He leans over and yanks me on top of him, sending loose pages floating down to the floor. I squeal and squirm, which he takes as an invitation to tickle me relentlessly. He finds that sweet spot under my chin, and I am chortling and choking at the same time as he laughs.
He gives me a moment to breathe. Somehow I’ve landed half in his lap and half on his bed, and he looks down at me, grinning.
“I didn’t know you were ticklish, Weathersby,” he says.
Uh oh.
Then he resumes, and I’m a wild animal. I thrash and try to pry his fingers away from me. At some point, my feet hit the wall with a thud, and I’m laughing so hard I’m crying.
He stops, but he doesn’t give me a moment to breathe. He yanks me closer and his lips collide against mine. He tastes like the cinnamon bubblegum he seems borderline obsessed with, some fancy version of Big Red. He holds me there, his thumb underneath my chin, his fingers cradling my head.
His tongue slips past my lips and explores my mouth. Tingles race down my spine and radiate like exploding fireworks toward my fingertips and toes. When we finally break apart, his eyes are shielded by long lashes. His heart beats steady beneath my palm.
“I think I just ruined whatever you were working on,” I croak.
“Impossible,” he says. “You make everything better.”
Somehow I know he doesn’t just mean objects. He means people. He means himself. My papier-mâché heart combusts into flames.
I glance over at the sheets crumpled next to us, glimpsing a treble clef and notes. My…my—Even my mind chokes on the word—my lover, who used to call Molly the Thing, who watched as his friends made her life Hell, isn’t made of anger and retribution and hate. He’s an artist. The thought brings a smile to my lips.
On his nightstand, Ian’s tablet dings with a notification. He frowns, and I watch as the debate plays out. He wants to ignore it, but what if it’s his parents? What if it’s important?
He stretches for it lazily and unlocks the screen. For a moment, I watch as he reads, the tinge of LED light painting his face blue before he stills.
I don’t even think he’s breathing, and although his eyes blaze, he doesn’t utter a word. He’s clenching his jaw so tight, my teeth hurt for him.
“Is everything okay?” I ask.
He doesn’t reply, but I already know the answer. It’s written on the furrow of his brow and the rigidity of his shoulders. I glance down at the tablet.
He’s on a website, and from the looks of it, it appears devoted to the exploits of socialites in New York. There’s a photograph at the top of the page, dated yesterday. It’s blurry, like someone took it through a telescopic lens, but I can make out Ian’s father dressed in the same suit I met him in and his mother in her emerald ball gown.
Ian’s mother is flush against the wall, her face turned so her cheek flattens against the silver-and-black argyle wallpaper, her teeth gritted together. Ian’s father is behind her, trapping her hands behind her back. The photograph only shows his profile, but I can see the pull of his lips over his teeth with his snarl and feel the bite of his hands at her wrists. My eyes flick to the title in bold print, Billionaire Becketts Get Kinky at Annual Auction.
My stomach rolls. I don’t understand because it seems so clear to me that this isn’t an act of passion. There’s no enjoyment in Mrs. Beckett’s gaze, no anticipation, no excitement. There is nothing but fear. Her monster isn’t in a closet. He’s escaped.
“Are you okay?” I ask Ian.
He turns suddenly to face me, sending my arm falling from his shoulder.
“Why do you care?” he snarls.
I know he doesn’t mean it. He can’t mean it, but it feels like someone has carved up my chest and dug out all the warmth.
“Because I am yours, and you are mine,” I manage, but the words—his words originally professed to me in the library at Voclain—shake with uncertainty. Just like I do.
He stares at me, unblinking. I am as small as a grain of sand beneath his feet. He shoves me off him and stands, looking down at me.
The spark I normally find in his gaze is extinguished. He is distant, shielded off from the world. He’s rebuilt every wall I fought, brick by brick, to tear down, and it’s taken him less than a minute.
“We are only together because I didn’t give you a choice.” His words are emotionless, matter-of-fact, like he’s reading off his grocery list and not destroying my heart. “At the beginning of the semester, you hated me, Harlow. You didn’t want anything to do with me.”
“That’s not true,” I say, but as the words leave my mouth, I’m not entirely sure whether I am speaking truth or lies.
“Yeah, it is. I dragged you into my world, and then I refused to let you go.” His lips thin with his disgust. “You don’t belong, and you don’t have to pretend to belong anymore, sweetness.” His words don’t sound sweet at all. They are sour and bitter and slice deeply.
“Go,” he says, not even bothering to look at me. “Please, just fucking go.”
I want to wrap my arms around him and hold him until it all goes away.
I want to stroke his hair and tell him it’ll be all right.
I want to go back to five minutes ago.
“Fuck!” The scream rips from behind his teeth so violently his gums should bleed. He throws the tablet, and I flinch as the screen shatters against the wall and falls to the floor, the picture of his mother and father cracking with the glass.
The image of him standing there, his shoulders pinched tight with rage, his hands shaking at his sides, wavers in my tears before I turn
