Total pages in book: 184
Estimated words: 186756 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 934(@200wpm)___ 747(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186756 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 934(@200wpm)___ 747(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
I don’t even know why I’m searching for him.
All I know is that if I don’t find him, my heart is going to beat out of my chest and I’m going to perish.
So here I am.
I scan the ground as best as I can in the wintry darkness. Snow clings to the air and the ground as I make my way farther and farther away from the ballroom. When I can’t find him anywhere in the vicinity, I venture into the part of the grounds that’s flanked by bare and scary-looking trees and seems more slippery and chillier. The winter air’s more brutal as it slashes through my bare arms and shoulders, making even me think—the girl who loves the sharpness of cold—that I should’ve put on a coat at least.
“Running away again?”
My gasp is loud.
Louder than probably that voice.
That deep, deep voice.
That reminds me of a bottomless well.
I whirl around and for the first time in a year, come face to face with him.
I know it sounds dramatic—in a year and all that—but it’s true. Even though I’ve seen him around, I’ve been to the same places as him, deliberately put myself in his path so he can stumble upon me, we haven’t been alone since the night we met a year ago. We haven’t talked to each other or come in contact with each other in any way whatsoever since then.
He’s always been there but only in my periphery.
I always looked at him from the corner of my eye, with surreptitious side glances. And now that I have him in front of me, I can’t stop staring.
He’s standing under a tree like he was the night I met him. It’s not a pink magnolia, but it doesn’t matter. Because everything else is the same. His casual lean against the trunk; his dark clothes; the fact that he’s in the shadows and that cigarette of his.
Dangling from his plush lips, all orange and glow-y.
Sending out curls of smoke.
Reminding me of a rose set on fire.
“You scared me,” I say after a year of not saying anything to him.
He gets that cancer stick out of his mouth and, sending a puff of smoke into the air, speaks, “You don’t look scared.”
I think he’s right.
I probably don’t. I probably look the opposite of scared.
I probably look all flushed and breathless.
Because I’m the same too.
From a year ago.
I’m feeling the same feelings. The same emotions, the same thrill. The same ecstasy running through my veins that I’d felt when I’d stumbled upon him.
“I am, trust me,” I insist because maybe if I keep saying it, it’ll become true.
All my ecstasy will turn into fear.
All my thrill will turn into revulsion.
“Well, then you shouldn’t be out here all alone at night,” he shares.
“Or maybe you shouldn’t be standing out here hidden in the night like some sort of a thug.”
“A thug,” he repeats.
“Yes.”
His silence feels thoughtful. “And here I thought I was a bodyguard.”
A jolt goes through me like I’ve been electrocuted.
Like I stuck my finger in the power socket and now every corner in my body is filled with electricity, every cell buzzes, every nerve crackles.
All because he said something completely inconsequential from that night.
“And here I thought,” I shoot back, watching his silhouette, “that the world needed protection from me and not the other way around.”
“Old men, specifically,” he reminds me as if he needs to.
As if I don’t think of that night—also enact it on some occasions—every single day.
“And then,” I keep sharing, “we decided that you’re safe because you’re not that old.”
“But now you know that I am,” he returns.
He is.
Or at least he thinks he is even though he’s only seven years older than me. And since I’m only nineteen, that puts him at twenty-six. Not old by any means whatsoever and even if he were, I know I wouldn’t care.
When it comes to him, I don’t care much about anything at all, to be honest.
And that’s the problem.
That has always been the problem.
“So maybe,” I say, “it’s you who should be scared.”
He takes a drag. “I guess so.”
“Well, it’s not too late. You can still go back inside and save yourself from me.”
“Maybe I should.”
“You—”
“Because I don’t think I’m in the mood to be mauled by a half-naked girl tonight.”
“I didn’t maul you,” I say, taken aback.
He lets out another puff of smoke. “Forced yourself upon me then.”
“I did not do that either,” I say vehemently.
“No?”
“Absolutely not.”
“So what would you call it?” he asks.
He sounds so genuinely curious that I can’t help but answer, “Seizing my destiny.”
“Ah”—he lets out another cloud of toxic smoke—“somehow I’d forgotten about that.”
At this, I’m burning in the middle of winter.
With embarrassment.
“You don’t have to—”
“So what about tonight?” he asks, cutting me off.
“What about tonight?”
He sucks in a drag, his cheeks hollowing out and his chest expanding before he lets it out. “Any particular reason you’re half-naked?”