“Helia is mine.”Even if she doesn’t know that yet.
“Who?” His eyes widen, playing the innocent. Only he was never innocent, even if she is.
Wrong answer, frat fucker.
My metal enhanced fist finds soft flesh, splitting the soft layer to the bone. Coating my hand in his precious, rich boy blood. Old blood.
So, so worthy.
You will be nameless. Forgotten. Because you touched her before me.
Flesh softens, tenderized beneath my cold rage. Metal to bone, skin to skin.
It’s a messy night.
Soon, he makes no sound at all. And our hour is up.
CHAPTER ONE
HELIA
The art stool beside me sat conspicuously empty. Conspicuous, because Ethan never missed a class. Empty, because…
Ethannevermissed a class.
He’s been my mini stalker all semester—for most of my first year and well into my second, come to think of it. And now that he wasn't there, my table seemed…vacant.
Too quiet.
I painted in black. Black on black. Gray on black. Mixed in white that became gray that merged into shadow.
The same shadow that I watched, the shadows that waited beneath my windows last night as they did every night, I knew I wasn’t imagining them, or maybe I was, in my sleepless, insomniac state. Hell, I even tried to paint one, after I hallucinated it—them—coming into my room, bending over my bed and pressing a soft kiss to my lips.
And woke with a soft cry on my tingling mouth that related to nothing in my vacant room.
Empty, empty, empty.
Just like my life.
My lips weren’t the only thing that tingled, or were damp that night. I worked myself to a furious orgasm that ruined as fast as the elusive dream faded, frustrated with myself, and screamed into my pillow for all the wrong reasons. The same emotion slammed me again now as my brush jabbed at my blacks, stroked more onto the board.
I opted to use that over a canvas, preferring the smoother strokes. I knew that if I looked out of the window and peered around a bit, I’d see them, the twins. Key and Kash. the college’s feral pair of disruptors at their best, and at worst… They liked to do their deals near this building at Rippton U nearest dusk. My classroom just happened to be the prime hunting ground for their twisted pastime.
I shivered as the last of the light left campus in a perpetual purple haze that would only last a few more minutes before the world darkened, just like my painting. Then the lights would flicker on in a false show of brightness, and Rippton’s nightlife began. I hated the fakeness of it all, and wished for the first time that Ethan was here, to keep me company.
The rest of the class who chattered on, unfocused, and melted away as I painted on, until it was only me and my work, the shadow that emerged on the black landscape before me. Drawing me in, calling to me.
My breaths grew shorter as I started into the faceless hood that lingered, just out of sight. Beckoning, though no hand was raised. As if it,the shadow, who knew that I wanted to see the features beneath.
To know who watched me at night.
Probably, it was some drug dealer who loitered around my off campus building, well away from security. Who wanted to make their own sorts of deals.
I stayed away from those, too.
My headspace fuzzed at the edges as I sank deeper with the impending night. Not the best time to make art, maybe. I’d always preferred morning classes when the light was better. The artificial glow bothered me with its incessant hum on so many levels. One of the perks of living alone and off campus, maybe. Or maybe I was simply the spoilt, abandoned daughter of rich parents who lived their lives independent of anything that resembled family values. Parents who preferred to dump their offspring into her own life years early.
Because unlike the rest of Rippton U, I wasn’t the same age as the rest of the student body. About to complete my third year and I just turned eighteen. A little secret I kept to myself, along with the rest of my solitary life.
