Beats for him.
I can see Wyn is blinking too and I know she’s doing it to keep her tears at bay. “Hearts are stupid, aren’t they? Foolish little dreamers.”
I chuckle sadly. “Yeah.”
“So your heart wants him then.”
I bite my lip again. Harder this time. Much harder, so I can stop the thundering in my chest. This wave of ache and need.
“I’m not listening to it,” I tell her. “I listened to my heart once and it didn’t turn out so well.”
Wyn nods. Then, “And what about the other stuff?”
“What?”
“You know, you’ve been sick a lot. And you haven’t been to your studio.”
Oh. That.
When I said there’s something wrong with me, I meant that there’s something wrong with me on multiple levels.
Levels like my stomach is acting weird this week. I’m either ragingly hungry or I’m throwing up or feeling nauseated. Especially around my favorite things, coffee and bacon. The bacon thing really saddens me because I don’t get to eat it that often anyway because of my stupid diet. So I savor it whenever I eat it, but I can’t even do that anymore.
I do fantastic with arugula or kale. Even lettuce.
Things that I’ve had to eat because of my diet but have never really liked in the past.
So I don’t know what’s happening there. It actually snuck up on me a few days ago.
Not to mention, I’ve been so tired, bone tired lately. So much so that ballet and practice and exercises are the last thing on my mind, which is fine because I already sent in my Juilliard application but still. I can barely drag myself out of bed in the morning and stay awake in classes after lunch.
I feel like my body is swollen and heavy and I just want to sleep till the end of time.
“Maybe I’ll go next week,” I say and smile reassuringly.
Hopefully I’ll be better next week, won’t I?
I have to be.
This can’t go on forever. Especially when this is what I want. Especially when it’s been three weeks since that night.
But hours later, long after Wyn has gone to sleep, I’m still awake.
I’m tossing and turning, so hot and so uncomfortable in my skin that I decide to sneak out. Coincidentally, it’s a Thursday and so a perfect night for sneaking out.
I’m not going to the studio though because I don’t have the energy or any will to dance, but I need some fresh air. So I creep out of the room, scale the fence and wander into the woods.
I walk aimlessly, my feet kicking up the leaves, crunching them, my fingers grazing the rough bark, the branches, trying to get rid of this nausea that has suddenly crept up.
I even walk over to the tree. The tree.
Just by the side of the road. Where he kissed me.
I’m an idiot for doing that. I know.
But I just wanted to see it. I just wanted to touch it.
As soon as I do though, I snatch my hand back, disgusted with myself, and walk away, ready to go back to my dorm room, when I hear something.
Tires screeching. Bang of a car door shutting.
Footsteps.
Loud and thumping.
I can hear the crunch of the leaves. I can feel the force of the heels stomping the ground right in my chest.
Strangely, I know it’s him.
I already know it so I dive for the tree just by my side and hide behind it. I hunch my shoulders and try to shrink my body, try to make myself smaller because I don’t want him to see me.
I don’t.
What is he doing here? Why has he come?
He’s looking for me, isn’t he?
He’s come to find me when he promised. He promised he wouldn’t.
Yet he’s here on a Thursday at midnight.
God, Reed.
I ignore my fluttering heart. I ignore that it soars in my chest, that a rush goes through me. At the fact that he’s here.
I slowly look over my shoulder from where I’m hiding. I dig my nails into the bark when I see that he’s striding down the path that I take to and from the fence. He’s going to that spot, the spot from which we sneak out.
I showed him that spot the other night.
That night.
He actually carried me to that spot. After. In the rain.
Like I was his doll or something.
And I held on to him like I’d never let go. I burrowed my nose in the side of his neck, in the triangle of his throat, trying to fill my lungs with his scent for the last time.
He kept smelling me too, pressing his hot mouth on my forehead, breathing me in and breathing out.
I want to do that right now.
Jump into his arms so he carries me. Rub my nose in his hoodie, smell him, have him smell me.
Kiss me.
But I stay put as my stomach churns.
As I watch Reed march over to the fence, that I can only partially see through the trees.
As I feel dizzy.
Pressing my spine to the tree to keep my balance, I put a hand on my stomach and God, it feels so warm.
I don’t remember my belly ever being so heated.
Why is it so hot?
But I don’t have the time to think about it right now because he’s come to a stop. Right at the spot in the fence where I asked him to let me down and where he watched me scale it and leave him to go back to my dorm.
Like he was really my Romeo and I was really his Juliet, sneaking back to my room.
In this moment, my Romeo is watching the fence, running his hands through his hair. His shoulders and back are shifting with what I think are agitated breaths and his stance is wide, battle-ready. As if he’s going to tear the fence apart, take it down brick by brick, demolish it, all with those hands that are messing up his overly-long hair.
My belly lurches and churns and bile rises up my throat.
And oh my God, I think I’m gonna throw up.
I think…
Reed turns around then and looks in my direction, or rather where I’m hiding.
And quickly, I duck even more behind the tree.
I clench my eyes shut, put a hand on my mouth to muffle the sounds of my breaths. The hand that’s on my stomach, I press it even more as if I’m trying to stop whatever the heck is going on inside my body.
Whatever the heck makes me want to throw up right now and all the time, and that repels bacon and coffee and that makes me…
Wait a second.
Just wait a freaking second.
I’m throwing up all the time. I’m tired and I’m depressed and I smell everything and everything makes me nauseous.
And I can’t remember the last time I had my period and wasn’t I supposed to get a period a few days ago?
But maybe that’s fine. Maybe I’m just a little late.
It doesn’t mean anything, right?
My stomach churns and roars and I can feel him running his eyes frantically over the area. I can feel him looking for me, hunting for me, and it’s getting harder and harder to stop this chaos in my stomach.
Oh God.
Please, Reed. Please, please, please.
I’m not sure what I’m pleading for. Am I pleading for him to leave or to find me or to tell me that whatever I’m thinking, whatever I’ve discovered about my body is false?
Maybe I want him to tell me that it’s not right.
That it can’t be.
There needs to be some other explanation. That it can’t be what my body has been trying to tell me for the past few days.
But he doesn’t do any of that.
He doesn’t find me and tell me that it’s all going to be okay, no.
He leaves.
Just as he’d come, out of the blue, almost jogging up to the fence, he walks away from it. I hear him leave. I hear his footsteps thumping and retreating.
Until I can’t hear them anymore.
Until I open my eyes and fall down to my knees.
Then I throw up on the ground, my heart rebelling over letting him go and my body rebelling over what we did three weeks ago.
He’s the first thing I see as soon as I enter Ballad of the Bards.
I’m not shocked to see him though.
It’s Friday and he knows where I go on Fridays.
Even though I haven’t been here in three weeks, ever since that night. And I would’ve skipped tonight as well but I’ve already worried my friends a lot and I couldn’t skip without telling them something, everything, I don’t know.
But I can’t.
I can’t tell them anything. Not yet.
Not until I figure things out myself. So when they asked, I said yes and I did it with a huge smile on my face to make it look convincing.
But anyway, he knows where to go to find me.
The shock comes from the fact that he wants to find me in the first place. That he wanted to find me last night as well when I hid from him.
When I figured out that…
That I am. I know I am.
My body has been trying to tell me this for days now and I’ve ignored it. I can’t ignore it now.
So I know.
I’ve known it for about twenty-four hours now.
I’ve known it ever since last night when I threw up in the woods. I knew it when I got back to my room and first hugged my pillow to my body because I was so scared — I still am — and then cried in it.
I knew all through breakfast this morning, through trigonometry, geography, history, biology. I knew it when I went to see my guidance counselor and she asked me how my week had been and I told her it was fine. Everything was the same.
Even though it was a lie.
Because everything is not fine. Everything is not the same.
I don’t think it will ever be the same after what I’ve known for the last twenty-four hours.
And now he’s here.
He’s standing at the same spot that he was back when I first saw him after two years. But unlike the last time, he doesn’t have people around him.
He’s alone and it looks like he’s been waiting for me. It looks like he’s been watching the door.
My heart tries to race at the thought.
At him watching the door, waiting for me to show up. But I harden it.
I make it stop.
Because he shouldn’t be waiting for me. He shouldn’t be watching the door for me.
And I shouldn’t want him to.
I do everything in my power to stop my heart from wrecking my ribs, from leaping out of my chest at the sight of him. And I think I’m successful. I think.
But I forgot one thing. Or rather, didn’t take that thing into account.
I didn’t take into account the fact that instead of it all ending that night, something began.
Something took root and I feel it in my body now, and even though I’ve managed to calm down my heart, I can’t calm it down.
The flutters in my abdomen.
A quickening, something pulsing to life, and it’s only getting worse the more I stare into his wolf eyes.
And I have to put a hand on my belly.
My skin feels just as warm and heated as it did last night.
As soon as I do that though, I know I’ve made a mistake.
Because God, his animal eyes — they really never miss anything — drop down to my belly. And his arched cheekbones flood with a flush as if he can feel that warmth himself.
When his lips part slightly as if on an exhale, I snatch my hand off.
His eyes snap up and my own pop wide at the look in them.
All angry and dark. Possessive. Filled with knowledge, somehow.
Of what’s inside of me.
But it can’t be, right?
He can’t know. It took me days to figure it out myself, granted I was distracted but still. He can’t figure it out by just looking at my hand on my stomach.
Right?
But he starts to move toward me. He starts to bulldoze his way through the crowd to get to me and I don’t know what else to do except run.
Again.
Because this wasn’t the plan, okay?
This wasn’t how I wanted to tell him. Did I want to tell him?
I don’t know.
I only just found out myself. I haven’t even had the time to process it all. And second of all, we were supposed to be free of each other.
I was supposed to be free of him. I was supposed to forget him and move on.
But this is the opposite of all that.
So blindly, I turn left and push my way through people. I push my way through their sour breaths, the smell of liquor, the heavy violins in the air. All of which is making me slightly dizzy and nauseated.
But somehow I manage not to fall to the ground or throw up.
I somehow make it to the back and turn into a hallway. Somehow, I find the door that I’m looking for — an office that all employees use. The reason I come to this bar and the reason I know Will, the bartender, is because my brother Conrad used to work here and I used to accompany him when I was little.
I’ve spent a lot of time in that office and I know for a fact that it’s cozy and has soundproof walls. Although back then, I never ever thought that I’d come to find refuge here, in Con’s old office, in this condition.
If he knew…
Don’t think about that now, Callie.
Don’t.
I finally get inside the office but when I go to close the door, something is blocking it.
Or someone.
Him.
The tall broad body of the guy I was running away from.
He has his large hand on the door, pressing against it, stopping it from closing.
He was right on my heels, wasn’t he?
When I look into his eyes, all molten and heated, still sporting that dark light of possession, I get my answer. That yes, he was. He was right at my heels, chasing me.
Slowly, I back away from him and slowly and authoritatively, he enters.
His cheeks still have their slightly flushed look and his jaw, stubbled as always at night, is clamped shut as he watches me.
I back away from him. “What are you doing here?”
Without taking his eyes off me, he closes the door behind him and locks it shut. “Chasing after you. As always.”
My heart thunders in my chest.
It’s not because he locked the door just now. No, that doesn’t surprise me anymore.
It’s his familiar answer.
That he came here for me. Like he went to the woods last night.
That he was chasing after me.
I shake my head to dispel these stupid, useless thoughts as I keep backing away. “Well, you should stop. You promised, Reed. You promised that we wouldn’t see each other again.”
“I didn’t.”
“What?”
His eyes pierce into mine. “You wanted me to promise but I didn’t.”
I stare back at him, studying his features, which look gorgeous. As gorgeous as ever. Even though his hair’s grown out and his strands are messy, all disheveled, probably courtesy of his fingers. Even though there’s a certain kind of strain on his features. A certain kind of tiredness and something so akin to regret.
And I realize that he’s right.
He never promised.
I wanted him to but he didn’t.
So I guess he didn’t break it then, the promise. Because he never made it in the first place.
When he notices the realization on my features, his jaw becomes even tighter, his fingers fisting at his sides. “I know I’m a bastard. I know I’ve lied to you. I’ve broken promises before. But I’m never going to make a promise to you that I won’t keep. Not anymore. And that’s a promise.”
I finally reach the end of this office.
&nb
sp; It’s not a very large space to begin with and from what I can see from the corner of my eye, it looks the same. A large wooden desk by the door, a dark leather couch adjacent to it and a dresser right opposite the desk.
Which I touch with my spine and come to a halt, my lips parting.
At his promise.
At the look in his eyes, stark and intense, that makes me want to believe him.
I swallow, pressing my hands on the dresser behind me. “So then why are you here? What do you want?”
My eyes go wide when I say those words.
Those words from our past: What do you want?
Whenever I said those words to him, they ended up changing my life. They ended up being my doom and I can’t believe that I’ve said them now.
Even my body knows it.
The thing inside my body knows it and I feel flutters in my belly. Vicious, brutal. Fierce.
As soon as I say these words, Reed steps away from the door.
He starts to walk toward me. “You.”
Even though I knew he was going to say that, I fist my hands and press my spine into the dresser even more. “Me what?”
“To tell me the truth.”
“What?”
As I said before, this isn’t a big space and so he reaches me in a few long steps. And when he delivers his next statement, he’s right here, leaning down over me, his wolf eyes all fiery. “Because this time it’s not me, it’s you. Who lied.”
“Lied about what?”
Bending down even more, he puts both his hands on the dresser behind me and I feel a shake at my back. “About Toby.”
My breaths hiccup then.
Toby.
Right.
I’ve been so engrossed in everything over the past weeks that it never even occurred to me that he might’ve figured it out. That he might’ve somehow found out that I was in fact a virgin.
That he was the one who took it, my virginity, like he wanted to.
“How do you…”
“How do I know?”
“Yes.”
“Because I saw it.”
“Saw what?”
Another shake at my back. “Your blood. On my dick.”
A Gorgeous Villain Page 30
