Yes.
I was running away for him. So I could get out of his life, leave him alone before my love makes me do something drastic. Before my secret love ruinshislove.
I raise my chin and his necklace hits my jaw. “What if there is?”
His own jaw clenches as he says, “Then I’d like to ask him something.”
“What?”
He runs his eyes over my body.
My wild, wind-whipped hair, the tingling tip of my nose, my parted and painted lips. My heaving chest under his vintage leather. My bare belly.
He stares at each part of me like it belongs to him. Like he can stare at those favorite little spots of his whenever and for however long he wants.
He can. He can.
But still.
It makes things happen inside my body. It makes me break out in goosebumps and it makes me bite my lip. It makes me arch my spine and makes my nipples bead.
He lifts his eyes, a flush covering his cheeks. “I’d like to ask him what the fuck is he doing, letting you run around town like this. Your friends, I understand. Maybe they’re a bunch of clueless schoolgirls like you. But what the fuck is his problem?”
I draw back. “Excuse me?”
Instead of answering me, he touches me.
With his other hand, he touches my lip again. His broad thumb is probably smudging the lipstick at the corner, but I don’t care.
I don’t care about anything right now except him and his rough thumb.
“What’s the name of this one?” he rasps.
“Dream Broken Darling.”
“You’re the darling?”
I shake my head, hypnotized. “No, he is.”You are. “I-I like sweetheart.”
“So what is he doing allowing his sweetheart to go where she doesn’t belong, wearing something she shouldn’t?”
I grabhiswrist then and dig my nails in. “My darlingdoesn’t control me. I can do whatever I want. I can…”
He licks his lip then and I trail off.
“Because if it was me.” He presses that thumb in the middle of my lower lip, tugging at it. “You wouldn’t be setting foot out of your room like this, let alone frolicking around town in the middle of the night.”
“If it was y-you?”
He nods slowly. “If it was me, I’d keep you reined in. A girl like you needs that.”
He’d keep me reined in.
If it was him.
If he was my boyfriend.
That’s what he means.
