My eyes are closed as I let the music take me away from my physical shackles.
Magic by Coldplay drums in my ears and it’s almost like that – magic. The lyrics speak so much to me and to the person I’ve been. It becomes a bit painful to listen, to be that fool who still believes in magic.
Music is the only thing that keeps my head afloat and somehow manages to keep the fog at bay.
Ever since I walked into the party and saw Summer rubbing herself all over Xander, I’ve been having these small bursts of nothingness.
I know I came to confront him, and I’ll do that, but I need to calm the hell down first.
The shot of tequila didn’t work, being with Elsa didn’t, and Ronan, my own tailored distraction, is nowhere to be found, so music is my only reprieve.
I let it float me away as the melody fills my ears and my senses. My body moves of its own accord as I take refuge in the darkness and the cold, knowing no one will come out here in the middle of this wind.
As soon as this song ends, I’ll walk back in there and tell Summer off. If she doesn’t leave, I’ll punch her like I did her friend – or not. I really don’t want to witness that same expression on Mum’s face again.
It’s enough for one day.
Anyway, I’ll just push Summer away and demand he explain whatever the hell he sent me in texts.
In and out. It’ll be in a place full of people and I’ll be able to disappear in no time.
I nod to myself and pluck out my earbuds as I turn around, determination bubbling in my veins.
My feet halt automatically when my eyes meet those ocean-deep ones. The ones filled with magic that I can’t stop believing in.
With arms and ankles crossed, he’s leaning against the tree right behind me, as if he’s been watching the entire show.
Wait. He was?
The light coming from the huge mansion casts shadows over his features. I swallow, still trying to get over the fact he’s been there all along.
The hell? Since when did he become such a creep?
And why are you secretly happy about it?
If he’s a creep and I like it, what does that make me?
“Don’t stop on my account.” He twirls his finger. “How do you do that thing with your hips?”
I blush, and I’m so glad he won’t be able to see it due to the lack of lighting.
“It’s like a belly dancer. Is that what you practice late at night?”
My head snaps up. “How do you know that?”
He can’t possibly be watching me, because his room always has its dark curtains pulled down.
“I think we’ve established that I know a lot of shit about you.” He pushes off the tree, and my body instinctively tightens.
The way he stalks towards me is nothing short of a predator. Someone with the need to hurt and destroy. Someone who’s after me, not anything else, just me.
Still, I speak in the most neutral tone I can afford. “Why?”
“Why?” he repeats, lifting one of his brows.
“Why do you know a lot of shit about me?”
“That’s the question of the century, isn’t it? Why?” He stops when his chest nearly brushes against mine.
This close, I can breathe the stench of vodka on him, strong and unyielding like everything else about him.
He’s drunk. No, he’s wasted. I’m surprised he was able to walk that small distance from the tree to here or even sound relatively normal.
Usually, if someone were to stare at me the way Xander is right now for more than five seconds, I would be compelled to run away. It’s sinister and filled with so much anger, it’s physically wounding. But I can’t run away from him. I did it before and it ruined us for fucking good.
“Why green?” he asks.
“Huh?”
“You heard me. Why is it fucking green?”
“My favourite colour?”
“I hate your favourite fucking colour. I hate you, Kimberly.”
Ouch.
I try to think that I already know that bit of information, that he’s always made his feelings crystal clear, but hearing him say the words is equal to inhaling black smoke straight to my suffocating lungs.
I couldn’t breathe if I wanted to.
“I hate your eyes and your fucking hair.” He clutches a strand and strokes it between his thumb and forefinger as if he’s memorising it – or thinking about burning it. I can never tell with him.
He’s that dark well that’s been abandoned for years. You never know if you’ll find a treasure or vengeful ghosts in it.
“Then stop touching me,” I breathe out. “Stop getting in my way, stop invading my life and knowing so much shit about me.”
Most of all, I need him to stop seeing me. Because if he keeps doing that while pushing me away and letting other beautiful girls into his bed, it’ll only make the fog worse.
Why can’t he leave me alone until we part ways at the end of the year?
Just why can’t he do that?
“I should.” He releases my hair with distaste. “But you keep being this sore thumb, making yourself noticeable all the fucking time. Don’t ask for my attention or I’ll suffocate you with it.”
“I n-never asked for your attention.”
“You want me to believe that?”
“I didn’t.” I push away from him. “Go away, Xander.”
I’ll talk to him when he’s sober. Better yet, I might not talk to him at all. It’s fruitless anyway. It’s not like he’d answer any of my questions like a normal human being.
He’ll just torment me some more, push me around some more, and then I’ll retaliate and it’ll turn ugly.
No, thanks.
He grabs me by my wrist – the scarred one – and forces me back against him. My breathing hitches as he dangles a pack of M&M’s in front of my face. It’s open and all the ones inside it are green.
“Why do you have green M&M’s?” I ask in a small voice.
“I found them.”
“You found them? You expect me to fall for that?”
“Yeah, and I want you to eat them.”
“I won’t.”
“Do it or I’ll turn Kirian against you. He already doesn’t trust you after he witnessed your suicide attempt.”
My lips part as I stare at him. “D-don’t.”
“Then eat them.” He shoves the M&M’s into my palm. “And don’t vomit them or I’ll shove another pack down your throat. I can do that all night.”
“But Mum –” I cut off before I blabber everything. I can’t tell him about my deal with her. My wanting to say something is a nasty habit from when we were children, where I ran to him and poured my heart out, then slept all wrapped around him.
Xander used to pat me to sleep, but now, he would just push me into a bottomless hole.
He’s not my friend anymore; he’s my enemy. I can’t let my stupid memories get the better of me.
“I don’t fucking care about Jeanine.” His gaze hardens. “Do it.”
Sometimes, I swear he loathes my mother, but he has no reason to, aside from what I used to tell him. Did I paint her like an actual monster back then?
“Xander…”
“Shut the fuck up. I told you not to say my name.” He releases my hand and motions at the pack. “Eat it.”
Keeping much-needed distance between us, I open the pack with trembling fingers. The smell of the peanut and chocolate gets me right in the nose. Considering I only had an apple today, my stomach growls with the need for a taste.
I stare up at Xander with one final plea not to have me do this. I’ll have to run or do exercises for an hour to erase the calories and I hate physical activities from the bottom of my heart.
“Hurry,” he orders.
“Damn you,” I curse him under my breath as I throw the first M&M in my mouth. My heart skips a beat at the taste, sweet with that rich chocolate flavour. It’s been so long, a year to be exact, since I last had M&M’s. Even more since I last enjoyed them.
I had them that day I lost him once and for all and since then, I haven’t been able to properly taste M&M’s or pistachio gelato.
The first piece is the hardest, the second tentative, but by the third, I’m popping them as if I’ve been dying and it’s my cure to live. I want to savour it more, to commit the taste to memory, but I’ve been starved of this joy for way too long.
No idea if it’s because a long time has passed since my last M&M or the fact that I feel Xander watching me like a hawk as I devour the entire pack.
I don’t dare look up at him and meet those eyes, or else I’d offer and share. I’d stop and ask all the questions burning inside me.
The pack is empty too soon, and the moment the last bit disappears down my throat, I feel the need to throw up.
Shit.
I ate all those calories. I need to get them out and –
“Don’t even think about it.”
I lift my head to find Xander staring down at me with his lids half-closed, although the rest of his face is stone cold.
Only Xander wouldn’t loosen up when he’s drunk.
“How do you know what I’m thinking about?” I ask.
“I just do. It’s a curse.” He reaches his thumb to my lower lip and wipes some chocolate off. “You want to throw it back up, but don’t. Rein it in. I’ll stay with you until the urge goes.”
My chin trembles, but I clench my mouth, not wanting to feel the softness of his touch or the dooming weight of his words.
I’ll stay with you until the urge goes.
How can he say things like that so easily? How can he reach inside me and effortlessly wrench these feelings out?
He places his thumb with the bit of chocolate between my pursed lips. “Finish it.”
I shake my head, but that only makes him push his thumb harsher until it connects with my teeth. “We can do it the easy way or the hard way.”
Or I can just bite you.
I’m about to do that when he smirks as if he’s been reading my thoughts all along. “For the record, biting me is the hard, not the easy one.”
I dart out my tongue and lick the chocolate off his thumb. It’s quick and I finish soon after I start.
My tongue itches for more. I’m like a newbie getting her first hit of drugs, her first high, and needing so much more of that madness.
Xander doesn’t remove his finger, even after I’m done. He stares at me with a weird type of intensity.
He always has this frown whenever he looks at me, a fucked up type of interest, which I’ve always known is because he hates me.
But right now, it’s not hate that’s staring back at me. It’s anger, raw and unhinged. A shudder goes through me, even though he hasn’t directed it at me yet.
His thumb leaves my lips and I exhale, thinking it’s finally over.
“The right green eyes,” he slurs.
“W-what?”
My breathing cuts off when he cradles my cheeks with both his hands and brushes his lips against mine. Once. Twice.
It’s soft, so soft, I think I’m going to die from the feeling of it. I never thought Xander’s lips would be this soft. Not once have I imagined our first kiss would be this gentle, heartbreaking even.
First kiss, if we don’t count the smooches we had as kids.
He groans deep in his throat as he possesses my lips and turns me around, slamming me against something hard, a tree.
Tingles erupt down my spine as I open my mouth with a moan. Xander loses all softness then. His tongue finds mine and he kisses me with a ferocity that leaves me soundless, breathless, and boneless.
I wrap my hands around his nape, letting them get lost in his thick hair as he grabs my face tighter, kissing me harder and faster, like it’s the first and the last time, like he has to run right after this.
From the outside looking in, it must seem like he’s sucking my soul out of my mouth, and that’s probably what he’s doing.
Never in my wildest dreams did I think he’d kiss me, or that he’d be this passionate about it, as if I was the only kiss that matters in his life and –
As fast as he starts, he wrenches away from me with a deep, pained growl.
My back is still against the tree, my legs shaking, and I couldn’t move if I wanted to.
He glares down at me like I’m his worst enemy before he runs a hand through his hair. “Fuck!”
He kicks a pebble, facing away from me as if my mere view repulses him. “Fucking fuck.”
“What the hell?” I murmur out loud, although I mean to say it internally.
He’s at my face again, his eyes glimmering with deep-seated rage, and this time, he looks about ready to unleash it on me. “Don’t you ever, and I mean ever tempt me again.”
“What?”
“Get the fuck out of my sight. Your face disgusts me.”
A sob catches in my throat as his same words from that day years ago cut me open all over again.
He started to mend those wounds only so he could rip them open.
I hate him.
I hate him.
I hate him so fucking much.
“Now!” he growls and I don’t have to be told twice as I turn on my heels and run out of the garden.
My lips are swollen, heart slaughtered, and head swimming with that memory from seven years ago.
