Oh God.
He’s looking at my nipples.
Mr. Edwards is looking at my nipples.
“Have you, Violet?” he repeats the question hoarsely, lifting his eyes.
“I-I don’t understand the question,” I say weakly, in the face of the fact that his hot stare is making me want to clench my thighs. Curl my toes and bite my lips and move my body in ways that are super inappropriate.
Super.
“I think I know the answer,” he tells me as he arranges his body in the same position as before, hand on the wall up above my head so he can loom.
“What’s the answer?”
“I think you do go around kissing whoever you want to. Isn’t that right?”
“What?”
He jerks his chin up. “Yeah, I think that’s right. I think that’s what you do. You get drunk and you throw yourself on men. Those teenage hormones, yeah? They make you, don’t they? Maybe you even let them go further.”
“Further?”
“Yeah, maybe you let them put their hands on your tiny, little body. Maybe they touch you in ways I wanted to touch that woman last night. Before you showed up and ruined it for me.”
“I –"
“Because it all starts with a kiss, doesn’t it? Because none of it means anything to you. It’s all one stupid drunken mistake that you won’t even remember the next day.”
He finishes his sentence with clenched teeth and I think he’s done.
It’s over.
But no, he has more to give me. He has more gasoline to pour over the fire his words have started in my veins so that it burns down my whole body.
“Were you going to remember it the next day? The kiss? Or were you just playing a game? It was all a game, wasn’t it? You did it all for shits and giggles. It could’ve been anyone. It could’ve been the whole neighborhood. For all I know, it was the whole neighborhood. Maybe you made rounds through every man in the area before you came to me. Isn’t that right? Because let’s face it, it was a mistake, wasn’t it?”
My chest is heaving. It’s shaking, almost vibrating with the violence in my breaths.
I’m angry.
God, I’m so, so angry.
But I can’t make myself move. I can’t make myself escape the flames that are licking my skin, tonguing my nipples, turning them into these hard little points, making them ache.
How dare he?
How dare he say that? How dare he?
How dare he stand there, all outraged and tightened up like a fist, glaring at me like he wants to kill me for kissing other men when I’ve never kissed anyone in my entire life?
But you know what, fuck him. I’m too far gone now. Too far gone in my anger.
I’m not gonna correct him.
If he wants to be an asshole, he can be one. But I’m not going down.
Challenge accepted, Mr. Edwards.
“Well, now you know. Now you know that this is what I do.”
As soon as the words are out of my mouth, all fight leaves me. All fire, all anger.
I know I shouldn’t have said it. He’s right to be angry and I should’ve taken it. I should’ve taken his wrath.
A second later, I hear a smack, a slap that he delivers to the wall, sharp and powerful that practically shakes the whole building.
“Don’t play games with me, you got that?” he growls. “If I tell you to do something, you do it. If I tell you to leave, you fucking leave. You walk away. You don’t mess with me. You never mess with me. I eat girls like you for breakfast. Do you understand? And you? I’ll eat you up so slow that you’ll feel every painful bite. I’ll make you feel every painful bite. Every sharp stab of my teeth. Every vicious pull of my mouth. And trust me, you’re not going to like it, not one bit. So smarten the fuck up and leave. This is the last time I’ll ask nicely.”
With that, he whirls around and marches out the door.
I’m at his place.
Or rather outside of his place, where his dead rose garden is, surrounded by thick woods on all sides and crunchy, leaf-filled, untamed ground, all against the backdrop of mountains.
Seriously, how does anyone live here?
It’s practically impossible to live in this falling-apart cabin in the middle of the woods where even the sun doesn’t shine.
But whatever.
I am here because he lives here.
I’m not sure if it’s the right move. In fact, I should’ve left the moment he marched out of the bar after saying all those wonderful things to me and I’m being totally sarcastic here.
But I didn’t leave.
I wrote a note to Billy, the amused man, and told him that I’d be staying up in his room for a few more days. And then I left him some cash – which my mom generously gave me before I left – telling him that if he needed more, he could just slide the bill in through the door.