by Aria Cole
“Eighteen: the kitchen. Nineteen: the dining room. Twenty and twenty-one: the living room. Twenty-two: master suite.” I hummed the words as my eyes travelled the dark iron bars of the balconies that spanned the top floor of the building.
I hadn’t seen Deven at all in the few days since she’d stormed out of the coffee shop on me. I hadn’t meant to elicit that reaction, but I did love rattling the fuck out of her at every opportunity.
My eyes once again followed the line of windows on the top-floor apartment.
I wondered if she’d ever let another guy into her home like she had me.
I wondered if she had a thing for anti-establishment guys…like me.
“Where are you, Deven Fairchild?”
I hated that I kept finding myself here—with her or waiting for her. I’d grown accustomed to her schedule: a run first thing in the morning—rain or sun—a coffee from the bakery on the corner on the way home. It wasn’t that I was stalking her or anything. It was simpler than that. I just kept…gravitating here. I’d spent a lot of time in Central Park over the years. When the greatest park in the world was feet from your doorstep, you made use of it…so that’s what I was doing.
I groaned when I reached the corner of 5th Avenue, eyes on the Tiffany wall that now wore a fresh coat of white paint. I remembered the look on my mother’s face when Dad had presented her with a Tiffany blue box every year for her birthday and Christmas. My father grew to be such a loyal customer that the head jeweler often cleared his schedule to work the custom pieces as requested by my father.
In the later years, the gifts grew bigger, glitzier, more ostentatious, and my mother loved them. I should have known then he was up to no good, asking for silent forgiveness with every diamond-encrusted gift.
The doorman of Deven’s building opened the door on a cab then, and my girl stepped out.
My girl.
“She’s not your girl, idiot.” I verbally kicked myself for the mistake as I sprinted across the street, narrowly avoiding her cab speeding out of the valet entrance. He crushed on his horn and threw me the finger before skittering off the curb and onto the street.
I shook my head, straightening my black jacket and mouthing fucker at the driver.
“Hey, Jameson, are you okay?” I smelled the soft scent of her floral perfume before I laid eyes on her. Her tender words of concern wrapped around my barbed edges like a warm blanket.
“Fine,” I spat, turning to narrow my eyes at her. “Where were you?”
Her grin dropped on one side, and she moved her palm from my forearm as she turned, quilted designer backpack staring me in the face. “What’s it to you?”
“I didn’t come here to watch you walk away from me.” I caught her elbow, forcing her to stop her walking away and look at me.
I liked the rattled look on her face. A lot.
Her chin tipped up, her eyes narrowed. “Maybe you just came to watch me? I’ve seen you out there at the edge of the park.”
I shook my head, no excuse except the truth: “I wanted to see you. Come with me.”
She assessed me slowly, pressing her full lips together before she glanced up to the top of the building, to the sky, I wasn't sure, and then back to me. “Why?”
She waited, but I said nothing.
“Whatever this back-and-forth, love-hate game you’re playing is about, I’m not here for it. I don’t have time for it. I didn’t then, and I sure as hell don’t now.”
She nearly backed away, but I caught her wrist, pulling her back to me until our chests brushed. “This isn’t a game.”
“Then why does it feel like one?”
“Nothing with you has ever been a game.” I enunciated the last four words, my eyes holding hers as something intense burned up inside my chest. “That’s the part that fucks with my head the most—the fact that you’re so in my head all. The. Time.”
“That’s not my problem, Jameson.”
“Right now it is. Come with me.”
“My parents always told me to avoid the park after dark, like, no matter what.” She broke the silence. “Funny, being here now, with you of all people.”
I shrugged, thinking how funny it was, after everything.
“Is it crazy that I’ve been at that apartment for almost two years and…” Her voice trailed off, loneliness radiating through her words.
“It’s a big park. Don’t worry, princess. I know the place like the back of my hand.”
She was silent for a long time, her fingertips grazing my forearm flexing softly, every tremor like a lead weight connected directly to me. It’d torn me up when she’d stomped out of the coffee shop a few days ago. Maybe that’s why I was here, to make quiet amends and absolve myself of the guilt of hurting her.
I shoved my hand through my hair, annoyed that I’d even let her get to me this much. I wasn’t one to overthink my every word, but with her, I couldn’t stop.
“I tagged my first wall over there.” I nodded around the corner to a low brick wall painted a dark shade of gray. “The streetlamp over there is just out of view. It’s always shadowy—a pretty safe tag for a first-timer.”
Her grin deepened as we took a few steps down the path so she could get a close-up of the wall. “What was it?”
I tensed, remembering my first piece like a brand behind my eyelids. “For my dad, the night after I found out he’d killed himself. I walked the park for hours. I felt lost in the only place I knew as home. I had to…mark it somehow, leave an imprint of my pain.” I swallowed, the bright blue and purple slashes of color emblazoned like a tattoo. “There was this game he took me to when I was a kid, one of the first summers we spent in the city. Mets and Yankees. I sketched the mascots, adding the final stats of the game in roman numerals. It took me four hours to do it, especially trying to dodge any stray park people walking by. I hid in the bushes so many times that night.” I laughed, remembering the amateur move I’d made to tag a high-traffic area. “I remember every single detail of that game. The park service had it painted over by the next night.”
“Is it hard? Seeing it painted over so soon? Why not put your stuff in a gallery and sell it? Allow the highest number of people to see it?”
“It’s not about that. It’s about the right people seeing it.”
I shoved a hand into my pocket, fishing out one of the slim cans of black spray paint I almost always kept on me.
“Try it.”
She shook her head, soft waves flying around her face. “What would I do?”
“What do you have to say?”
She frowned, taking the can from my hands and approaching the wall on slow steps.
“I’ll keep an eye on your backside.” I grinned.
“Clever,” she threw over her shoulder before bending to the wall and giving me a real view of her round backside. My fingers twitched at my side, in the same way they did right before I started a new piece. I was dying to feel my hands on her warm skin right now.
I heard the soft whoosh of spraying paint in the air, the smell of it on my nostrils a moment later as she laid her first swipes of black on the gray brick. I waited patiently, watching the sidewalk both ways as she quickly moved the paint around the wall in elegant swipes, pausing to take in her finished work less than five minutes after she’d started.
“What is it?” I tipped my head to the side, squinting in the dim light to make out whatever the fuck it was I was seeing.
“You can’t tell?” she purred, one black-tipped pointer finger stroking a line that curved to the right. “It’s a nutcracker mouse in a tutu. I know it’s silly, but your memory was so sweet. The best memory I have of my dad is when I was eight and performed in my ballet performance of The Nutcracker. I had a solo that I worked on for weeks in his office every night after dinner. My dad was beaming after the first performance. He brought me three dozen roses. The bouquet was so big, it covered my head in the picture.” She gnashed on her bottom lip. “That’s one of my favorite nights.”
>
Silence settled around us, her eyes on the abstract mouse with tutu, my eyes on her, emotion sucking the air out of my lungs as much as the humid summer night.
My heart hammered as I watched her wiping at tears. My heart was crushed as I realized she was having a moment and I was so caught up in my own bullshit that I had no idea what to even say to ease hers.
“I…” I cleared my throat. “I just remembered…” I gnawed on my bottom lip, heartbeat pounding in my ears as my palms began to sting with a thousand needles. “I’ve gotta go.”
I caught the look of sad confusion on her face before I split down the path in the opposite direction. I felt her disappointed eyes following me like a cloud until I was obscured in shadow again. Right where I belonged.
I eased my steps, thoughts spinning away from me as I sucked in cool breaths of air, thankful to be anywhere out of her web of complicated emotions.
No one had ever been able to draw me in like Deven Fairchild—and she was a dangerous road I refused to go down again.
Chapter 10
Deven
“I swear if my dad were still alive, this wouldn’t be a problem. The freakin’ library is named after him.” I sucked in a silent breath as I tried to calm my nerves. Memories of the last time I’d seen Jameson were playing heavy on my mind.
I was due at class in an hour—the one that Jameson had magically found his way into weeks after the beginning of the semester. And right now, I was walking out of the registrar’s office after trying to drop that class, the fear of combusting after another minute with Jameson Styles all but oppressing me.
I couldn’t be expected to learn under these conditions.
“Wake up on the wrong side of the bed, Fairchild?” His voice startled me out of my head.
“Styles,” I grumped as I clutched my backpack to my chest and walked down the sidewalk. “You smell like paint. If you’re going to tag walls on the way to class, you may want to bring a change of clothes. Your dirty little secret be blown for sure.”
“I’m not worried.” He grinned, catching my arm and spinning me softly into a limestone wall in a small alleyway crowded between buildings that led to the central courtyard. “I’d like to tag this.”
His breath at my neck was beyond arousing. I cursed him inwardly for being so…alluring and me for finding myself pressed so close to my body’s worst enemy again.
“Excuse me?” I found my voice. “Tag what?”
“This wall. You know how hard it’d be for them to cover it? They can't paint it. It’s natural stone. They’d have to clean it. It’d take weeks and an entire crew.”
“There are so many cameras all over campus, you’d get kicked out the next day.”
He shrugged, leaning closer and stealing all the air from me. “Hard to get kicked out when I don’t belong here in the first place.”
“Of course you belong here. What’s that moody emo stuff supposed to mean?”
“Maybe I’m not really a student. I just slip into class to keep you on your toes, Fairchild. Wanted to see what kind of education you’re getting in this fine institution of higher learning, and it turns out I have a right to be concerned. This place just releases robots into the free market, little money makers that only push buttons and learn how to pass their wealth onto the next generation. You could learn way more spending a few nights with me than half a wasted decade in this place.” His lips dusted mine so briefly, I wasn’t even sure if he meant to do it, only this was Jameson… He never did anything he didn’t mean.
“Stop playing with me, Jameson. I’m a fucking person. With fucking feelings. I have never been anything but good to you. Even after you fucking shattered my heart into a million tiny pieces, walking away while I was crumpled up and broken on the fucking floor,” I sobbed, my words shaking from emotion.
He moved closer, eyes hanging low on mine as his lips edged mine, hovering just out of reach.
He pressed me into the jagged slabs of limestone at my back, his breath washing over my skin and sending tingles erupting in every sinful place I wished they wouldn’t.
“You're a good girl,” he whispered, a low lullaby caressing my ear. I missed how the low octave of his voice would make my skin tingle and the butterflies in my stomach flutter.
“What the fuck does that have to do anything? I loved you. I loved you more than anything, and you abandoned me for something that wasn’t my fault.” My words were angry, but my tone was soft. I was unable to completely let the rage I felt burst out of me. “I just want things to be clean. I want to be clean of all the insanity, all the pain and sorrow.”
His palm cupped my neck then, the pad of one finger dusting across my cheekbone in tender strokes.
He gazed into my eyes with such brooding intensity that he made me want to throw away my life just to run away and have his babies.
I hated him for that.
“Hang around me and get dirty.” His eyes flicked to my lips once before he pressed his lips to mine, his fingers weaving into my hair as his hips swayed against mine.
The cool limestone at my back did nothing to quell the inferno he created inside me.
He nipped around the edge of my lips, his tongue trailing the seam as small breaths gasped past my lips. His tongue traveled inside again, searching me out slower this time, his hands crawling my neck and sending razor-edged goose bumps around my skin.
“You make me crazy, Fairchild.” His chilly words against my hot lips made my heartbeat triple beat out of tune. “But against my better judgement, I can’t get enough of you.”
Chapter 11
Jameson
She tasted like my bitter past and my hopeful future. I couldn’t get enough of her lips or the way she felt wrapped in my arms. All those years hurled back at me, the memory of her actually a reality. Something I never thought that I would feel again. She pushed me back, holding me at arm’s length. Her eyes gazed back at me. Those eyes that had haunted my dreams for the past five years.
“I can’t keep playing this game with you,” she said.
“Who’s playing games?”
“Come on, Jameson. Everything with you is a game. I am just another way for you to give the elite the finger.”
“I want to give you the finger. Maybe two or three. How I remember it, you really liked feeling full. Airtight, as they say,” I spat. The anger raged out of me. I wanted to hurt her because I wanted her so fucking bad that I couldn’t think straight. Shock sprang into her eyes, and then she cast them down. Her hands dropped to her sides and balled into fists. I knew I’d hit a nerve. I knew I’d hurt her, and I felt like a fucking prick. I never wanted to hurt her. When I was with Deven, it was the only time the pain died and left me alone. She silenced all the anger and lulled the voices in my head. When I was with Deven, I was Jameson, just a guy with the girl he loved. Not an angry, bitter dick with a chip on his shoulder. But we had a history—a fucked-up, tangled history filled with pain and humiliation, and no matter how much I wanted that not to matter, somehow it always did. The past was a tornado, and no matter how hard or fast I ran from it, it managed to catch up and swallow me whole. But I was tired of running, I was tired of hurting, and just for one second, I wanted to forget it all.
“Why are you so cruel to me?” she whimpered.
“Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.”
“This isn’t kindness, Jameson. I love you. I’m always going to do whatever I can for you, and you know it. You have some sort of twisted hold on me.”
“I have a hold on you? You’ve got to be kidding me. You fucking moved on with your life and didn’t look back. Nothing changed for you, princess. Your were in your tower, high up in the city, untouchable, carefree. I was the one in Brooklyn trying to pick up the pieces. You lost your high school boyfriend. Some guy you were fucking. I lost my father, my home, the sanity of my mother, and had to deal with a fucking twelve-year-old who was spinning out of control. If you’d loved me, you would have tried harder,” I ye
lled. Angry that she dared say that she loved me. She didn’t even think twice when we ended things. She didn’t give a fuck about me, about us. She was just angry that her degenerate mother had a thing for any man that wasn’t her father.
“Are you kidding me? You know nothing about what I went through, Jameson. Nothing. I couldn't eat. I couldn’t sleep. I almost flunked out of school. My mother was a horror story. I had to fucking put the pieces together. Some days I wish she had run off with your father like she intended. Instead she decided to be a money-hungry bitch.” She spat the words quickly, and the tears started streaming down her face. I couldn’t help but smile, remembering how every time we fought and Deven would get riled up, she would start to cry. She never cried when she was sad, but when she was fire-spitting angry, she could cry so hard that she would start to hyperventilate.
“Why are you smiling? This isn’t funny.”
I took her hands in mine. She flinched but didn’t pull away.
“I just missed you.” And I did. I missed her. I missed every fucking thing about her, and I was tired of being a lonely, miserable son of a bitch. I knew that no matter what I wanted, I didn’t want to live my life without her anymore. “I want you, princess. I’m tired of denying it.”
“I am tired of the games. It’s over,” she said before walking away.
Chapter 12
Deven –Five Years Ago
I hadn’t heard from Jameson in five days…something that hadn’t happened since we started dating two years ago. We would text back and forth or chat on the phone daily. Not only had he not returned any of my messages, but he hadn’t even been in school. I even heard about his father through the newspaper. I wasn’t sure why he wasn’t telling me. I wanted to be there for him. I knew he must feel so horrible. I didn’t know what I could do, but I would be there, holding his hand, giving him whatever he needed.
“I’m leaving you, Phillis. I am leaving you and taking everything, You can fucking just get buried with that trash you decided to cheat on me with,” my father yelled so loudly that I could hear him down the hall. My father didn’t raise his voice. Not ever.