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“You will.”
His firm words make my eyes snap up to his and I realize how close we are.
How close his chocolate chip eyes are to me.
With me bent over him like this, we’re breathing each other’s air. Or rather I’m breathing his. I’m breathing whatever he gives me through his parted lips.
I suck it in, all his oxygen laced with leather and smoke, and fill my lungs with it.
With his uncanny belief in me. I’ve never had that before.
It’s addicting.
He is addicting.
Drugged, I whisper, “It’s raining like it was that night. Four years ago.”
His jaw clenches for a second, something flickering in those eyes. “Yeah.”
“I was praying for a miracle. Up on that roof,” I tell him. “I was praying for a god maybe.”
Another clench. “But you didn’t get Him.”
“No, I got you.”
“The devil.”
With dark hair and dark eyes.
Standing there with an umbrella and my glasses.
My newly appointed guardian.
And now he sits here, his eyes just as dark and pretty, his curly hair still rich and thick. Only somehow he’s more powerful.
He’s more potent and all-knowing.
Somehow, I’m more trapped under him than I was before.
“I thought,” I continue, looking into his intense eyes, “that if I made my argument well enough, you’d see reason and let me go.”
“But I didn’t.”
“And then here at summer school, I thought the same. I thought if I came up with a solution, you’d have to let me out early.”
Dark things flicker through his features before he says, “You were naive.”
“I was.”
“So now what?”
“It’s Monday.”
“It is.”
“You said we’d talk about my future.”
“I did.”
My heart thumps. “So what’s my future?”
“Whatever I want it to be.”
My heart thumps harder. “And what do you want it to be? What will you do to me?”
He takes a few seconds to answer. In those few seconds, I both live and die, and melt and freeze.
Waiting and waiting for him to say the words.
To deliver the verdict so I can retaliate.
“Is it over with him?”
My fingers flex at his sudden question and I realize that the notebook is still open between us and my fingers are still pointing at things, things we’re both not looking at or caring about right now.
I want to move away then but I can’t for some reason.
So suspended over him, breathing his air, I lie, “Yes.”
“You sure about that?” he asks again, his voice low.
“Yes.” I nod, my heart heavy. “I don’t want you to do anything to Ji —” His eyes narrow at my slip up and I correct myself. “Him.”
My assurance — even though that’s what he wanted — makes his body go tighter. It makes his features grow meaner. “What a perfect girlfriend you are, huh.” Then, slowly and roughly, with clenched teeth, “What a perfect fucking girlfriend.”
My heart twists in my chest at the bitterness in his tone, and I whisper, “I don’t wanna talk about that.”
“Yeah? Then what do you want to talk about?”
“About you.”
“What about me?”
My heart in my throat, I whisper, “I want something from you.”
“You want something from me.”
“Yes. Before you lock me up here.” My fingers flex on the page again, the toes of my Mary Janes pressing against his Italian loafers. “That’s what you’re going to do, aren’t you? You’re going to lock me up here, at St. Mary’s, for a long, long time.”
This time, he pushes back.
I feel the hard, sharp tips of his loafers pressing back against the softly rounded toes of my Mary Janes. And it makes my thighs clench, that pressure.
“For all your lies, you mean,” he rasps.
“Yes. So I want you to do something before you put me away for a long time. Sort of like my last wish.”
Again, he leaves me hanging for his response. And again, in those few seconds I live and die a thousand times.
Then with a ticking jaw, he asks, “And what’s your last wish?”
This is it.
This is fucking it.
This is the moment. This is how I get back my freedom and my control.
This is how I trap him.
“A kiss,” I say. “My last wish is for you to give me my first kiss.”
And when he does, the camera sitting on his bookcase will record it.
It will record Alaric Rule Marshall kissing Poe Austen Blyton.
But that’s not all, is it?
It will record Mr. Marshall, the guardian, kissing Poe Blyton, his ward.
Not to mention, it will record Principal Marshall kissing Miss Blyton, his student.
And that’s evidence.
That’s the weakness that I’ve been searching for for the past week, and it’s a weakness that I’m going to use against him when the time comes.
He could lose everything.
He could lose his conferences, his papers, his research, his entire reputation that he’s worked so hard for. Not to mention his city council duties and everything else that he’s involved in.
It makes me want to take my words back.
And that urge only grows when at my words, he licks his lips and glances down to mine.
