I also have to admit that when I decided to never seek out any information about him, cut all the ties, I was sad that I’d never see him play.
I was sad that I’d never get to witness his breathtaking footwork, his majestic skills on the field.
I was sad.
I am sad tonight too.
Sad and miserable and so melancholic. So blue and gray.
As gray as the smoke coming out of his mouth. Because he’s got a cigarette clenched between his teeth.
He hardly ever smokes, this villain. The one who blackmails and locks me up in closets and chases after me when I run. But if he’s smoking tonight, then that means he’s cold.
Even though the October weather isn’t all that chilly. Not yet.
But I know him.
I know that he gets cold easily. That’s why I made him that sweater. The night before everything happened.
The night he kissed me.
I wonder what he did with it. I wonder if he threw it away.
I don’t have the courage to ask him though.
Besides, I’m going to need my courage for other things tonight.
So I walk toward him, coming out of my hiding place. My feet crunch on the leaves and the gravel, alerting him to my presence, and he looks up.
His gaze homing in on me as always.
His gaze roving all over me as always.
Like he has every right to do that. He has every right to watch me, take me in, take me apart, turn me inside out and cast me aside when he’s done. And tonight, his wolf eyes are even hungrier.
Because I’m wearing his favorite color.
White.
An ivory dress with a lacy overlay and a zipper in the back. My flats are white too. With my blonde hair in a braid snaking down one side of my shoulder, I’m dressed up as his favorite meal.
All dewy-eyed and daisy fresh.
And when he pulls the cigarette out of his mouth to lick his lower lip, I feel like one too.
A meal.
“You’re wearing white,” he murmurs, and I fist my hands at my side.
“I am.”
His forest-thick eyelashes flutter as he takes me in again. “Why?”
“Because I felt like it.”
And because it’s your favorite color…
I haven’t worn white ever since I saw him at the bar. I’ve actually been going out of my way not to wear it. To wear something completely opposite of white every Thursday, black, blue, orange, anything other than white.
Just because it’s his favorite color and because I didn’t want to dress myself up in something he likes.
Not tonight though.
Tonight things are different.
The air is different too. The moon, the sky, these woods, everything.
“It suits you,” he says, looking me over a third time. “Innocence.”
I look at his jacket again and the cigarette clutched between his fingers. “And villainy suits you.”
His lips tip up in a smirk and he takes another drag before letting it out. “Is that why you’re standing all the way over there? Because I’m a cigarette-smoking villain and you’re afraid to get closer?”
“I’m not afraid of you,” I reply from where I stand by the tree, and his wolf eyes glow. His vampire skin sparkles as if in challenge. As if he can make me afraid if he wants to.
But that’s the thing, I’ve never been afraid of him. And that turned out to be my doom in the end.
His doom too.
Isn’t it?
“Are you cold?” I ask him then. “Because you smoke when you’re cold.”
He continues to watch me for a couple of seconds before he flicks his cigarette away and crushes it under his boots like it’s a love-filled heart and he’s bored of it. “You know me, don’t you? Yes, I’m cold.”
“Where’s your hoodie?”
His eyes narrow. “I’ve got a jacket.”
“I hate your jacket.”
“You hate my jacket.”
I nod. “Yes. Because this is the jacket you wore that night.”
“What night?”
“The night of the game. The night you won that contest against Ledger.” I shake my head then. “For the longest time I saw that jacket in my dreams. I saw it so many times. So many, many times that I thought bad things happen when you wear that jacket. I know it’s a silly thought but I just —”
I stop talking when he straightens up from his car.
When he grabs his jacket and rolls his shoulders, his dense thick shoulders, and takes it off. He takes his jacket off as he stares at me, letting it fall on the ground.
Just like that.
“There. It’s gone,” he says, his jacket lying at his feet, his biceps corded and naked in his V-neck light-colored t-shirt. “Are you going to come here so we can go?”
“But you’re cold.”
"I’m fine.”
With parted lips and a heart that won’t stop pounding, I watch the veins on his wrists, on the back of his hand, thick and beautiful. I watch the arms that he uses to pick me up as I practice.
To help me.
I watch them and ask, “What about your practice?”
“What?”
I look at his face then. “It must be brutal now, right? At college level.” His eyes narrow. “Ledger can barely come home these days. He’s always at the gym, always on the field, practicing. He wants to be like Shep. Who got picked in the first round of the draft. You know that, right? That Shep got picked. Stellan would’ve been too but he never wanted to go pro. Not like you.”
His chest is moving up and down, pushing at the fabric of his thin t-shirt. “Get in the car.”
I shake my head, standing my ground. “So is it? Is it brutal? Is your coach riding you hard?”
“Get in the car.”
“You’d easily be picked up in the first round too,” I say and almost lose my courage but I have to keep going. “J-January, right?”
The next breath he takes pushes out the fabric so much that I think it’s going to get torn apart. Reed is going to tear apart his t-shirt in one long breath and God, I can’t stand it.
I can’t stand his agitation. I can’t stand what he did.
What he had to do.
To get me free.
“Are you fucking getting in the car or not?” he growls.
“No.”
“What?”
I shake my head as my eyes sting. “I’m not going with you.”
“You’re not going with me.”
I shake my head again. “No. Not until you tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“What you did,” I say, fisting my dress. “Not until you tell me what you did to save me from your father.”
As expected, the word save triggers him.
It makes him shift on his feet, assume a battle stance, as a thunderous expression crosses his features. “Are we back at that again?”