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Every beat that my heart takes echoes through his chest, and he watches over every breath that goes through my lungs.
This is it, isn’t it?
This is what it feels like to be guarded.
“Poe,” he growls when all I do is stare up at him in awe.
“I… He… It’s not important.”
And it isn’t.
Not in the face of what I’ve just discovered: what it feels like to be held by my devil guardian.
No, just my guardian.
Alaric.
His hold around me tenses though and he growls again, “It was important enough to make you cry. In the car. The whole way back.”
My eyes go wide. “Mo told you that?”
“And then in your fucking sleep.”
“H-how did you—”
“So what the fuck did he do?”
I know he’s getting impatient.
But my brain is stuck on the fact that he knew I was crying in my sleep and that instead of Mo, who usually comes in here to help me when I have nightmares, it’s him who came.
“Is that why you came when I cried out? Instead of Mo.”
“Poe, I swear —”
“Just tell me.”
His chest moves on an impatient breath. Then, “Yes.”
Things melt inside me at his confirmation. They drip and pool at the bottom of my belly, making me feel heavy and cozy. “If I tell you,” I whisper, “you’ll get mad.”
A muscle jumps out in his cheek. “I’m already mad.”
I bite my lip, still hesitating.
He leans in, the tip of his nose grazing mine. “Tell me what the fuck he did, Poe.”
“He lied,” I whisper finally.
“Lied about what?”
“About the tour,” I tell him, holding on to him tightly. “There was never any tour. He was lying to me because he wanted to… he wanted me to go with him so he could…” I grimace but then just come out with it. “So he could make it look like I’d been kidnapped and then ask you to pay him my trust fund as ransom. And that’s because he owes money to this drug dealer and that drug dealer, Big Jack, was putting pressure on him so they came up with this whole fake kidnapping idea.”
And then I’m glad that he’s holding me in his arms.
I mean I already was but now I’m even gladder because I feel a pain in my chest.
I feel a sting.
I guess I’ve been so focused on how he’d feel and how he’d get angry about me sneaking out of St. Mary’s and then going to see Jimmy that I forgot about my own heartbreak.
I forgot about my own pain.
I forgot that my love is gone now. That my love was a lie.
That all my dreams and my hopes that I’d pinned on Jimmy were a lie.
God, it was all a lie.
“But before all that,” I continue, my eyes teary and unfocused, “I saw him kiss another girl. I saw him make out with her. I saw him… I felt so stupid. I felt so stupid standing there, watching him, all because I wanted to tell him in person. I wanted to give him the courtesy of telling him that I wouldn’t be able to go with him. On the tour. I thought he deserved at least that. I was gonna let him go. I was gonna tell him to not wait for me because I… I didn’t know when I was getting out of St. Mary’s and so I wanted to say goodbye in person and… As it turns out, there wasn’t even a tour. It was all his plan. To get the money. And he made it sound like he was doing me a favor, like I’d buy that bullshit. Like I’d… But I guess it’s not really his fault because I bought into his other bullshit, right? That he wanted me. That he had feelings for me. When all this time, it was just a ploy. When he was kissing someone else while I was… I was saving my first kiss for him.”
A tear streams down my face then.
A thick, lonely tear that tells me that I’m stupid.
That I’m beyond stupid.
That I’ve been so desperate for love and attention that I was blind.
Blind to Jimmy. Blind to his intentions. His sudden interest in me. The tour.
What a joke.
But it’s worse, isn’t it?
Because I’ve always been this way. I’ve always been this blind and it all started with her.
With my mother.
God, my mother.
My fucking mother.
The mere thought of her brings me out of my self-pity. It brings me out of my stupid teenage angst to focus on other important things.
Things like him.
And the fact that he’s gone all still under me.
All stiff and harsh, his eyes blacker than the night and his jaw made of granite.
And I bring my hands back to his cheeks. I press my palms over his hard bones and whisper, “Alaric.”
As if me calling his name wakes him up, he breaks his stillness and moves.
