God.
I feel… all charged up and bubbly and light. “Where was your truck? I mean, I’m not that blind. I would’ve seen the headlights.”
“Yeah, that’s debatable.” Then, “I left it in the woods. I wanted to see how far you’d walk before you smartened up and called a cab. But apparently, you were too stupid to do that. Apparently walking all alone, in the dark, was preferable to calling for help. I almost wish I’d left you sleeping in your car just to teach you a lesson.”
I shake my head at him, kind of amused and a whole lot of tingly. “You not only came back for me and found me a place to stay for the night, you walked all the way back into town, on foot too.”
My voice sounds more fluttery and full of air than I’d intended for it to be. And Mr. Edwards hears it, as well.
His brows snap together, and he bends lower for this. “Let’s get this really fucking straight – the only reason I did any of that was because you looked miserable when I kicked you out of my truck. So I took pity on you. It was an act of pity, understand? Call off the teenage hormones because you’re leaving now.”
He removes his hand from the wall and gets up to his full height, towering over me like a pillar, and folds his arms across his chest, completely expecting me to nod and walk away.
Teenage hormones.
Right.
Of course, I’m a teenager so I’m bursting with hormones and I don’t know what I’m doing.
He really knows how to piss me off, doesn’t he?
I wasn’t going to be, but now I am.
I glare up at him, fisting my hands. “No.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. First of all, I don’t need your pity. I don’t need any favors from you. And second of all, I’m not going anywhere. It’s a free country. I can stay here as long as I want. You can’t stop me.”
He goes all still and dangerous. As if I just challenged him, his inner beast. “Is that really something you want to say to me?”
Oh, man.
He doesn’t know what he’s done.
Challenge accepted.
“Yes. You can’t stop me. Boom. There. I said it. It’s out there now.” I make jazz hands and widen my eyes. “You wanna leave me on the side of the road, fine. Do it. I’ll walk back every time and I won’t call a cab just to spite you. That’s why I didn’t call it the first time. Because I knew you’d want me to give up. And you know what else? I’ll fall asleep in my car, every night. Again, just to spite you. I’m a teenager, right? Teenagers do crazy things. So yeah. I’m not one of your players and you can’t control me.”
I’m panting, watching him through this fog that seems to have settled over me, making me kind of numb and the world kind of blurry.
The only problem with the world being smudged is that now, he burns bright. Brighter than before. He appears sharper to me, clearer than ever, more in focus with his cold face and savage beard.
“Free country, huh?”
“Yup.”
“So you can do whatever you want.”
“Yes, I can.”
His smile is slow and lazy and one-sided, colder than ice.
I haven’t touched it, his smile, with my hands but my fingertips are going blue anyway.
His dark eyes drop to my mouth for a second. “So you do this a lot? Make a lot of drunken mistakes?”
I part my lips because holy shit, I can’t breathe. He’s staring at my lips.
Also, what?
“What?” I say it out loud.
He unfolds his arms and closes the distance between us again. This time there’s no dance, there’s no keeping rhythm with his feet. He comes at me in a flash.
“Drunken mistakes,” he says. “Like the one you made that night. Have you made them a lot? Since it’s a free country and all that. And you can do whatever the hell you want.”
I would’ve answered. I would’ve said something in response to his statement.
If he hadn’t dropped his gaze even lower.
If he hadn’t started staring at my chest.
Which in itself is so surreal that he’s doing that. That he finds something on my body interesting enough to do what he’s doing.
Staring. Very, very lazily. Like he has all the time in the world to look at it, to study it, memorize it.
And after a moment or two of his staring, I feel something on that exact spot where his eyes are.
I feel wet.
I whip my eyes down and realize that my wet-from-the-shower hair is draped over my shoulder and hangs over my right breast. The water from it has seeped into my t-shirt, making it damp and translucent. Making it so that the outline of my breast is visible along with my red bra, and my hard, puckered nipples.
Oh God.
He’s looking at my nipples.
Mr. Edwards is looking at my nipples.
“Have you, Violet?” he repeats the question hoarsely, lifting his eyes.
“I-I don’t understand the question,” I say weakly, in the face of the fact that his hot stare is making me want to clench my thighs. Curl my toes and bite my lips and move my body in ways that are super inappropriate.
Super.
“I think I know the answer,” he tells me as he arranges his body in the same position as before, hand on the wall up above my head so he can loom.
“What’s the answer?”
“I think you do go around kissing whoever you want to. Isn’t that right?”
“What?”
He jerks his chin up. “Yeah, I think that’s right. I think that’s what you do. You get drunk and you throw yourself on men. Those teenage hormones, yeah? They make you, don’t they? Maybe you even let them go further.”
“Further?”
“Yeah, maybe you let them put their hands on your tiny, little body. Maybe they touch you in ways I wanted to touch that woman last night. Before you showed up and ruined it for me.”
“I –"
“Because it all starts with a kiss, doesn’t it? Because none of it means anything to you. It’s all one stupid drunken mistake that you won’t even remember the next day.”
He finishes his sentence with clenched teeth and I think he’s done.
It’s over.
But no, he has more to give me. He has more gasoline to pour over the fire his words have started in my veins so that it burns down my whole body.
“Were you going to remember it the next day? The kiss? Or were you just playing a game? It was all a game, wasn’t it? You did it all for shits and giggles. It could’ve been anyone. It could’ve been the whole neighborhood. For all I know, it was the whole neighborhood. Maybe you made rounds through every man in the area before you came to me. Isn’t that right? Because let’s face it, it was a mistake, wasn’t it?”
My chest is heaving. It’s shaking, almost vibrating with the violence in my breaths.
I’m angry.
God, I’m so, so angry.
But I can’t make myself move. I can’t make myself escape the flames that are licking my skin, tonguing my nipples, turning them into these hard little points, making them ache.
How dare he?
How dare he say that? How dare he?
How dare he stand there, all outraged and tightened up like a fist, glaring at me like he wants to kill me for kissing other men when I’ve never kissed anyone in my entire life?
But you know what, fuck him. I’m too far gone now. Too far gone in my anger.
I’m not gonna correct him.
If he wants to be an asshole, he can be one. But I’m not going down.
Challenge accepted, Mr. Edwards.
“Well, now you know. Now you know that this is what I do.”
As soon as the words are out of my mouth, all fight leaves me. All fire, all anger.
I know I shouldn’t have said it. He’s right to be angry and I should’ve taken it. I should’ve taken his wrath.
A second later, I hear a smack, a slap that he delivers to the wall, sharp and powerful that practically shakes the whole building.
“Don’t play games with me, you got that?” he growls. “If I tell you to do something, you do it. If I tell you to leave, you fucking leave. You walk away. You don’t mess with me. You never mess with me. I eat girls like you for breakfast. Do you understand? And you? I’ll eat you up so slow that you’ll feel every painful bite. I’ll make you feel every painful bite. Every sharp stab of my teeth. Every vicious pull of my mouth. And trust me, you’re not going to like it, not one bit. So smarten the fuck up and leave. This is the last time I’ll ask nicely.”
With that, he whirls around and marches out the door.
I’m at his place.
Or rather outside of his place, where his dead rose garden is, surrounded by thick woods on all sides and crunchy, leaf-filled, untamed ground, all against the backdrop of mountains.
Seriously, how does anyone live here?
It’s practically impossible to live in this falling-apart cabin in the middle of the woods where even the sun doesn’t shine.
But whatever.
I am here because he lives here.
I’m not sure if it’s the right move. In fact, I should’ve left the moment he marched out of the bar after saying all those wonderful things to me and I’m being totally sarcastic here.
But I didn’t leave.
I wrote a note to Billy, the amused man, and told him that I’d be staying up in his room for a few more days. And then I left him some cash – which my mom generously gave me before I left – telling him that if he needed more, he could just slide the bill in through the door.
After that, I went up to the room and cried the day away.
Once I was done, I pulled out my phone and looked up gardening stores in the area and if they delivered. Turns out, there is a gardening store in Pike’s Peak that does deliver, and they had everything I needed. So I had them deliver some stuff to the bar, which I told Billy about with another note that I quickly left at the same place before the bar opened for the day.
A day later, here I am.
In his dead garden with all the supplies I need to grow him the roses. Once I’m done planting the new flowers for him, then I’ll leave.
I know, I know I said I wouldn’t be mad at him but screw him.
He’s not the boss of me.
If I want to learn how to grow roses on the internet, I’ll do it. If I want to use my newly-acquired knowledge and clear out the dead bushes, turn the freaking soil, dig a twelve-inch hole and add peat moss to it, I will fucking do that too.
I stab the shovel in the ground with a grunt. “Stupid, freaking jerk.”
Another stab. “Asshole.”
Stab number three and a kick, and I lower my voice and imitate his tone. “‘Were you going to remember it the next day? It was a game, wasn’t it? It could’ve been anyone.’ Yes. It could’ve been anyone, Mr. Edwards. It could’ve been the whole fucking neighborhood. What, you thought you were special? You’re not special. You were never special. Never.”
I kick at the ground again and the dirt goes flying. “Do you see how special you are, now? Do you?”
I raise the shovel high up and smash it back into the earth. “‘I eat girls like you for breakfast.’ Oh please. As if.”
“Are you trying to murder the ground?”
His groggy voice pierces through my anger and I whirl around.
I shouldn’t have.
Or maybe I should’ve taken a little time to control my raging emotions and then turned around and looked at him.
Because he’s not wearing a shirt.
Oh my God, he’s not wearing a shirt.
The only thing he has on is a pair of plaid pajama bottoms that look old and worn and so comfy. The hem of them is grazing his bare feet.
Such a non-threatening picture. Old pajamas, bare feet, sleepy voice.
Such a freaking lie.
“Only because I can’t get to my actual target right now,” I reply.
“And who’s your actual target?”
I flex my grip on the shovel. “People call him The Beast.”
“Yeah? Sounds dangerous.”
“He used to make students cry back at my school. Everyone hated him.”
“Everyone’s smart.”
“Oh, and he eats girls like me for breakfast.”
“You should probably stay away, then.”
“I should.” I raise the shovel and kind of wave it. “But I have this, remember? And I know how to use it.”
“Clearly.”
When all the words run out between us and silence descends, I can’t ignore the elephant in the space.
Or The Beast.
The Beast who’s not wearing a shirt.
I can see every ridge and groove of his upper body. The tight slabs of his pecs and rigid slopes of his sides.
Not to mention, I can see the hair on his chest, a light smattering at first, but then thickening and darkening as it goes down and becomes a furry trail around his belly button, that disappears under the waistband of his pajamas.
It kills me. It literally kills me how sexy it is, his chest hair. How appealing.
More appealing than the veins going up and down on his arms and that bulge in his bicep when he raises that arm and glugs something down from a bottle.
He does it all with his eyes on me and…
Hold on a second.
He’s drinking from a bottle? Again?
“Is that…” I squint. “Is that whiskey?”
“Scotch,” he corrects me, taking another sip of it, like that’s what’s important.
“But it’s like, first thing in the morning.”
“So?”
I stick the shovel into the ground and rest my elbow on it. “So, people drink coffee in the morning. Or juice.”
“I don’t like juice.”
“Well, there’s always coffee.”
“Don’t like coffee either.”
“That’s such a lie. You like coffee.”
“Really?”
“Uh-huh. You like it black.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “You also wake up really early in the morning.”
“Do I?”
“Yes. I used to live next door to you, remember? So I know. You used to wake up at four or something. It’s not four now.”
Nope, it’s not.
It’s like, after eleven, and I’ve never seen him sleep this late.
“So you do know how to tell the time. Your babysitter will be pleased.”
I scoff. “Of course. How did we go so long without you making a crack about my age? But I guess it helps you sleep at night. So sure, let’s call my imaginary babysitter and tell her the good news. But only after you tell me why you’re drinking when you’ve just woken up? Late, no less.”
Leaving the shovel in the ground, I fold my arms across my chest and wait for his answer.
“I like this now,” he says after a few seconds, and as if to emphasize it, he wraps his lips around the rim and chugs down another shot of it.
It’s fast and so sudden that even I feel the burn of whiskey going down. I can feel it settling in my stomach like it does in his and I don’t like it one bit.
I don’t like that he’s drinking like this.
“You want some?” he dares, tipping the bottle toward me.
“Absolutely not.”
“Afraid you might do something stupid?”
I grit my teeth. “No.”
“Come on. We both know how much you like it.”
I think I broke my jaw just a little, with how hard I’m grinding it. I might have even pierced the skin of my palms with my nails if I wasn’t wearing my newly-acquired work gloves.
“I don’t drink anymore,” I tell him.
At this, he laughs.
It’s a rusty sound. Gravelly and loud, coming from a place deep inside of him, it feels like.
“You don’t drink anymore,” he says in a voice laced with amusement.
“Nope.”
“Since when?”
“Since I kissed an asshole.”
It’s true.
I don’t touch liquor or any of the addictive substances. Well, except for this one time when I baked funny brownies for the girls just after we got out of Heartstone. But I only ate one and decided to never touch them again.
And Mr. Edwards believes that, I think.
He sees the truth of it on my face.
The face that’s exposed and unhindered by the cap and my Audrey Hepburn sunglasses. For some reason, I don’t need them when it’s just me and him.
“Well then, you’ll be disappointed because this is all I’ve got.”
Sighing, I step away from the shovel, which stays standing, buried in the soil that I haven’t finished prepping for the roses but I will, just not now.
Looking him in the eyes, I take off my gloves, pick up my fat hobo and begin to walk toward him.
I stop at the rickety stairs and tilt my neck up. “You do have water, don’t you?”
His answer is to keep staring at me with a dipped, neutral face.
His eyes are dark, but I can see little flecks of green shining through, as if light is breaking through thick clouds. As if there’s a softness in him and it’s seeping through the cracks of all that is hard in him.
“I’m thirsty,” I continue. “And I need to wash up.”
His eyelids drop low and take in my state.
I’m wearing a red t-shirt with a black rose printed on the chest along with jean shorts and red sneakers. My knees and calves are caked with mud. I somehow got a little bit of it on my clothes too.
He’s looking at all of that.
And I’m trying to stay calm and breathe normally. And not think about the glory that is his chest.
Man, I wanna touch it, like bury my fingers in that curling hair and…
“Yeah, you’re dirty,” he says in a tone as low and hooded as his eyes, breaking my quite frankly dirty thoughts.
But at the same time, I have to do something at his low words.
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