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I wondered if he was drunk or just crazy. He sounded like both. “Vicious isn’t the greatest role model. He’s just taking a little break until he burns this town down. You and I both know that.”
Jaime shook his head, a sad smile on his face. “Even if he does, I’d help him light the match. The HotHoles stick together. That’s who we are.” He laced his fingers through mine.
“You’re not staying here,” I stated. Even though, selfishly, I didn’t want him to move away. Moreover, the very thought of him living in Texas, far away from me, made my skin crawl.
“Bull. Shit. I’m staying where the only people I care about are. You. Vicious. Trent. Dean might even be staying if Vicious doesn’t kill him…” He broke off.
“In Defy?” I prodded.
“Not that. It’s more complicated.”
I shook my head. As much as I liked having him around, it was in his best interest to leave. This place was hell. The city of saints was filled with nothing but sinners. He’d already been corrupted but not beyond repair.
“No.” I made my voice firmer, trying to use that authoritative teacher tone my parents were so good at. “You said you loved me. If you do, then promise me, you’ll leave here before you get hurt. And no more Defy.” People have probably already been hurt, I thought. “Go away, James.”
“Can’t.” He brought my hands to his lips, kissing my knuckles one by one. “I’m not leaving you here or anywhere else. Hey, I never wanted to go to college in Texas anyway. You know how dangerous it is to look this good on a campus that big? I could get fucking roofied, Ms. G.”
He winked. I laughed, but it died quickly.
“Then at least promise me you’ll keep Vicious away from Millie?” I sighed. I wanted her safe, for the same reason I wanted me to be safe. She was my mini-me. Before I was broken, anyway.
“He’ll never stay away from her.” Jaime’s expression grew tight. “For one, he wants to ruin her. And two? She lives too close. Her parents work for the Spencers.”
I’d suspected she was the complication he mentioned, and now he’d confirmed it. She was a good distraction for us too. This wasn’t the right time to talk about our plans as a couple. Jaime was too drunk. Too emotional to think clearly.
We both were.
But deep down, my truths were already starting to dig their way out of my layers of indifference. And they told me it wasn’t about the alcohol, or the late hour, or the inconvenient talks about the future.
It was about us. It was us.
THE NEXT DAY, I WOKE up different.
I don’t know how it happened, but it did, and it was all Jaime’s fault. That emptiness that swirled in my gut like a storm, refusing to calm down despite my best efforts? It wasn’t there the next day.
After the accident that ended my studying at Julliard, I thought I’d never escape that empty feeling. Surely, when your future career and dreams consumed you, chased you around, like bitter memories that nipped at your skin every time you saw a picture of a ballerina or heard about a traveling company in town, you couldn’t come back from it and find something else to fill the void.
That void.
Logically, I’d assumed that I was probably going to meet a guy. Get married. Start a life. I still had things to do and accomplish, and some of them might even be fun. I thought that maybe, I’d find my calling elsewhere. Not teaching high school Lit, but maybe with my kids? I could probably be a good mom. A soccer mom. Live through my children.
But the next morning, when I woke up in the arms of my student, he didn’t feel like my student. He felt like my mentor. Like a man who knows the way to that slippery, elusive thing called happiness.
Not just physically. The way his hard muscles and long body enveloped me. The fact that he was so tall and wide, made me feel protected and cherished. It was his warmth—not the one from his skin, the one from who he was—that filled me with something that wasn’t emptiness.
“This is the part where you run away from this, Mel,” he whispered into my ear, his morning voice gruff and his morning wood hard against my lower back. We were spooning, and I couldn’t smell his morning breath, but I bet it wasn’t as bad as the average person’s. The guy was just annoyingly perfect.
“Run, Ms. Greene. As fast as you’d like. I’m going to catch you, and I’m going to have fun showing you that there’s no escape from this.”
I rolled around to face him, the space between us warm from sleeping together in my new place. I grinned, a smile that wasn’t controlled or calculated.
