I jumped, turning around to face the voice that’d interrupted me. There stood the most beautiful boy I’d ever seen. He leaned against one of the bookcases, dressed in black jeans and a t-shirt, his jet-black hair falling in his face, piercing blue eyes mesmerizing. My gaze settled on his full lips, adorned with a silver loop on the right side.
My eyes trailed down his lean yet muscular body, and I couldn’t help but notice his thick arms and neck, covered in tattoos. He didn’t look like he belonged in a house like this, or in a town like this one. He looked like someone who didn’t want anyone to notice them, but I noticed.
I noticed so much that I couldn’t yank my eyes away.
“What are you doing in here?” he asked, his voice deep and demanding. I was stunned.
I stood frozen, not sure what to do.
The way he looked at me was like he was trying to set me on fire. His eyes looked to be filled with hatred and I wasn’t sure why. Those hard eyes traveled down my body and made me feel exposed and vulnerable. His index finger came out and he trailed the top edge of the leather bound book in my hands, his fingers slender just like Monica’s.
I noticed the letters tattooed boldly.
H-A-T-E.
2
“She was more than human to me. She was a Fairy, a Sylph, I don’t know what she was - anything that no one ever saw, and everything that everybody ever wanted. I was swallowed up in an abyss of love in an instant. There was no pausing on the brink; no looking down, or looking back; I was gone, headlong, before I had sense to say a word to her.”
- Charles Dickens, David Copper-field
Kyler
What the fuck is she doing here?
The little mouse stepped back, but she wasn’t going to get away that easily. I liked that she was uncomfortable; it made me want to be the cat.
I caught how she looked at me, it’s how most people saw me. I was a scary looking fucker and I liked it. I didn’t want anyone in my life, it’s why I looked the way I did: one look at me and most people turned away. My appearance made mothers cross the street with their small children, just to avoid breathing the same air as me. I knew the piercings and tattoos made people uneasy, they didn’t know what to make of me.
The only son of Edward Sinclair, looking like a prison inmate.
I smirked at the mouse, arching my eyebrow when she didn’t answer me right away. She took a clumsy step back, losing her balance and falling into a wingback chair, the old copy of Pride and Prejudice falling out of her hand and hitting the floor with a thud. I don’t know why I smirked then, but my lips curled up as I just stood there watching her, leaning back on the bookcase.
She looked up at me, her eyes pretty in a naive way. I didn’t like how the warmth in them made me feel. People with warm eyes always think they can fix shit. They annoy me. They usually have no idea how life works and live in one of those happily-ever-after books. She’d probably go on to have some boring life with a guy who was nice enough, pop out a few kids, and then die—not really doing anything wrong, but not really living. Those eyes made me want to be cruel. I felt a small tinge of guilt but I squashed that shit quickly. Humans are mostly bad; none of them deserves much. The mouse wasn’t any different.
My eyes took in her body; she didn’t look like most girls my age. Most of them were rail thin, so thin that they looked like they barfed more than they put into their mouths. Not this chick though, she had curves. Some would call her fat, but not me. I liked how soft she looked. In another life I might have called her pretty, beautiful even.
This girl didn’t seem to give a fuck about fashion; she looked like she was going to church, wearing her Sunday best. She was probably a naive little thing; she probably spent her whole life never experiencing anything more painful than breaking a fucking nail.
I crossed the distance between us, wanting to invade her space. A sick part of me liked that she had nowhere to go now that she was in a chair. I leaned over and put my arms on either side of her, getting really close to the little mouse. Her warm eyes rounded, her pretty, pink lips forming an O.
“Are you deaf? I asked you a question. What the fuck are you doing here?” I asked, moving my face closer so there wasn’t much space between us. I could see her breathing growing shallower, her pupils dilating as her heavy tits moved in rapid succession.
I wasn’t sure if I was scaring her or turning her on.
“Mrs. Sinclair told me to come up here to find a book,” she said, her voice shaking.
“Did she now?” Monica really needed to understand that people weren’t welcome here. It was the only fucking place in this house I could stand.
I looked the little mouse in the eyes, letting the silence around us take the lead.
In my life, I’ve learned one thing: people don’t like silence. Most of them would talk about anything just to avoid it. Yet this little mouse seemed to welcome it, she looked at me, eyes startled but still gazing into mine, holding her ground. That show of strength never happened to me. There she sat, calm
