Break Away (Away, Book 1)

by Tatiana Vila

  “You have a letter, Dafne.” Gran said, pointing to the metallic slinky I’d convinced her to use as a mail holder. It filled the empty spot where Mom and Dad’s pictures had been.

  “Oh, yeah, I was waiting for it.” I bent forward and stretched myself to reach the coffee table to place the plate and the soy sauce on it. While I stood up and peeled off the blazer, Gran turned and left the room. Buffy seemed to remember something and followed her into the foyer to speak with her, leaving me alone in the living hell with the prick of Ian.

  I threw the blazer over the back of the recliner and turned to grab my mail, which wasn’t in the slinky anymore. Ian was holding it.

  “If you don’t want to suffer a slow and painful death, you better give me that envelope, right now.” I pushed my hand to him, palm up, waiting.

  He tsked, waving the white envelope in the air. “If you ask nicely, I may consider it.”

  “Consider it?” I snapped, blushing in red-hot anger. “There’s nothing to consider. Did you hear me? Nothing.” I closed the distance between us threateningly, feeling like a black panther measuring its prey’s weaknesses. “What you’re holding in your hands is mine. And if you don’t give it back, I’ll kick your ass out of this house no matter what Buffy thinks. Understood?” I narrowed my eyes to a feline glare.

  “You would love to do that, wouldn’t you?” he said with that wicked crooked smile pulling up one corner of his mouth.

  I ignored his innuendo and rose on my tiptoes to snatch the envelope, but he waved it back in a flash, letting me fall flat on my feet with my hands empty. And the fact that he was about a full head taller than me didn’t help either. I wasn’t small, he was just too tall. “Give it back,” I said through clenched teeth.

  “Just be a good girl,” he said in a singsong voice, lowering bit by bit the hand holding the envelope, until it was leveled to his hip. If he was doing it on purpose or not, if it was part of some stupid strategy, it didn’t matter. I threw my hand forward in a mightily attempt, but in the same second, he snapped back his hand behind him and I crushed against him. The soft flesh crowning my chest lessened the hard contact, though it hurt a little. Ian was pure lean muscle; even the ripples of his abs were obvious under the fabric of his shirt.

  Okay, I had to give him that. The guy had an amazing body.

  I pushed away the thought from my mind in a flash and glared at him more intently, keeping the short distance between our bodies. My eyes almost shooting sharp ice balls. “Forget the kicking ass thing. I would gladly cover you up in meat juice and push you down into a bed of starving ants,” I said slowly, each word infused with dark fury.

  He leaned down his head, placing his face only an inch away from mine, and whispered, “I'm not afraid of you, Dafne.” His voice blew into my lips. And that’s not what shot a shiver up my spine in that moment. Behind those words that seemed so daring and bold, echoed a sort of promise. A promise of what? I didn’t know. But it suffused his sharp words with warmth—a startling contradiction.

  He was still staring at me with great intensity, the emerald in his eyes deep in exasperation. This was entirely new, this almost intimate approach, which was the thing that jolted me out of my confusion and opened my eyes to the hidden machinations inside his infuriating mind. I’d forgotten who I was facing.

  “And I’m not affected by you, Ian,” I muttered pushing my face closer, the tip of our noses nearly touching. “You can work your ways through people to lure them to do your every wish and need, but like I’ve told you a zillion times before, I'm not one of them.” It wasn’t that he was trying to seduce me or anything like it—he was my sister’s boyfriend, and not even he, an innate Casanova, could’ve fallen that low—he just wanted to break my ice-solid defenses down so he could prove to himself that even an ice queen like me weakened to his presence. He needed his massive ego to be pampered whenever he was around me, and that, I think, wasn’t a pleasant feeling for a guy like him.

  “That’s not wh—”

  “Well,” Buffy’s sudden flat voice cut him sideways, but we didn’t pull away, just kept glaring at each other like tigers on the verge of clawing at their victims. “If it wasn’t because of the hostility glowing in your eyes, I would’ve thought you were about to cheat on me—both of you.”

  At that, Ian stepped back and turned to look at Buffy. Taking advantage of his distraction, I swung my hand forward and finally snatched the envelope from his hands. He gave a little gasp of surprise and then let it go with a soft shake of his head. He reached Buffy’s hand and pulled her into his arms. “Where were you, babe?”

  I mimicked his words with a grimace, the tip of my tongue escaping past my lips like a four-year old. Since Ian was giving me his back, he didn’t notice—he might’ve felt it because it’d been as sharp as the tongue of a poisonous snake—but Buffy did, with a roll of her eyes over his broad shoulders. “Were you stealing Dafne’s PETA mail again?” She looked up to see him. “Why can’t you two just get along like civilized people?”

  “Let’s not talk about her, okay? It’s a waste of time.” He leaned down and kissed her.

  If it’s such a waste of time, then why do you stick your nose in my mail asshole, I thought with a frown.

  After a few seconds, the merging of mouths started to get so intense and so…nauseating that I had to sit down before I would see the contents of my stomach splattered on the rug. “Oh, get a room, would you?” I snapped, annoyed while squeezing a piece of sushi between the chopsticks. “If you’re more interested in each other’s throats than watching a fascinating movie, then please… go far, far away and release me from this torture so I can eat happily.”

  Ian stopped immediately, as if he’d been paying more attention to my words than kissing, as if he’d been expecting me to utter them, and spun to look at me, pulling my sister in front of him to embrace her from behind. “I'm enjoying myself,” he said with a self-contented smile. The bastard. “We can take it to the couch.” He lowered his head and pressed a kiss on Buffy’s neck without taking his eyes from mine.

  Cocky, are we? I pulled up the handle on the side of the recliner, popping out the leg rest, and stretched out as if I was a pharaoh waiting for the juicy grape to be placed in my mouth. Though instead of the grape, it was the squared piece of sushi. I ground up the soft concoction slowly, deliberately, taking my time to show him my lack of concern. And he got it. He smiled with a low snort and shook his head in amazement.

  “None of that,” Buffy said, wriggling out from his arms and reaching for the DVD cases she’d left on top of the small shelf. “We still have to choose which movie we’re going to watch—and it’s going to be tough. All of these are so good…” Her voice faded as if with admiration while checking each case.

  By the way she was knitting her pale eyebrows together and sighing mutely, I knew we were doomed to watch an excruciating chick flick. On my way here, I’d hoped some mysterious energy, pooled somewhere in the blackness of the universe, had broken barriers of speed and infringed our atmosphere to pour down some logic into Buffy’s brain, but apparently, it was too much to ask. Now I was going to be trapped for about two hours in girly fiddledeedee stuff, cheesy lines and oh-so-cliché plots.

  “Great,” Ian said as enthusiastically as I felt, throwing himself on the couch. “So, what are the options?”

  “Hey, mind the shoes!” I told him after swallowing a sushi bite. “Gran doesn’t…”

  “…like people dirtying her couch. I know.” He kicked out his lace up ankle boots, which I’d been told, by my fashionista sister, had cost more than four Benjamins. And let’s get real. That is just plain ridiculous. The Buttero boots—I think that was the name of the crazy brand—were pretty cool. But paying that unreasonable amount of money for some straps of leather and laces was plainly over the top, and it said a lot about the person who wore them. He clearly didn’t know the value of money—and of an animal’s life.

  “Murderer,” I told Ian after glaring
at his boots.

  “What?” he asked, puzzled.

  “You’re contributing to animal’s slaughtering just because of your narcissistic needs. Don’t you see how repulsive and selfish that is? What if you were the one being skinned alive just because someone was looking for human leather in your exact shade? Would it be fair if they ripped you out from living only to fulfill someone’s greediness?”

  “Oookay, don’t turn all the veggie psycho on me.” He held up his hands as a barrier. “Those boots were a gift. I can’t control what people’s mind or wallet tells them to buy.”

  “But you can control what you’re wea—”

  “Stop,” Buffy called exasperated. “Could we please focus?” she said, wiggling one of the movie cases in the air as to bring our attention to them.

  “Sure,” Ian shrugged. “I just don’t understand how an animal planet disciple can talk about going to hell if you wear leather when she’s eating crab,” he said without looking at me, sprawling on the couch with one of his legs dangling from the side.

  “Are you pea-brained?” I said with a deep frown, spoiling the smoothness between my eyebrows. “What part of being vegetarian didn’t you understand? And even if I wasn’t, this”—I maneuvered the chopsticks into the roll and plucked the small piece of whitish meat—”isn’t real crab, you idiot.”

  “Jesus, it’s like going back to preschool.” Buffy sighed, slumping down her shoulders.

  “Oh, yeah—a sexy veggie. Is that why PETA writes you every month?” he asked, looking at me this time. “Are they trying to convince you to pose for their naked campaign or something?” He ended with a small wicked smile.

  “I don’t know if I should be flattered or disgusted by you thinking I'm sexy.” I pulled up my eyebrows in surprise, though a pip of self-satisfaction was blossoming in my stomach. It was good to know that a guy like Ian appreciated my looks.

  “Don’t give yourself too much credit. I just can’t imagine any other reason why they would write to someone so heartless and cold. You love animals, yeah, but you’re not the type of person who would actually do something for them. It’s more of a vocal thing—explanations, advices, arguments, whatever—and not a physical thing. You wouldn’t leave the comfort zone of your ice palace to help others. That’s just who you are,” he added, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, like saying what the sum of one plus one was. “And doing something like that would suit more your personality. It’s more…self-centered.”

  His words stung. Badly. I shouldn’t have cared what his vision of me was, or how stone-hearted he thought I was, but I did. Deep down inside, I did. Not because it was him, but because that’s how everyone perceived me—except for Gran and Linda. It was a reminder of how perfectly well-done the four ice walls enclosing me were, mirroring the image of an unfeeling person through the hard surface of pretense. Inside those walls, it was just me. There was no ice queen waiting to strike, or itching to cast frostbites. Only the real Dafne sheltering herself from the tearing brutality of the outside world.

  Ian wasn’t that far away from reality. I didn’t like to leave the comfort zone inside those walls. It was safe. But the flurry of pain and need curling above that topless icy shelter, like a gathering storm of cries and tears, called my heart to jump out from it at times, pushing me to help those who were in a greater need of shelter. The Humane Society of Berryford and PETA were my short escapes from that cold enclosure. And most recently, a boy named Ayo from Yoruba, Africa, had joined those breakouts, too.

  Did they know I was doing all of this? No, and I didn’t want them to. Did Gran know about this? Yeah, she was the one receiving the mail.

  “Well, sorry to disappoint you, but not even me—the Queen of Icytopia and Egotopia—would show my goodies for the entire world to see,” I told Ian, masking the hurt with sarcasm. “Believe it or not, I like better the physical thing and doing something more personal than doing something that narcissistic. And anyway, in case you didn’t know, those campaigns are only for celebrities.”

  Ian was staring at me, his usual loose stance now stiff. A faint trace of regret sharpened the emerald in his eyes. So he did notice the hurt in my voice. “Dafne,” he uttered softly, using that voice people drew on whenever they wanted to reach someone’s hand to soothe the pain away. “I didn’t…” He never finished though. He trailed off when Buffy sat down between his stretched leg and the one dangling off the couch.

  She pressed a button on the remote control she was holding, and then leaned over Ian, settling her head on his chest.

  He sighed, as if in resignation, and asked while encircling her waist with his arm, “What are we watching?”

  “No way!” I protested once I aimed my eyes on the screen and the symphonic song flew into the room. “We are not watching that thing. It’s like half a day long. Only menopausal housewives can stand this.”

  “How can you say that?” Buffy lifted up his head as if offended. “Titanic is one of the greatest screen romances of all time. Everybody loves it, even guys, right Ian?” She turned and asked him for confirmation.

  “A giant boat being ripped in half and Kate Winslet naked? Sure,” he said with a shrug and looked at me, giving his approval.

  Ugh. Something told me I wasn’t going to get any support from him. When did I get it anyway? He obviously didn’t want to disagree with Buffy. He was playing the good-boyfriend part. I stood up, left the plate on the coffee table, and reached the small shelf stuffed with girly movies. There had to be something not so cheesy. Buffy couldn’t be that brainless.

  “What about Mean Girls?” Buffy suggested when she noticed I wouldn’t let go of my hunt, which turned out to be more and more difficult every second.

  Okay, maybe she was brainless. “I will pretend you didn’t mention that,” I said without looking at her, crouched on the floor still looking for the impossible.

  “Never Been Kissed? It’s a funny movie.”

  I scoffed. “Bring me a thermos of espresso and an alarm clock.”

  “What about While You Were Sleeping?” Ian added to the parade of ideas. “A successful giant-eyebrowed douchebag gets run over by a train and goes into a coma so his older brother can get his hands under his girl’s pants. You would like that.”

  “No, she wouldn’t,” Buffy said. “Too sweet and romantic.”

  Ignoring them, I finally raised from my hunt with two DVD’s in hand. “This one doesn’t look that bad,” I said, pushing in front of me a movie called “When Harry Met Sally,” an oldie from what it looked like.

  Ian seemed suddenly really interested. “The movie that introduced men to spotting the signs of women faking the Big O,” he said with a smile.

  I nearly choked. “Okay…this one is out.” I said putting it back hastily, as if my hand had unexpectedly been burned. “What about The Phantom of the Opera?” I held up the other case. I’d heard about the novel before, written by some French guy a long time ago—apparently, it was a classic of French literature—and the Broadway musical, but I’d never read or seen any of those. It looked pretty interesting, dark.

  Buffy frowned in interest. “I haven’t seen that one yet. It’s a musical. Ian gave it to me last week.” She turned around and placed a small kiss on his lips. They were stretched all over the couch now, side to side, Buffy’s head resting on the crook of Ian’s arm.

  He pulled out a stunning smile, filled with a perfect row of white as snow teeth, and said while looking down at her, “Let’s see it.”

  Maybe Linda was right and Ian was truly in love with Buffy. The way he looked at her, as if she was his own glowing sun on earth, said lots of poems. An image is worth a thousand words. And it definitely did. They looked like two lovers, prisoners of their own fascination for each other.

  But instead of feeling relief, I felt the increase of worry. There was still something I didn’t like about all of this.

  CHAPTER 4

  Even if all the stupid snuggling and cuddling distract
ed me from the movie for the first ten minutes, making me oblivious to a very important grainy black-and-white scene, I caught up quickly with the events. Suddenly I found myself immersed in the story unrolling in front of my eyes—and not on the one sideways. I found myself fascinated by the colorful flight into Paris’s Opera Populaire, with its pulsing crowd of performers, chorus girls, set decorators, well-dressed audiences and most of all, the mysterious Phantom haunting the depths of the Opera, who molded the voice of an orphan chorus girl into a pure-as-crystal soprano , transforming her into the next Opera’s big star.

  Of course, there had to be romance involved, or else Buffy wouldn’t have wanted to watch it, even if the music was terrific. But instead of being usually cheesy and silly, it had a heartbreaking depth I would’ve never expected. The phantom with the teeny mask, who’s a man hiding more than a mild skin problem, was in love with the rising star, but she didn’t return his feelings. She loved another man, her handsome, perfect-skinned childhood sweetheart. The despair and loneliness the phantom exhibited because of it undid me, tearing some threads that embroidered my heart, and leaving part of the sheer shell vulnerable to emotion. But when the phantom put into play a mechanical music box with a cymbal-clapping monkey, the only good remembrance of his ill-treated and dark childhood, in the cold loneliness of the cellars, I couldn’t stop the tears sliding down my cheeks, thick with sadness and compassion. The way he was looking at that music box, as if he’d never known happiness in his life and the clapping monkey was the only thing that filled him with a spark of joy, made me wish with all my heart that I could be there next to him, to comfort him and shelter him.