“You know you don’t have to try so hard with me,” he goes on like I haven’t spoken. “You want me to touch you, Fae, just say the word.”
Fae.
I breathe out.
I blink.
I didn’t want him to say that. Because I didn’t want to find out.
I didn’t want to find out if it sounds the same.
My name. The name that he gave me two years ago.
It does.
It sounds exactly like it did two years ago.
Intense and intimate. Like it belongs to me. Like I was made to be called that.
Blonde and tiny with the limbs of a dancer,hisdancer.
His fairy.
But I was never his and that is not my name.
“Hey,Reed.” I stare into his wolf eyes and throw him a false smile. “I know it’s been two years and all, but my name is Calliope Thorne. People also call me Callie. And if I’m beinghonest, I’d rather you not call me anything at all. But asshole’s choice, of course.”
Those eyes of his become intense as he murmurs, “Calliope Juliet Thorne. I know what your name is, Fae. I also know what my name is. Do you?”
Yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
I do.
I do know his name.
I know his name like I know how to breathe.
Like I know how to cry in my pillow at night, biting down on it so I don’t make a noise.
I know his name like I know how to hurt when I see someone wearing a white hoodie on the street. When I see a girl so in love with a guy that she only has eyes for him and no one else.
I know his name, yes.
Reed Roman Jackson.
My Roman.
Or so I thought.
“You said that our names made us Shakespearean, star-crossed lovers,” he says, bringing me back to the moment. “A teenage tragedy. And I told you that they didn’t. Because what did fucking Shakespeare know? To me, you’ll always be Fae. And to you, I’ll always be Roman.”
I did say those things to him. I did tell him about our names and I did warn him to stay away from me.
It was a warning for me too.
If only I had listened to it myself.
