I’m very proud of myself.
Or I would be. If he’d listened to anything that I just said and obeyed.
As it is, he doesn’t.
He still advances on me.
In fact, he takes a very long and lunging step — at least, it looks like that to me — toward me, making me flinch. Especially when the blunt toes of his boots knock against my sneakers.
Then, dipping down, pinning his red-flecked gaze on me, he says, “First, with me is the only way you’ll leave. And youwillleave, I’ll make sure of that. Second, you’re not talking to Lucas when he’s like this, drunk and stoned out of his mind. When he doesn’t know up from down. Third, the way I see it, you’ve always been my servant girl and the sooner you accept that fact, the better, because then we won’t have to go through this whole thing where you pretend to have all the power and I have to remind you that you have less than none. And lastly, isn’t predator a synonym for criminal?”
My heart skips a beat then.
Followed by several other beats as he continues, “Not exactly but kinda though, yeah? It fits. Right there with a lawbreaker, a delinquent and a felon.” Then, dipping his chin further and lowering his voice even more, “A bandit who rides a horse and kidnaps girls in the middle of the night. Although I have to say that I like my girls bold. I like ’em feisty and wild. Girls who don’t run away from danger but toward it. So you with your bubblegum pink and good girl routine have got nothing to worry about. You bore me more than the books that you like to read and you’re stronger than the sleeping pills that I have to take to put myself to sleep these days. Chasing after you, let alone kidnapping you, is the last thing on my agenda tonight.”
I want to cover my ears again.
Reach into my brain and take out that piece containing all the memories.
Of him.
My ex-boyfriend’s asshole best friend.
But I can’t.
All I can do is stand here and look up into his eyes.
His flashing and glowing eyes.
Surrounded by the thickest eyelashes I’ve ever seen.
All I can do is breathe lungfuls of his scent, summery and sunshiny. Exactly like I remember.
And that’s the thing, isn’t it?
I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to remember anything from the past.
All I want to do is move on, move forward.
So I focus on that.
On Lucas.
“Why,” I breathe deep and close my eyes for a second, “is Lucas drunk and stoned out of his mind?”
His best friend’s answer is silence.
And a belligerent stare.
But I refuse to back down. “Why doesn’t he know up from down? What does that mean?” Again he gives me nothing, and despite my better judgement, I stretch my neck, my body even further and get up in his face. “Is that why he was kissing those girls and putting on that disgusting show? Tell me. Tell me what you meant. Why’s Lucas like that? What’s going on? What —”
“What’s going on,” he speaks in a biting tone, “is that that’s what Lucas does now.”
“What?”
“He drinks. He smokes. He pops pills and he fucks.” A pulse has started up on his cheek now. “Whoever he wants. Wherever he wants.”
“But that’s… That’s not how he is. That’s…”