And for the life of me, I can’t be happy. I can’t find joy in his misery.
Maybe this is the curse of a brokenhearted girl.
The curse of falling for a villain.
If you love him once, you hurt for him forever.
I blink my eyes, realizing that they are wet as I whisper, “No. I’m not happy. I can’t be. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done to me. How much you’ve hurt me. Or how much I hate you. I can’t be happy when you’re suffering. I can’t take pleasure in your misery.”
His eyes turn even angrier then.
As if he hates the fact that I don’t like his suffering. That even after everything, I can’t revel in it.
“I may be a villain but you’re just as stupid and naïve in this white dress as you were when you were almost sixteen,” he rasps.
And before I know it, my hand shoots up and I slap him in the face.
My eyes go wide when I realize what I’ve done.
When I realize that he hardly blinked, hardly even moved his face but my palm is burning. It’s stinging with the force of my slap, with the shock of it. With the violence.
This wildness he invokes in me so easily. This passion.
I thought that after knowing how caged and trapped he’s been because of whatIdid, all this furious fire would go out. But apparently not.
So when he lowers his face even more and stares into my eyes, as if giving me the go-ahead, telling me to put him in his place, slap him once more, I do it.
I smack his face once more.
And a third time and a fourth and when that’s not enough, I punch his chest. I beat at it with my fists and keep going until he grabs my wrists and pins them on the bark.
Not only that, he pins my entire body to the tree as he moves closer to me.
As his strong chest pushes against my arched one.
As his lean torso presses against my ribs.
“Does that make you happy now?” he asks, his jaw all tight.
No.
No, it doesn’t.
Especially when I realize that I’ve become an animal tonight too. One who can see in the dark like him because I clearly notice my scratch marks on his face. My red fingerprints and where my nails have marked his skin.
“Oh my God, Reed. Y-you’re hurt,” I stammer, knowing my statement is stupid.
Iwantedto hurt him and of course he is.
But I don’t like it.
I don’t like that I hurt him and that I’m still angry. But I don’tknowwhat else to be.
God, I’m so screwed up. So tied up in knots. All because of him.
He thinks so too, Reed.
Because he chuckles roughly. “Jesus Christ, Fae, you kill me. You fucking murder me with your goodness.”
