If only I’d stayed away.
“I remember,” I tell him, staring into the face of the villain I fell in love with. “I remember everything. I remember everything I said to you and everything you said to me. And that’s why I know that wearea teenage tragedy. Because you made sure ofthat, didn’t you? So get away from me because I wasn’t kidding about you losing your teeth.Reed.”
But again, instead of moving away he gets even closer, and I find out the answer to another question that I didn’t want to know.
His scent.
It’s still the same.
He still smells of wildflowers and woods. He still smells of open roads and freedom.
The freedom that I don’t have anymore.
The freedom I lost the night I stole his Mustang and tried to destroy it.
The Mustang that he built himself.
He did, yes.
I didn’t know that, see.
I had noideathat the thing I was destroying, the thing that he loved the most in the world, was also a thing that he had made himself.
Reed Roman Jackson, the richest boy at Bardstown High, in Bardstown, had built his Mustang with his own two hands.
I found that out later.
Much, much later.
After all the damage was done.
I don’t even blame him for calling the cops on me. Ineverblamed him for calling them.
I’ve only ever blamed him for breaking my heart.
I only blame him now, for smelling the same even after two years.
And while I’m so busy smelling him and remembering the past,he’sdoing something else. I don’t realize that the reason he’s so close to me is because he’s stealing from me.
My whiskey bottle.
It is only after he’s straightened up and moved back that I realize that my hand is empty and his is not.
That… asshole.
“Give it back,” I order.
Staring at me, he puts the bottle to his mouth and takes a long gulp. As if to taunt me.
When he’s done drinkingmywhiskey, his red lips glisten and his face sparkles like the moon that hangs low in the sky. “See you around, Fae.”
And just like that he turns around and leaves.
I should be relieved.
I should be, I know.
This is what I wanted. I wanted him to leave me alone.
