many, many times that I thought bad things happen when you wear that jacket. I know it’s a silly thought but I just —”

  I stop talking when he straightens up from his car.

  When he grabs his jacket and rolls his shoulders, his dense thick shoulders, and takes it off. He takes his jacket off as he stares at me, letting it fall on the ground.

  Just like that.

  “There. It’s gone,” he says, his jacket lying at his feet, his biceps corded and naked in his V-neck light-colored t-shirt. “Are you going to come here so we can go?”

  “But you’re cold.”

  "I’m fine.”

  With parted lips and a heart that won’t stop pounding, I watch the veins on his wrists, on the back of his hand, thick and beautiful. I watch the arms that he uses to pick me up as I practice.

  To help me.

  I watch them and ask, “What about your practice?”

  “What?”

  I look at his face then. “It must be brutal now, right? At college level.” His eyes narrow. “Ledger can barely come home these days. He’s always at the gym, always on the field, practicing. He wants to be like Shep. Who got picked in the first round of the draft. You know that, right? That Shep got picked. Stellan would’ve been too but he never wanted to go pro. Not like you.”

  His chest is moving up and down, pushing at the fabric of his thin t-shirt. “Get in the car.”

  I shake my head, standing my ground. “So is it? Is it brutal? Is your coach riding you hard?”

  “Get in the car.”

  “You’d easily be picked up in the first round too,” I say and almost lose my courage but I have to keep going. “J-January, right?”

  The next breath he takes pushes out the fabric so much that I think it’s going to get torn apart. Reed is going to tear apart his t-shirt in one long breath and God, I can’t stand it.

  I can’t stand his agitation. I can’t stand what he did.

  What he had to do.

  To get me free.

  “Are you fucking getting in the car or not?” he growls.

  “No.”

  “What?”

  I shake my head as my eyes sting. “I’m not going with you.”

  “You’re not going with me.”

  I shake my head again. “No. Not until you tell me.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “What you did,” I say, fisting my dress. “Not until you tell me what you did to save me from your father.”

  As expected, the word save triggers him.

  It makes him shift on his feet, assume a battle stance, as a thunderous expression crosses his features. “Are we back at that again?”

  “Yes.” I swallow. “Tell me. Tell me what you did, Reed.”

  He begins to walk toward me then.

  Stride over to me.

  And as always, I stay put. My legs won’t move.

  I watch him, his thighs, rippling, shifting under his jeans, dripping with power. I watch them in all their majestic beauty and my heart twists.

  It wrenches and pulses and cries out for him.

  When he reaches me, he backs me up.

  He crowds me with his body and makes me walk backward, his shoes clashing with my flats, until my spine bumps into something. A tree, rough and edgy.

  Like him.

  He dips his face toward me, his shoulders hiding the world from my eyes, and I crane my neck up, not wanting to see anything else in this moment anyway.

  “What do you know?” he growls.

  “Everything.”

  His jaw is hard. “Tempest.”

  “I made her,” I tell him hastily. “I forced her to tell me. I saw those files in your car last week. Jackson Builders. And so I called her and practically pried it out of her.”

  He bends down even more.

  Putting his hand on the tree by the side of my neck, he lowers himself over me, his chest still heaving. “That’s what you do, isn’t it? You pry and pry and stick your nose in things that are none of your business.”

  My ballerina toes go up and I stretch myself as much as I can to bridge the gap between our heights. “But it is my business. Because you did it for me. To get me free.”

  “I told you —”

  “You did, didn’t you?” I cut him off because I’m not letting him deter me. “That game. That championship game, that was so important to you, that you needed to win. That was your last, wasn’t it? That was your last game.”

  I’m watching his face. I’m watching all the angry, violent things pass through his features and yet I can tell that he’s digging his fingers into the bark.

  I can tell that he’s almost clawing at it.

  “That’s what you did,” I continue, my neck still tilted toward him. “That’s what you had to do to get me free. You had to give up soccer. You don’t live in New York either, do you? Because your dad asked you to come back. Because you work for him now, at his company. The place where you never wanted to end up at. But you did. Because of me. I stole your car and you had to give up soccer, something that you loved to —”

  “I don’t love soccer.”

  “What?”

  “Fuck soccer.”

  “
W-what do you mean?”

  “I mean,” he says, his teeth clenched, “I don’t care about soccer. I never did.”

  I come down to earth then.

  My toes can’t hold my weight and so I have to come down on my heels and press my spine against the tree even more. “But that’s… that’s not true. All those years of rivalry. All those fights with Ledger because you wanted to be the best. You wanted to win. You betrayed me for it. You love soccer. You —”

  His harsh chuckle stops me.

  Harsh and brutal and full of something that feels like hate.

  “I don’t love anything,” he says, his voice guttural, coarse. “When are you going to get this through your head? I don’t fucking love anything. Soccer was just a way to fuck with him. My father. Soccer was just a way to show him that he can’t control me. That I won’t be the son he wants me to be. Because he’s a fucking monster. He’s a fucking psychopath. A shitty husband. A shitty father, and so I wanted to get back at him. So no, I don’t love soccer. It hurt like a motherfucker to give it up and become my father’s bitch, to let him win two years ago, but I don’t love it. I don’t love anything. I don’t have space to love anything when I’m so full of hate.”

  His eyes are black by the time he finishes.

  Demon-like.

  Someone so full of hate that every soft, fragile thing inside of him is gone. Is swallowed by this darkness.

  And God, it’s even worse.

  It was bad enough that he didn’t love me, that he used me, chose something else over me. But the fact that what he chose — soccer — is not even his love, I don’t know what to do about that.

  I don’t know how to cope with that. I don’t know how to cope with the fact that he has no space for love. Because all his spaces, all his corners are taken up by hate.

  He may love his sister or a car but not much else.

  I believe him now though.

  As I look at his fire-breathing demon eyes and his flared nostrils, I do believe that he doesn’t love anything. He’s probably incapable of it.

  His chest is not only heartless but it’s barren and there’s no chance of a heart ever growing in it.

  That makes me so sad, so miserable. So blue.

  Bluer than before.

  That I strangely want to cry and hug him.

  “You don’t love anything,” I whisper, wondering if maybe that’s why he’s always cold, because he’s so full of hate.

  His gorgeous features bunch up for a second. “No.”

  “That’s —”

  “You should be happy though, shouldn’t you?”

  “What?”

  “You should be happy that that was my last game,” he explains gutturally, a humorless smile twisting his mouth. “Soccer is why everything happened, didn’t it? Soccer is why I betrayed you. I fought with your brothers. So you should be happy that I’m not playing anymore. You should be happy that my father got what he wanted. That I’m his lapdog now. You should be happy that I’m getting punished for breaking your heart. That the villain in your story is getting his due. All this time that you’ve been punishing yourself for falling for me, I was already getting put in my place.”

  I have to part my lips then.

  I have to breathe through my mouth because my lungs are starving for air.

  My body is starving for it too.

  I’m starving and dying and writhing in pain.

  Because the answer is no.

  I’m not happy.

  Maybe I should be. Maybe I should laugh and smile but all I want to do is cry.

  All this time I thought so many things. I thought he was the one who got me arrested. I thought he was living his life in New York, being a soccer god, being worshipped by people, fulfilling his dreams, doing something he loves.

  But as it turns out, he doesn’t love the game that I thought he did and he was just as caged as me.

  He is just as caged.

  And for the life of me, I can’t be happy. I can’t find joy in his misery.

  Maybe this is the curse of a brokenhearted girl.

  The curse of falling for a villain.

  If you love him once, you hurt for him forever.

  I blink my eyes, realizing that they are wet as I whisper, “No. I’m not happy. I can’t be. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done to me. How much you’ve hurt me. Or how much I hate you. I can’t be happy when you’re suffering. I can’t take pleasure in your misery.”

  His eyes turn even angrier then.

  As if he hates the fact that I don’t like his suffering. That even after everything, I can’t revel in it.

  “I may be a villain but you’re just as stupid and naïve in this white dress as you were when you were almost sixteen,” he rasps.

  And before I know it, my hand shoots up and I slap him in the face.

  My eyes go wide when I realize what I’ve done.

  When I realize that he hardly blinked, hardly even moved his face but my palm is burning. It’s stinging with the force of my slap, with the shock of it. With the violence.

  This wildness he invokes in me so easily. This passion.

  I thought that after knowing how caged and trapped he’s been because of what I did, all this furious fire would go out. But apparently not.

  So when he lowers his face even more and stares into my eyes, as if giving me the go-ahead, telling me to put him in his place, slap him once more, I do it.

  I smack his face once more.

  And a third time and a fourth and when that’s not enough, I punch his chest. I beat at it with my fists and keep going until he grabs my wrists and pins them on the bark.

  Not only that, he pins my entire body to the tree as he moves closer to me.

  As his strong chest pushes against my arched one.

  As his lean torso presses against my ribs.

  “Does that make you happy now?” he asks, his jaw all tight.

  No.

  No, it doesn’t.

  Especially when I realize that I’ve become an animal tonight too. One who can see in the dark like him because I clearly notice my scratch marks on his face. My red fingerprints and where my nails have marked his skin.

  “Oh my God, Reed. Y-you’re hurt,” I stammer, knowing my statement is stupid.

  I wanted to hurt him and of course he is.

  But I don’t like it.

  I don’t like that I hurt him and that I’m still angry. But I don’t know what else to be.

  God, I’m so screwed up. So tied up in knots. All because of him.

  He thinks so too, Reed.

  Because he chuckles roughly. “Jesus Christ, Fae, you kill me. You fucking murder me with your goodness.”

  I’m ashamed to say that I shift on my feet at his tone, at the fondness in it. At the familiarity, and I struggle against his hold. “Let me go.”

  His ruby red lips twitch and his hooded eyes rove over my face and stop at my lips.

  That I have to lick because he won’t stop staring.

  “What’s this one?” he whispers.

  I lick my lips again as a blush fans over my cheeks. “None of your business.”

  He looks up and there’s amusement lurking in his gaze. “Are you trying to hide it? The name.”

  “No.”

  A full-fledged smirk overcomes his lips then. “Fae’s getting shy, isn’t she?”

  “Stop…” I struggle against his hold again because my blush is burning my cheeks. “Let me go, Reed.”

  He flexes his grip around my hands and I try very hard — as I’ve been doing for the past few minutes —not to feel his grip, feel his skin, the pads of his fingers, the meat of his palm.

  The fact that there’s only a sliver of distance between our bodies.

  “Not until you tell me.”

  I glare at him and he chuckles again.

  “Fine,” I say. “Sex and Candy.”

  It’s green, d
ark and pretty, and when I wore it, it felt like the right choice, wearing something green. Because I felt green, all untrained and inexperienced.

  But now I don’t think it’s a good thing, feeling so out of depth in my white dress and dark green lipstick.

  Especially when the mere name of my lipstick makes him grow heated.

  Especially when I can feel that heat running through my own veins. Because I’m trapped now, between him and the tree, and he’s got a hold of my arms as he stares down at me.

  All hungry and intense.

  “Sex,” he drawls.

  “And candy,” I tell him to make a point.

  “Because your lips taste like candy?”

  “You’ll never know, will you?”

  His wolf eyes glow. “I already do, remember?”

  Yes.

  I do remember.

  Although I don’t want to. Although this is one memory I try not to bring up when I’m punishing myself for falling in love with him.

  That night. The rain. His mouth. His Mustang with foggy windows.

  “No,” I whisper.

  “Yeah, you do,” he counters. “You remember everything. Like I do.”

  He does remember everything and now I know why.

  Because like mine, his present is the product of his past too.

  Our past.

  Instead of fighting against it, the past and his tight grip, I let myself go loose then. “I remember.” I let the floodgates open. I let this one memory douse me. “I remember that you let me go. You let me escape your clutches.”

  His eyes narrow for a second. “Unscathed.”

  Maybe it’s madness. Insanity. Maybe Mercury is in retrograde tonight.

  Because none of it feels wrong.

  Remembering doesn’t feel wrong. Remembering with him doesn’t feel like wrong either. It doesn’t feel like I’m about to drink a toxic potion labeled love.

  “I didn’t want you to,” I tell him, which of course he knows but still.

  His fingers around my wrist tighten as if to say that he won’t make the same mistake again. He won’t let me out of his evil clutches a second time.

  “I know.” His jaw tics as if remembering it. “Hardest fucking thing I’ve ever done in my life. Noblest fucking thing too.”

  “And also so atypical of you.”

  “Fuck yeah, I’m not a good guy.”