“Is that so?”
“Yes.” I grit my teeth at his condescending tone, at the tone that has the power to make me feel all young and naïve. “Because it’s never happening. So say what you came here to say and leave.”
He looks at me thoughtfully. “Hmm. I’m not so sure you want me to leave though. Because this feels like a dare, and you know how much I like those.”
I know.
I do know.
He likes dares. He likes provocation. He likes to rile people up and ruffle their feathers like he used to do with Ledger on the field. When they played together back at Bardstown High. When they were rivals.
As I debate throwing this bottle at him, I say, “It’s not a dare, it’s reality. Touch me and lose your teeth. So you really need to leave now.”
Instead, he takes a step toward me and I press myself into the wall even more.
“You’re not making it easy though,” he drawls. “Leaving.”
“Get away from me or I’ll punch you, okay? I’m not kidding.”
Of course he thinks I’m kidding and does the opposite of what I’m asking him to do.
He takes another step toward me and I swear to God, it’s such a big step that he’s almost here. He’s almost where I am and I have to hold my breath because I don’t want to breathe the same air as him.
I don’t want to find out if his scent, his delicious scent, has remained the same after two years or not.
“If you keep talking like that,” he dips his face toward me, reminding me of how short I am compared to him, “I’ll start getting ideas.”
“What ideas?” I squeak, wondering how it is possible that I forgot the difference in our sizes.
When I lived for those differences back then.
I lived for how tall he was, how strong, how he could pick me up while I danced on my toes for him.
“That you’re flirting with me,” he says in a husky tone.
I ignore the pounding of my heart and the rush under my skin. “Oh my God, you are delusional.”
“You know you don’t have to try so hard with me,” he goes on like I haven’t spoken. “You want me to touch you, Fae, just say the word.”
Fae.
I breathe out.
I blink.
I didn’t want him to say that. Because I didn’t want to find out.
I didn’t want to find out if it sounds the same.
My name. The name that he gave me two years ago.
It does.
It sounds exactly like it did two years ago.
Intense and intimate. Like it belongs to me. Like I was made to be called that.
Blonde and tiny with the limbs of a dancer, his dancer.
His fairy.
But I was never his and that is not my name.
“Hey, Reed.” I stare into his wolf eyes and throw him a false smile. “I know it’s been two years and all, but my name is Calliope Thorne. People also call me Callie. And if I’m being honest, I’d rather you not call me anything at all. But asshole’s choice, of course.”
Those eyes of his become intense as he murmurs, “Calliope Juliet Thorne. I know what your name is, Fae. I also know what my name is. Do you?”
Yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
I do.
I do know his name.
I know his name like I know how to breathe.
Like I know how to cry in my pillow at night, biting down on it so I don’t make a noise.
I know his name like I know how to hurt when I see someone wearing a white hoodie on the street. When I see a girl so in love with a guy that she only has eyes for him and no one else.
I know his name, yes.
Reed Roman Jackson.
My Roman.
Or so I thought.
“You said that our names made us Shakespearean, star-crossed lovers,” he says, bringing me back to the moment. “A teenage tragedy. And I told you that they didn’t. Because what did fucking Shakespeare know? To me, you’ll always be Fae. And to you, I’ll always be Roman.”
I did say those things to him. I did tell him about our names and I did warn him to stay away from me.
It was a warning for me too.
If only I had listened to it myself.
If only I’d stayed away.
“I remember,” I tell him, staring into the face of the villain I fell in love with. “I remember everything. I remember everything I said to you and everything you said to me. And that’s why I know that we are a teenage tragedy. Because you made sure of that, didn’t you? So get away from me because I wasn’t kidding about you losing your teeth. Reed.”
But again, instead of moving away he gets even closer, and I find out the answer to another question that I didn’t want to know.
His scent.
It’s still the same.
He still smells of wildflowers and woods. He still smells of open roads and freedom.
The freedom that I don’t have anymore.
The freedom I lost the night I stole his Mustang and tried to destroy it.
The Mustang that he built himself.
He did, yes.
I didn’t know that, see.
I had no idea that the thing I was destroying, the thing that he loved the most in the world, was also a thing that he had made himself.
Reed Roman Jackson, the richest boy at Bardstown High, in Bardstown, had built his Mustang with his own two hands.
I found that out later.
Much, much later.
After all the damage was done.
I don’t even blame him for calling the cops on me. I never blamed him for calling them.
I’ve only ever blamed him for breaking my heart.
I only blame him now, for smelling the same even after two years.
And while I’m so busy smelling him and remembering the past, he’s doing something else. I don’t realize that the reason he’s so close to me is because he’s stealing from me.
My whiskey bottle.
It is only after he’s straightened up and moved back that I realize that my hand is empty and his is not.
That… asshole.
“Give it back,” I order.
Staring at me, he puts the bottle to his mouth and takes a long gulp. As if to taunt me.
When he’s done drinking my whiskey, his red lips glisten and his face sparkles like the moon that hangs low in the sky. “See you around, Fae.”
And just like that he turns around and leaves.
I should be relieved.
I should be, I know.
This is what I wanted. I wanted him to leave me alone.
But I don’t feel relief. Not at all.
I feel anger.
I feel so much fury right now. So much heat in my body that I can’t contain it.
I can’t contain this massive outrage, this massive wrath at what he said just now, the words that he used.
See you around, Fae.
The same words he said to me the night he smashed my heart to pieces. When he turned around and never looked back as I stood there, crying.