“Yes.” I swallow. “Tell me. Tell me what you did, Reed.”
He begins to walk toward me then.
Stride over to me.
And as always, I stay put. My legs won’t move.
I watch him, his thighs, rippling, shifting under his jeans, dripping with power. I watch them in all their majestic beauty and my heart twists.
It wrenches and pulses and cries out for him.
When he reaches me, he backs me up.
He crowds me with his body and makes me walk backward, his shoes clashing with my flats, until my spine bumps into something. A tree, rough and edgy.
Like him.
He dips his face toward me, his shoulders hiding the world from my eyes, and I crane my neck up, not wanting to see anything else in this moment anyway.
“What do you know?” he growls.
“Everything.”
His jaw is hard. “Tempest.”
“I made her,” I tell him hastily. “I forced her to tell me. I saw those files in your car last week. Jackson Builders. And so I called her and practically pried it out of her.”
He bends down even more.
Putting his hand on the tree by the side of my neck, he lowers himself over me, his chest still heaving. “That’s what you do, isn’t it? You pry and pry and stick your nose in things that are none of your business.”
My ballerina toes go up and I stretch myself as much as I can to bridge the gap between our heights. “But it is my business. Because you did it for me. To get me free.”
“I told you —”
“You did, didn’t you?” I cut him off because I’m not letting him deter me. “That game. That championship game, that was so important to you, that you needed to win. That was your last, wasn’t it? That was your last game.”
I’m watching his face. I’m watching all the angry, violent things pass through his features and yet I can tell that he’s digging his fingers into the bark.
I can tell that he’s almost clawing at it.
“That’s what you did,” I continue, my neck still tilted toward him. “That’s what you had to do to get me free. You had to give up soccer. You don’t live in New York either, do you? Because your dad asked you to come back. Because you work for him now, at his company. The place where you never wanted to end up at. But you did. Because of me. I stole your car and you had to give up soccer, something that you loved to —”
“I don’t love soccer.”
“What?”
“Fuck soccer.”
“W-what do you mean?”
“I mean,” he says, his teeth clenched, “I don’t care about soccer. I never did.”
I come down to earth then.
My toes can’t hold my weight and so I have to come down on my heels and press my spine against the tree even more. “But that’s… that’s not true. All those years of rivalry. All those fights with Ledger because you wanted to be the best. You wanted to win. You betrayed me for it. You love soccer. You —”
His harsh chuckle stops me.
Harsh and brutal and full of something that feels like hate.
“I don’t love anything,” he says, his voice guttural, coarse. “When are you going to get this through your head? I don’t fucking love anything. Soccer was just a way to fuck with him. My father. Soccer was just a way to show him that he can’t control me. That I won’t be the son he wants me to be. Because he’s a fucking monster. He’s a fucking psychopath. A shitty husband. A shitty father, and so I wanted to get back at him. So no, I don’t love soccer. It hurt like a motherfucker to give it up and become my father’s bitch, to let him win two years ago, but I don’t love it. I don’t love anything. I don’t have space to love anything when I’m so full of hate.”
His eyes are black by the time he finishes.
Demon-like.
Someone so full of hate that every soft, fragile thing inside of him is gone. Is swallowed by this darkness.
And God, it’s even worse.
It was bad enough that he didn’t love me, that he used me, chose something else over me. But the fact that what he chose — soccer — is not even his love, I don’t know what to do about that.
I don’t know how to cope with that. I don’t know how to cope with the fact that he has no space for love. Because all his spaces, all his corners are taken up by hate.
He may love his sister or a car but not much else.
I believe him now though.
As I look at his fire-breathing demon eyes and his flared nostrils, I do believe that he doesn’t love anything. He’s probably incapable of it.
His chest is not only heartless but it’s barren and there’s no chance of a heart ever growing in it.
That makes me so sad, so miserable. So blue.
Bluer than before.
That I strangely want to cry and hug him.
“You don’t love anything,” I whisper, wondering if maybe that’s why he’s always cold, because he’s so full of hate.
His gorgeous features bunch up for a second. “No.”
“That’s —”
“You should be happy though, shouldn’t you?”
“What?”
“You should be happy that that was my last game,” he explains gutturally, a humorless smile twisting his mouth. “Soccer is why everything happened, didn’t it? Soccer is why I betrayed you. I fought with your brothers. So you should be happy that I’m not playing anymore. You should be happy that my father got what he wanted. That I’m his lapdog now. You should be happy that I’m getting punished for breaking your heart. That the villain in your story is getting his due. All this time that you’ve been punishing yourself for falling for me, I was already getting put in my place.”
I have to part my lips then.
I have to breathe through my mouth because my lungs are starving for air.
My body is starving for it too.
I’m starving and dying and writhing in pain.
Because the answer is no.
I’m not happy.
Maybe I should be. Maybe I should laugh and smile but all I want to do is cry.
All this time I thought so many things. I thought he was the one who got me arrested. I thought he was living his life in New York, being a soccer god, being worshipped by people, fulfilling his dreams, doing something he loves.
But as it turns out, he doesn’t love the game that I thought he did and he was just as caged as me.
He is just as caged.
And for the life of me, I can’t be happy. I can’t find joy in his misery.
Maybe this is the curse of a brokenhearted girl.
The curse of falling for a villain.
If you love him once, you hurt for him forever.
I blink my eyes, realizing that they are wet as I whisper, “No. I’m not happy. I can’t be. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done to me. How much you’ve hurt me. Or how much I hate you. I can’t be happy when you’re suffering. I can’t take pleasure in your misery.”