She sighs and closes her eyes for a brief moment.
“Everyone knows my name,” she says. “I can’t just date anyone. I’ll either be slaughtered by the press or the person. And if I survive that, let’s be real, 99% just want my money and status.”
“That sucks,” I say, but I still feel this is not the real reason.
“Yeah. You count yourself lucky to have money, but being invisible to the public eye. I was accused of being impregnated by someone on campus because I have a belly in a photo.”
“You don’t have a belly,” I say, stupidly, because my mind wanders off. If she’s in that sort of light, what if I’m photographed with her? What if I make the headlines with her at some point? I mean, I did change my face to some extent with fillers and a nose job, but I couldn’t change everything. I couldn’t change much about my body. What if—I freeze from the thought of it and my body tenses.
“My point exactly. You don’t get the world I’m in,” she says coldly.
“I do,” I begin. “But El. Give me the real reason.”
El’s eyes harden.
“El, come on,” I say. I doon’t know why I am pushing her that much, but I need to hear it. I want to hear I am not the only messed up person in the room.
She grasps my face rather harshly.
“I went through hell,” she says in an equally harsh tone, “And that hell will haunt me forever. I don’t feel, because if I allow me to feel, I will break. So no, I will never have feelings or date or love. We fuck, we’re friends, but I will never have any feelings for you. I don’t do love. Love sucks. It makes you an idiot, and it’s a lie people tell themselves to be miserable together.”
Her words almost hurt. Almost. Because I see what’s really behind it. Because I can relate. Because denying yourself feelings it what keeps one safe from getting hurt. From being alone.
So I don’t care if she will never have feelings for me, because I don’t have feelings for her. It’s fine.
Everything is fine.
Right?
Eland I stayed in bed all weekend, and when we leave for our University writing course together, it almost feels like we have done so forever. We are mixed in the same group, which none of us knew because we didn’t attend the first week. I’m quite certain it’s El’s first time she sets foot on campus after the Convocation.
I’m still not used to having a bodyguard shadow our every movement at a distance.
“He sucks,” I say, because it’s not just that I am watched all the time, but that everyone else is staring at us.
“You just gotta see him as a cute lapdog who does whatever you tell him to do,” she says.
“Not whatever,” I say. “He won’t jump off a bridge or leave you alone.”
El groans as she says, “You are such a mid-core NPC, oh my god. And that means something because I went to Boarding School.”
I don’t understand a single thing of what she said, but I can’t ask, so I laugh it away.
“You were so much more fun when you were up to level,” she says. “Let’s find a bathroom, I won’t survive that class.”
And because I feel the very same, who am I to argue?
We get to a bathroom, Alex, the bodyguard waiting in front of the door, not letting anyone in, is actually a convenient use of his presence because we don’t have to use a filthy toilet lid and can do our business in the open.
Five minutes later, I’m back to the feeling I craved. The invincibility. All the messy thoughts stored away, replaced by that sensation of being limitless.
El comes up after doing two lines, and let’s her head circle back in the sensation. She bites her bottom lip, and fuck me, the view is so hot that I grab her by the throat and push her back into the wall.
My lips find hers in a wild embrace, my tongue entering her mouth as I press my body into hers. It is the first time I lead the action, and it feels fucking amazing.
She grins against my lips as we end the kiss and I bite my way down her neck to her collarbone.
My hands wander over her slim form with the soft skin. I massage her breasts for a moment, but then decide I want more. I am hungry. Fucking hungry for her.
