Not only because my déjà vu isn’t going anywhere but also because the very thing that I was hoping to avoid is right in front of me now.
Him.
His face. His body.
And how it’s all changed.
How there are subtle and not-so-subtle differences.
How there are a couple of lines around his eyes that weren’t there before. A tiny mark slashing through his right eyebrow that makes me think that it’s a result of an injury, something he got in the last two years because that mark wasn’t there when I knew him.
A bump on his nose. No, wait, two bumps.
Maybe he broke it a couple of times.
Plus his cheekbones are even more pronounced now. They always made hollows slanting down to his scruffy jaw but now they’re deeper, his jaw is even more square. Like time has chiseled away at his features, his body, making everything even sleeker and sharper.
The biggest change, however, is in his hair.
Something that’s been really hard for me not to look at and ponder over.
Before, his hair used to be long and messy, falling over his forehead in disarray. A surfer’s hair, only dark. But now it’s short. Much shorter, cut so close to the scalp on the sides and thick and spiky up top.
It makes me realize how naive I was, how innocent to think that he looked like a criminal before.
He didn’t.
He looks like it now.
He looks dangerous now with his hair buzzed short, with his slightly crooked nose and hollow cheekbones. All hardened and rough.
Dipping his scruffy jaw, he rasps, “But I hope it was a gift.”
“What?”
“A little too,” he searches for a word, “classy and expensive for a servant girl such as yourself to afford.”
My heart clenches in pain.
It always comes down to this, doesn’t it?
That I have no money. That I’m poor. My family is poor.
I’m beneath him.
I’m beneath Lucas. I’m practically beneath everyone.
“I’m not your servant girl.”
“You wore it for him,” he says, ignoring me, “didn’t you?”
“Don’t talk about him,” I warn.
His eyes swipe across my features. “Because you came here for him.”
My heart skips a beat at his right conclusion. “I came here with my friends, okay?”
“I’d believe you, you know.” He dips down even further as his mouth pulls up on the side in his signature smirk. “If you didn’t reek of a little thing called desperation.”