And my ballerina heart spins in my chest.
“Your heart,” he murmurs as if he knows, and my eyes go wide. “The one that you gave me so stupidly and the one that I broke. Because I didn’t want it. Is it starting to beat faster now?”
“What?”
“Yeah, now that you know it wasn’t me. That it wasn’t me who got you arrested for stealing my car. Is it starting to race and pound and spin? Is your heart coming back to life now, Fae? For me. For the guy who broke it in the first place. Are you going to tell your friends about me now? About how I saved you and got you free.”
My own eyes narrow at him. “You’re such an ass—”
“Yeah, you’ve said that before,” he cuts me off, giving my backpack, giving me, a vicious shake. “A million times. I suggest you remember that. I suggest you remember who you’re talking to. Who I am. What I did and what I’m capable of. It’s none of your business what I did to save you. Because I didn’t save you, did I? You’re still trapped. You’re still caught in a cage from which you have to sneak out to go dancing with your friends. You have to jump over that fence to chase your ballerina dreams.
“So let me explain to you in a way that your brain full of pink glitter and love stories will understand. When you go back to your dorm tonight, I want you to tell your friends a little story. I want you to tell them that when you were almost sixteen, you met a villain in the woods. He forced you to dance for him. He made you do things. He made you sneak out and lie to your brothers. He made you break all your good girl rules and turned you into a bad girl. And despite all that, you fell in love with him. Despite all the fucking warnings and all the cautionary tales, you fell in love with him. You gave him your heart and he broke it. He broke it into a million little pieces and you got so upset that you stole his car. You got arrested for him. For his love. You should tell them that. You should tell them that this car, his Mustang that you drove into the lake, he rebuilt it. He put all the pieces of it back together to remind himself that while he can fix his car, he can’t do the same with your heart. He can’t mend your broken heart. Because that’s not his forte. He doesn’t really care about hearts and love. So if you ever make the mistake of falling for him again, he’ll take those broken pieces and fucking smash them. And he’ll keep doing that until there’s nothing left in your chest. Do you understand that?”
My lips are parted. “I —”
“Do you understand that, Fae?”
I wince. “Yes.”
He studies my face in darkness, my trembling lips, my wide eyes, my up-tilted neck. “Good. I’m glad. Now I want you to stop running from me. You want to throw tantrums, be mad at me, hit me, dump your drinks on my fucking lap, you can. But when I say I’m going to give you a ride, your answer is going to be yes. Because it’s about your fucking safety, all right? And you’re going to wait for me, here, next week at midnight. If you don’t, I will come after you. And you’re going to let me help you. Because I broke your heart, yes. But I’m going to make sure that nothing happens to your dream.”
I was five when I found out that my father was a villain.
Because he’d made my mother cry.
I saw them through the crack in their bedroom door. My dad was talking to my mom in a low voice. He was saying something to her that I couldn’t hear but I could see the effect of it on her face. I could see that with every word he said, her features crumpled up.
It was a sight that scared me.
I don’t remember ever seeing my mother like that.
And so when my dad left the room after a while, I ran to be with her. She was sitting on the bed, her shoulders hunched and her head bowed. I tried consoling her, asking her what was wrong, but she never told me.
All she said was that everything was fine.
I was five; of course I believed her.
But my mother was lying that day.
Because over the years, I watched. I watched it all with my own eyes, how my father broke her heart over and over. How he cheated on her, neglected her until he needed something from her. How his attentions were short and wandering.
So much so that one night I saw him fucking the nanny.
In his office chair no less, the one that he had custom made. And he was doing that when she was supposed to be taking care of my sister.
Back when Pest was little, there was a time when she used to have nightmares. Since her room was right across from mine, I’d always wake up when she did and I’d try to put her to sleep. It had gotten so bad that we had to see the doctors. And so Mom had specifically hired a nanny to take care of Pest at night.
But when I woke up that night, I went to her room and found the nanny gone.
I shushed my sister and put her back to sleep before I went in search of her.
The fucking nanny.
I was only eight but I was raging. I was furious that she wasn’t there to take care of my sister. And then, I heard noises coming out of my dad’s study and there she was. The nanny.
Instead of taking care of my sister, she was taking care of my father. I had her fired the following day; I planted Mom’s jewelry in her room and made it look like she’d stolen it.
But that’s not the point.
The point is that my father is a douchebag and by the time I was eight, I’d decided something.
I decided that I hated him.
That I loathed him for making my mother miserable. I loathed him for never giving any attention to my sister. And I loathed him because even then he thought he could control me.
So when I was eight, I decided to do everything in my power not to. Not to be controlled by him. Or not to be his devoted little son.
If he wanted to show me off to his business partners when I was a kid, the future CEO of the company, or show me the ropes of how it’s all done, I made sure to make myself scarce. I made sure to stay busy, stay lost in the town, stay drunk at the party he’d thrown where he wanted to show me off.
If he hated that I was wasting my time on soccer and that my coaches thought that I had some real talent, I made sure to play harder. I made sure to run away to that soccer summer camp he hadn’t wanted me to go to. If he asked me to quit the team, I decided to get a fucking scholarship.
I decided to go pro, get a million-dollar contract and throw it in his face.
Not that I could do it now because you know, I don’t play anymore, but it was a nice little wish to have, that kept me going while I was growing up.
So my father and I, we’re at war.
We’ve been at war ever since I was a kid.
Every war has collateral damage, doesn’t it, though?
The collateral damage of ours is her.
The girl I saw spinning on the playground when I was nine. The little blonde ballerina. The one who dances like a fairy and who stole my car when I broke her heart to hurt me.
She didn’t know what she was getting herself into. At the time I didn’t know either. I was high on my win, on the fact that I’d done the exact opposite of what my father wanted, of what my father had asked the previous night.
Yeah, I broke her innocent little heart in the process. But what do you expect of a villain anyway?
Not to mention, I defied him in style.
I won.
But somehow my father got wind of it, that a girl had stolen my car. Or maybe he was keeping better tabs on me than I’d arrogantly expected. And since he’d had it with me and my tantrums, he took advantage of the situation.
He used her to get what he wanted.
We Jackson men are real bastards, aren’t we?
I used her to win at soccer so I could piss off my father and he used her to get to me.
“Nice song.”
My thoughts break at the rough, gravelly voice and I pull myself from under the ’68 Chevy that I’m working on. It’s a sweet ride, or at least has the potential to be.
Right now it’s a dump though.
Salvaged from a yard, it’s all rusted and banged up. Needs a new engine, new tires, new paint job. It’s got alignment issues when you drive and the sound of it starting is like an animal being tortured.
But I’ve got plans for it.
Especially for that engine. I’m going to build it from scratch, rebore the cylinders, put in new pistons. It’s going to be fucking sexy when it’s done and it’s going to purr like a kitten.
And Pete knows that. The guy who just interrupted me.
That’s why he gave me the job even though I don’t work with him anymore. He knows I can make it run and look like a million bucks.
I press a few buttons on my phone and lower the volume of the song I’ve been playing. “Hey, what time is it?”
“Time for you to go home.”
I chuckle and get up and put away the wrench as I shoot back, “Which means it’s past your bedtime, isn’t it, old man?”
Pete is old, yeah.
He’s probably north of sixty and you can see every inch of that age on his ruddy face and his white beard. Pair that with a beer belly and the red and white checkered shirt that he’s wearing right now, Pete is a regular Santa Claus.
I met him when I was thirteen.
Back then I only knew him as the guy who was giving my dad trouble.
Since my dad has a habit of wanting things and acquiring things, Pete’s garage called Auto Alpha in Wuthering Garden, one of the towns that neighbors Bardstown, was in his sights. Pete was and is known, among other things, for restoring vintage cars and selling them for a fuck-ton of money.
My dad offered Pete a lot of sweet deals to give it up to Jackson Builders. My dad was going to turn it into a car showroom or something. Despite my dad’s intimidation tactics, a lot of them illegal, Pete never budged and my dad had to back off.
I guess Pete was the only man I ever saw who stood up to my dad.
Pete laughs at my comeback and offers me a beer. “So this song. Is it about her?”
Leaning against the Chevy, I was about to take a sip of the beer but I stop. “What?”
Pete has no problem sipping his beer though. He has no problem smirking either. “You’ve had it on repeat since you showed up at the shop.”
I showed up at the shop only an hour ago so I don’t know what he’s bitching about.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight.
Especially because of where I’m coming from. Dropping her off at St. Mary’s after her midnight practice.
“And?”
He shrugs. “It’s got a ballerina in it. She’s a ballerina. I put two and two together.”
It’s the song that I made her dance to, that first time. And yes, it has a ballerina in it.
But so what?
It doesn’t mean anything.
I stare at him a beat before going ahead and taking a long gulp of the beer. “Your beer’s shitty.”
He laughs again, this time harder than before. “And you’re an asshole.”
Back when I came to see him for the first time, we struck up a weird friendship.
He was a lonely old man whose wife had just died and I was a punk kid who came to look at the guy who stood up to my father. I respected his rebellion.
Plus something about his garage, located off an isolated turn in the highway, surrounded by woods and cliffs, seemed like an awesome place to hang out. An awesome place to get away from my own house, my father, the town where he owned everything.
So I’d come here every chance I got.
Pete taught me everything I know about cars. He let me build my own car even.
Actually, I didn’t know it was going to be mine at the time.
It was the first car I worked on, my Mustang, and when it was done, Pete just gave it to me.
I refused; I told him that I could get a hundred cars like that. I could pay, could buy it from him; on top of my father’s wealth, my mother’s father had me and Pest set up with a trust fund that my own father can’t touch so money has never been a problem for the Jackson kids. I was only building the car because it was another way to piss off my father. Well, secretly.
For some reason, I never wanted to throw this in his face. I threw soccer in his face plenty but I couldn’t do it with my time with Pete. Maybe because I’d never met anyone like Pete, strong, proud, decent, and I’d never enjoyed anything — not even soccer — as much as I enjoyed working on cars.
Anyway, Pete told me to shut the fuck up, keep my trust fund money, take the car and start working on earning my own money for a change.
So I did.
I worked here all through high school. I earned my own money, which I started to spend instead of spending my dad’s money; another way to defy him. And slowly, this garage, Pete, working on cars, building them, became soothing to me. Relaxing. Since my mornings were busy with school, soccer, fucking around with friends, I’d come here at night.
I’ve never been much of a sleeper anyway and working here took away my stress.
“What are you doing up so late?” I ask him.
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“Going through the photo albums again?”
“Yeah.” He throws me a small but fond smile. “She was fucking beautiful.”
I chuckle; I can’t help it.
Pete is a lovestruck fool and he’s completely gone for his wife, Mimi. She died of a heart attack years ago and now he’s left behind, looking at her photos every night, missing her, telling everyone tales of their love story.
I don’t believe in love or whatever.
But I guess if I had to, I’d say that Pete’s probably got it.
“So are you going to tell me or not?” he asks.
Damn it.
“Tell you what?”
“You’ve been down here a few times now. More than a few times. And you’re here tonight. Should I regret giving you the keys?”
“Maybe I’m here because I’ve moved back now.”
When I lived in New York, I’d usually see Pete once or twice a month.
I’d drive down to Wuthering Garden from New York City and try to spend a weekend or something, working in his shop and generally helping him. He’s allergic to computers so I’d help him with his accounts and stuff.
But over the past few days, ever since I moved back, I’ve been here thrice.
He raises his eyebrows, not believing me. “Is that really why you’re here? Because you’ve moved back.”
Something angry moves in my chest and I clutch the bottle tightly. “They kicked her out.”
“Who?”
“Her ballet studio,” I reply, taking a long, angry gulp of the beer. “Blue fucking Madonna.”
You know what, I was right. This beer is shitty.
It’s doing nothing to calm me, relax my suddenly tightened muscles.
“What the fuck? Why?”
“Because of what she did.”
What she did.
That’s the whole problem, isn’t it?
She stole my car and now she’s paying for it. She’s paying for it even when it wasn’t her fault.
That angry thing inside my chest hisses.
Pete watches me for a few beats. “Are you going to do something about it?”
He knows all about that night.
I’m not the sharing type, but if I was going to share what happened that night with anyone, it was going to be Pete. Maybe because he knows about my dad. He knows what a piece of shit he is, and so when my father pressed those charges against her to manipulate me, I told Pete.
“I already did. If they want to stay open in Bardstown, in my town, they better make it up to her.” I take another gulp and can’t help but add, “She sneaks out every week. To go practice. She takes that shitty bus. All alone.”
“Well, I don’t think you’ve got a say in that.”
I frown. “I know. So I’ve been told.”
Why does ev
eryone keep telling me that? That I don’t have a say in what she does or doesn’t do.
I know already, all right?
I fucking know and it fucking bugs me.
It makes me furious that I can’t do anything about this whole situation. It makes me furious that she was going to end up at juvie. And so I gave my father everything he wanted in exchange for him reducing those charges. And even with reduced charges, she ended up caged.
It makes me fucking furious that my father probably doesn’t even remember her name, the girl whose life he played with in order to get to me.
I thought at least at St. Mary’s, she wouldn’t be shut up in a detention center, among criminals.
She would have friends. She could see her brothers.
Yes, she wouldn’t be able to dance like she did before. But Tempest assured me — this I had to ask her — that she was still dancing. She still had plans of going to Juilliard when she graduates.
But for that fucking ballet studio to kick her out like that, for them to reject her as if she wasn’t the best student they ever had, the best fucking ballerina to ever come out of that shithole.
It makes me want to tear that place apart.
It makes me want to burn it down.
“She’s going there to teach herself,” I continue, my chest tight. “She’s doing it all alone.”
“And are you going to do something about that?” Pete asks.
“Yeah,” I say fiercely.
I’m going to help her make that audition video. I’m going to help her get into Juilliard because she belongs there. Because I’m not going to let anything else be taken from her because of what happened two years ago.
Before I remember what she did last week at that cupcake shop and again tonight, when she made me chase her down. I can’t help but chuckle slightly.
My fierce Fae.
I like that.
I like that she’s trying to stick it to me. That she’s trying to put me in my place. Like she did when she stole my car.
Not gonna lie though, I didn’t expect her to do that. Not my good girl Fae. But again I liked it.
A Gorgeous Villain Page 24