Even their styles are opposite.
Oliver wears the wrappings of Prada. From plain slacks and glossy shoes to a tailored shirt and a woollen coat.
Dray has slipped into something more relaxed for the return home, something casual he pulled on this morning in his private room at the Palace of Versailles, an ensemble he picked out knowing he is victorious—that he can do whatever he wants, and face no consequences, ever.
In that triumph, he chose black jeans and a dark Ralph Lauren sweater, then he had the fucking audacity to roll up his sleeves, like it’s just another day, just another victory.
I look at their differences and I see their twinship in their rotten souls, the evil that lives in them.
I always had a sort of hope for Oliver, that he was secretly good, loved me more than he let on, and was just playing the game.
That hope is dead.
It was snuffed out when Oliver drugged me—and now, watching them, my throat thickens.
Rage should be barrelling through me.
It doesn’t.
I just want to cry.
The farewell chatter around me buzzes too much, goes on too long—and watching Dray with my brother, the brother who forced a brew down my fucking throat so I’d pass out and he didn’t have to deal with me, it…hurts.
It just hurts.
An ache, a rip, a wound spreading in my chest.
Behind the shield of my shades, a prickle stings at my eyes, the faint itch of a burn, of tears coming.
But I still can’t tear my loathing gaze from them.
Oliver’s bright green eyes are a lie, they are warmth, friendliness, a fucking deception.
Dray’s eyes don’t lie. There is no lushness of nature, no false allure, no deceit in who and what he is.
His eyes are the truth.
A blue so striking, so pale that it borders on inhuman. Cruelty is in those crystalline eyes, blue-tinted glass—a sword that suddenly lifts from the glare of his smartphone and cuts me.
I blink under the assault of his stare.
Like he can sense me…
Now I know he can.
All those times I’ve tried to sneak away from him, creep by him in a crowd, join the veil queue in London heads behind him, he knew I was there.
Dray has an essence of his mother’s print layered somewhere in his makut, and for some reason, whatever reason, it senses me.
I’m only left with the question, does it only sense me, or can it sense everyone? Does it have to be a person, or can it detect more, like lies and nerves and deceit?
Still, through my spiralling thoughts, those crystalline eyes pierce into me, through the darkness of my shades, and I feel my insides hardening.
All that pain, those tears and sobs and aches—they fade under his stare and are replaced with something harder.
Loathing.
I hate, hate,hatehim.
