I swallow, afraid and trapped and God, thrilled. Thrilled to be so close to him. Something I don’t want to be.
“Let me go,” I tell him sternly.
“No,” he says in a rough, edgy tone. “Not yet. Not until you tell me. Tell me if it’s happening again.”
“What’s happening again?”
He runs those angry, somehow both heated and chilled eyes over my upturned face. He pauses at my lips. He studies the color of Train Wreck Princess, the lipstick I chose for tonight.
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.