When girls did everything to fit in, she just followed what she liked. She never once laughed or smiled because it was expected. She’s a socially awkward bean with a twist. Most socially awkward people don’t want to be in that category, whereas Teal likes it — if anything, she might even take pride in it.
Her glares are real, too. They’re probably the most real thing about her, the way her thick brows scrunch and her skin reddens with pent-up anger. Without words, she communicates that she hates having me here. She hates my guts and my existence, basically.
Get in line, belle.
For the past week, I’ve been picking her up for school, despite her protests and jabs and attempts to throw me under the bus like a mechanic every time an adult is around.
She tries to brush past me, ignore me, pretend I don’t exist. When that doesn’t work, she attempts to make me look bad.
Teal still doesn’t understand that she can’t win against me in the peopling game. I’m way too loved, too approachable, and I don’t give off the deceptive calm façade like Cole. For that reason, people like me and naturally gravitate towards me.
It’s not a gift. It’s a commitment I made to myself when I decided I’d never be alone.
Not for one second.
Not even for a blink.
To accomplish that, people needed to take a liking to me. Before I knew it, I was becoming the epitome fantasy of any person looking to socialise.
Teal and I are opposite that way. She’s a loner by choice, never by force. She wasn’t bullied into it, because even when people called her a social outcast and Satan’s worshipper, she didn’t give them the time of day. She just rolled with it and gave them the middle finger.
So how come someone like her, someone who doesn’t fit in my image of peopling, can consume my thoughts?
I haven’t stopped thinking about her. After the day she left my house with her clothes and hair dishevelled and her lips swollen from me fucking her mouth, she became Ron Astor the Second’s fantasy come true.
Every night, I dream of her black eyes as she stared up at me, and I can almost still taste her on my tongue.
I can still hear her tiny voice saying I’ll be good. Fuck. I’ve never loved words as much as those, never thought of a girl as much as I do of her.
Thankfully, I have the best solution to get rid of this unwanted attention. If I get close enough, I’ll eventually tire of her. The reason she’s occupying my thoughts is that I still know little to nothing about her aside from her being manhandled kink and her bad taste in men.
I should be her type.
Anyway, that’s why I’ve been showing up every day since. She’s starting to slip away by avoiding any alone time with me, probably scared about what I’ll do with her.
My head has been going into overdrive since that day, obsessing about the best way to fuck her so thoroughly she’ll forget everyone before me — and after me.
Wait. She gets people after me? I don’t like that thought.
Knox clasps my shoulder as she huffs and goes back to where she came from. She’ll buy more time before she has to go to school — it’s her pattern. Doesn’t matter. Sooner or later, she’ll come for me.
Pun intended.
“Never mind her. She’s always like that.” Knox grabs an apple from the bowl on the table and crunches loudly.
“Has she always been like that?” I grab an apple myself and toss it in the air, pretending to be nonchalant.
Knox and I have been getting close over the weeks, but he’s been distant lately, even during football practice. He also doesn’t like talking about his sister, which I understand considering the sibling relationship.
But something tells me he’s trying to hide something else.
Holding a secret for so long gives me certain perks; the most important of all is that I get to sense when someone is hiding something.
Knox, for instance.
“Why are you asking?” He takes another huge bite. “You want me to tell you her deepest, darkest secret so you can use it against her?”
I lift a hand in the air, pretending to wave a white flag. “I just want to end an engagement neither of us wants.”
Or at least, I didn’t want it. I’m not so sure anymore. The thought that she could be with someone else as soon as we’re over makes me want to grab her by the throat and fuck her until she no longer thinks about anyone else.
I’ve never had those thoughts about a girl before or even viewed sex that way.
For me, shagging was another way to keep people close, to never spend nights alone. Even when some fucked-up ideas barged in, I usually shooed them away without a problem.
Not with Teal.
It’s almost as if she brings them to the forefront of my messed-up brain.
Knox chews slowly. “She does want to be engaged.”
“Why would she?”
He lifts a shoulder. “I wish I knew. You think I want my sister with a womaniser like you, mate?”
“Then we can help each other.”
He raises a brow. “Or you can do right by my sister.”
Fuck that.
“We’re not in the middle ages anymore, Van Doren.”
“Apparently, your father thinks otherwise.”
I sigh, pausing before I throw the apple. “At least give me something about her so I can treat her right.”
Or rather, learn her better. Even after seeing her in her most intimate moments, she’s still a puzzle. It’s the way she shuts down, immediately building up fortresses and walls.
Knox chews, looking me up and down. “Don’t startle her.”
“What?”
“Don’t come out of nowhere and surprise her. Don’t touch her when she’s not aware of your presence. She has a bad reaction to that.”
A few things click into place — the way she jumps slightly then instantly hides it, the way she was breathing heavily as she sought refuge in that closet.
She has some sort of attacks.
But she didn’t have them when I pinned her to the wall. Was it because she was already aware of me?
I fully face Knox. “What’s the reason?”
“Childhood trauma.”
“The stuff with Elsa’s mother?” When Knox and I were getting close and smoking weed in dark corners at parties, he told me about how he and Teal became a part of Ethan Steel’s family and what his wife did to them.
I suspect something similar happened to Aiden, but the fucker never talks about it.
“Nope. Something deeper.” He tosses the finished apple in the bin. “That’s all for your psychological class of the day.”
Something deeper?
What’s deeper than being kidnapped by a mentally deranged woman, being made to pretend to be her dead son, and being cut by her? Teal and Knox have faded scars on their knees — evidence of those times.
He places a hand in his pocket and his eyes droop a little as he shoots me a glare. “I know you don’t want this engagement, but hurt my sister in any way and you’ll see evidence of my origins. Our origins.”
Street kids. A prostitute’s offspring who don’t even know their father because even their mother doesn’t.
That is the reality of the Van Doren twins. Everyone knows it, Edric included. Just because Ethan Steel became their father doesn’t mean it changed their origins. And yet, Edric agreed to the engagement for a partnership with Ethan.