That memory, so vivid even just weeks ago, feels like it’s been replaced somehow.
“So your eyes?”
“I don’t mean the color. Bellamy’s were a warm brown mixed with green, but they were kind. Mischievous. You could always tell whatever she was thinking just by staring into them.”
Slowly, my gaze travels over the treetops to the caves in the distance, not really visible from where we’re located at the back of campus. But I know them well enough that I don’t need to see them to remember the night my sisterdied.
The only reason I’d been at that party in the quarry was because Bellamy asked me to go. She could make me do anything, our connection forged in a distressed womb and fortified by a strict home life. I was guilty of constantly placating her.
Being around Bellamy felt like orbiting the sun though. It was a light source I sought when I was worn down from pleasing our parents and doing everything they said. I was a peacekeeper trying to get the four of us out from under our parents’ influenceand control, and it gave her the freedom to be chaotic and uncontainable.
I would have done anything she asked if it meant getting a taste of that freedom. Just for a moment even.
My desire for her to be that outlet is what got her killed. I shouldn’t have gone to the party and shouldn’t have let myself get taken advantage of, leaving her vulnerable for anyone who wanted to weaken the Dupont line.
I should have been stronger. That was mydutyas her older brother—to protect her no matter what.
But when I came to, I was too weak to search. Too weak to do anything but wait for someone to rescue me, and even then, the flashes of people violating my body made me catatonic.
It was weeks before I returned to school. By that time, Avernia had fully moved on from Bellamy Dupont, and no one cared about the concerns raised by students. Not when the dean and higher-ups were saying our fears didn’t matter.
Eventually, people started wondering if she’d ever existed at all. She became a ghost and has haunted me ever since.
Beckett glances at me, a thoughtful expression on his face. “Do you miss her?”
I’m not sure that’s a strong enough word to describe it.
You don’tmissa limb when it’s forcibly removed from your body. You ache against the phantom sensations where it once was, your mind forever altered by the knowledge that there’s nothing you can do to get it back.
“Every time I let myself,” I answer, tilting my chin slightly toward the sky as a breeze coasts over the trees, whispering its secrets.
Except they’re in a language I don’t speak.
HavingElle in class is a lesson in fucking torture.
She answers as many questions as she possibly can, visibly irritating the other students, but it wouldn’t be fair of me not to call on her. Reverse favoritism would be as much of a problem as anything else, and I don’t want anyone questioning my authority as a teacher.
It’s bad enough some people know about my relationship with Beckett. Too many connections, and people get suspicious.
I do my best to simply ignore Elle entirely, but her presence makes that impossible.
My fingertips yearn to smooth over her skin. My mouth quivers with the desire to have hers against it.
Any time I look away, placing the students into groups or allowing them time to start an assignment, it’s her that my gaze seeks out. No matter what.
Our rendezvous in the forest and near-kiss in the basement did little to quell the mounting need inside my bones. I spend more of my time in class just trying to get through the lesson without recalling what her cunt feels like or thinking about how nice the imprint of her teeth would look on my skin. How nice she smells and the little gasp she inhales when my face gets close.
Now I sit on the stage, twiddling my thumbs, unsure of what to fucking do.
Acting on it would have catastrophic consequences for both of us, but ignoring the issue makes my migraines more frequent. I’ve denied her multiple times at this point, but as my already-threadbare restraint thins, so does my bullshit reasoning.
I don’t actually give a fuck about my job, but Idocare about her. She knows that too, which makes this more complicated.
When I glance at her, she’s just sitting in the front row, swinging her foot as she reads a passage in her textbook, biting down on the end of her pen.
Some sick part of me wishes I were that pen.
The more time I spend resisting her, the worse I feel, until my mind is spinning a tapestry of blistering longing with no end in sight.
