I’m so fed up with all of this, everything, I whirl around and snap viciously, “Oh my God, shut up! Just shut up! Just like everyone else in my life, you think you know better than me.”
Irritation ticks in his jaw, his mouth a tense line as he catches up to me at the end of the alley. I take a step back from him, and my back meets the wall. My pulse quickens when he reaches me, but he grabs my hand in his, and those traitorous sparks zing through me the way they always do when he touches me.
Ellis keeps my stare intently as he takes careful hold onto my hand like it’s a lifeline in this fight. His dark brown eyes look more pained than angry.
Tears overwhelm, streaking hot tracks across my skin, chilling and burning in the wind.
He tugs me gently back toward him, his grip not so tight that I can’t pull out of it. It’s as light and tender as he is.
It’s a really shitty fact that he’s hot even when he looks pissed off. I let him pull me in, surrounding me with the warmth of his body.
He cups my face and kisses my forehead. My hands ball up in fistfuls of his jacket. After a few fraught heartbeats, he pulls back and tilts my face up to his.
The winter sun cuts harsh lines against the side of his face, as his thumbs brush over my cheeks to wipe my tears away.
“You’re right. I am jealous. You keep giving him the benefit of the doubt when he doesn’t deserve it,” Ellis says quietly. He doesn’t sound bitter, just defeated. He sighs and touches his forehead to mine.
“And...I want your confidence in me instead of him. I want you here with me, and I feel like you can’t be here with me if you’re not setting boundaries with him. It’s starting to feel like you don’t want to, either.”
Hot tears prick at my eyes. How can he say that? “No, that’s not—”
He takes in a deep breath and lets go of me. “What are we, Lacey?”
My throat is tight to the point of breaking. Even if I knew what to say in response, I couldn’t. We were no one to eachother, really; we just met a few days ago. And in the same breath, he had become so important to me so quickly. Every shameless flirtation he’d thrown my way, every time he’d made me feel like I was something wondrous to experience, every time he had believed in me. I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a person so much just being there next to me.
I really don’t want to make a decision right this second about what we are. I can’t.
Ellis takes a step back from me, shaking his head. From the look in his eyes, he seems like he already has his answer.
“No, I see it now. You don’t want to pick a side. You don’t have to question anything if you stay where you are. I get it. That’s easier. You don’t want to see him for what he is. You won’t acknowledge it even when he’s blatantly disrespecting you.”
I pull away, unable to keep my breath even as the tears spill over uncontrollably.
His lips curl, the fanged smile I’ve loved so much suddenly mocking. “Besides, we already knew this thing between us was going to be trouble. I’m the bad guy, Lacey, and I always have been. You should stay away from me, for your own good.”
15
Ellis
If it bothers me that you’re still involved with him, and I’ve communicated with you that it bothers me, and you do nothing, the only thing really to do is remove myself from the equation...
I sigh and exit from my notes app and the text response I’m drafting out to Lacey. I had to put my phone on Do Not Disturb an hour ago because my pulse spiked in a bad way at every new response I got from her.
I can’t believe I’m reduced to writing manifesto-length texts back and forth with this girl. Forget her, forget her, just block her and be done with it. Forget about her.
Ugh, I could cry. I really liked her.
I rub the heel of my hand against my eye, and sniffle, exhausted. We haven’t been saying anything new to each other in the last couple hours, just finding new, slightly more barbed ways of saying it. I can’t believe she would draw this arbitrary line in the sand.Bad guy. It feels so flat, an utterly un-nuanced line of thought. Does she really think the world is so simple?
It’s aggravating that she’s so enmeshed with her ex that she can’t see his bullshit. I can’t imagine why she keeps choosing him over and over, why she hasn’t just left him in the dust by now. If not for us, at least for herself.
And yet, every time I close my eyes I see her in tears from our last words spoken to each other. Traitorously, I feel guilt curl in my chest, her hand around my heart.
The evening traffic crush drifts several stories below from the architectural trim I’m perched on. I spend a lot of time dangling my feet over the edge when I don’t want to go back to the hideout, but don’t have anywhere better to be. Cell signal is better up here, unfortunately. I used to really like this spot until the big ass LED billboard across the street started showing Steel Heel baring his cybernetic gauntlets at the viewer, advertising nothing but his ego: BE A HERO in ten-foot-tall letters.
Whatever that means.
Maybe I just don’t want to face the fact that she just likes him better. Yeah, she slept with me once, but that’s probably nothing in the face of her relationship with Steel. This isn’t some fairy tale where you get the girl just for rescuing her from a dragon.
