Until his screams to the sound of my name became a distant echo.
After a while and loads of welcomed silence, Reyes caught the chatter bug again. “So what would you prefer people call you if not your name?”
I sighed, annoyed that we were still on this. “Any nickname will do. Literally anything.”
“What about Scar?” he suggested.
The one word syllable grated across my bones, winding around with teeth and scraping down the length of my body in a shiver. No one got to call me that name ever fucking again.
“Pass.”
“Why?”
A grumble fought itself down in my throat while the fire sparked with life in my fingertips. I rolled my fingers into my palm, holding them tight. “Lots of reasons. Mainly it’s the name of the villain from The Lion King, and that’s a hard pass. He’s not even the best Disney villain.”
Reyes shoved a hand back through his jet black hair, ruffling up what the wind hadn’t. “I’ve never seen it.”
At that, I nearly stopped walking.
“First Liar Liar and now this? Have you seen any movies?”
He shrugged. “Movies are a waste of time.”
Wasn’t everything a waste of time in the long trek to an inevitable death?
I felt the question to ask him why he thought the way he did sitting on my tongue. At the same time, my curiosity couldn’t outweigh the fact that his answer wouldn’t matter. Once I slipped away, everything I knew about Agent Reyes—from hiscontrol issues, to his lack of interest in movies, to his affinity for mystery novels like the one I caught him reading last night—would die with my brain cells as they fizzled out of existence.
So I dropped my question and exchanged it out for something simple and shallow.
“The best Disney villain is Hades, by the way. In case you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t.”
“He’s sardonic as fuck and I love it. Plus, I love everything about Hades and Persephone, so I might be biased.”
He arched one of his dark eyebrows behind his sunglasses. “You like Greek mythology?”
I nodded, taking in a lungful of fading summer air.
“I like stories about lives that are more fucked up than mine.”
“Is that why you like a story where an old, twisted pervert kidnaps and rapes the Goddess of Spring?” He tilted his sunglasses to the tip of his nose, giving me a pointed look that boiled defense in my blood.
“That’s not at all what happens.”
His mouth parted in an ‘ah’, and he jabbed his sunglasses back in place. “You're one of those who believe it's a forbidden love story, aren’t you?”
“I am.”
Agent Reyes' mouth twisted to the side. “Never would have taken you for a romantic.”
“Careful, Agent.” I paused, garnering his dark-eyed focus. “You’re dangerously close to almost learning more about me again.”
His focus stayed tight on my face, nostrils flaring. Then, he walked smack dab into a low-hanging branch.
Shock popped my mouth open and my feet stuttered in place on the uneven ground. Agent Reyes snapped back, swatting at the branch and the wavy globs of moss that joined in on the assault and wrapped around his face.
Laughter bubbled up endlessly as he aggressively brushed his hands over his face and through his hair, trying to rid any last remnants of the clinging leaves and moss. He slapped his hands on his jeans, wiping them off with a grimace pulled down his face.