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Yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
I do.
I do know his name.
I know his name like I know how to breathe.
Like I know how to cry in my pillow at night, biting down on it so I don’t make a noise.
I know his name like I know how to hurt when I see someone wearing a white hoodie on the street. When I see a girl so in love with a guy that she only has eyes for him and no one else.
I know his name, yes.
Reed Roman Jackson.
My Roman.
Or so I thought.
“You said that our names made us Shakespearean, star-crossed lovers,” he says, bringing me back to the moment. “A teenage tragedy. And I told you that they didn’t. Because what did fucking Shakespeare know? To me, you’ll always be Fae. And to you, I’ll always be Roman.”
I did say those things to him. I did tell him about our names and I did warn him to stay away from me.
It was a warning for me too.
If only I had listened to it myself.
If only I’d stayed away.
“I remember,” I tell him, staring into the face of the villain I fell in love with. “I remember everything. I remember everything I said to you and everything you said to me. And that’s why I know that we are a teenage tragedy. Because you made sure of that, didn’t you? So get away from me because I wasn’t kidding about you losing your teeth. Reed.”
But again, instead of moving away he gets even closer, and I find out the answer to another question that I didn’t want to know.
His scent.
It’s still the same.
He still smells of wildflowers and woods. He still smells of open roads and freedom.
The freedom that I don’t have anymore.
The freedom I lost the night I stole his Mustang and tried to destroy it.
The Mustang that he built himself.
He did, yes.
I didn’t know that, see.
I had no idea that the thing I was destroying, the thing that he loved the most in the world, was also a thing that he had made himself.
Reed Roman Jackson, the richest boy at Bardstown High, in Bardstown, had built his Mustang with his own two hands.
I found that out later.
Much, much later.
After all the damage was done.
I don’t even blame him for calling the cops on me. I never blamed him for calling them.
I’ve only ever blamed him for breaking my heart.
I only blame him now, for smelling the same even after two years.
And while I’m so busy smelling him and remembering the past, he’s doing something else. I don’t realize that the reason he’s so close to me is because he’s stealing from me.
My whiskey bottle.
It is only after he’s straightened up and moved back that I realize that my hand is empty and his is not.
That… asshole.
“Give it back,” I order.
Staring at me, he puts the bottle to his mouth and takes a long gulp. As if to taunt me.
When he’s done drinking my whiskey, his red lips glisten and his face sparkles like the moon that hangs low in the sky. “See you around, Fae.”
And just like that he turns around and leaves.
I should be relieved.
I should be, I know.
This is what I wanted. I wanted him to leave me alone.
But I don’t feel relief. Not at all.
I feel anger.
I feel so much fury right now. So much heat in my body that I can’t contain it.
I can’t contain this massive outrage, this massive wrath at what he said just now, the words that he used.
See you around, Fae.
The same words he said to me the night he smashed my heart to pieces. When he turned around and never looked back as I stood there, crying.
Before I know it, I’ve taken off after him.
I’ve started to charge at him like a crazy, wounded animal. I probably sound like one too, grunting and groaning, and in the back of my mind, I know I shouldn’t be acting this way.
You’re not a violent person, Callie. You don’t do this.
But I guess I’m violent for him.
I’m a bad girl for Reed Roman Jackson.
He’s at the back door, just about to enter the bar, and I’m about to crash into him until I don’t.
Until he spins around at the last second, intercepts me and spins me around too, pinning me to the brick wall. And then I’m right back where I started, pressed against a wall, staring up at him.
Only this time things are worse because he’s closer.
Much, much closer.
And he’s touching me.
Oh God, he’s touching me.
He has his hand on my stomach and he’s using it to keep me in my spot. He’s using it to trap me.
He’s actually holding me hostage right now and oh my God, I lose it.
I completely lose it.
“Take your hand off me,” I tell him, my legs jiggling. And when he doesn’t comply immediately, I start to struggle. “Take your hand off me. Take your hand off me right now!”
