Pretty When She Cries - Black Mountain Academy

Inevitably, my eyes drift back to Kailani. She’s restless, rolling around, her leg falling out of the sheet. I’m trying to imagine what else is beneath that sheet. Does she sleep naked? Am I in her dreams? Her nightmares?

My chest heaves, and as if she can sense me, she sits upright in her bed, searching for monsters in the shadows. It takes a minute for her eyes to adjust, but when she notices me on the lounge chair, she makes a tiny noise of protest. The bedside lamp comes on as she shifts her legs over the side of the mattress and shoves the covers away. To my disappointment, she’s not as naked as I’d hoped. Apparently, she wears a tiny white tank top and shorts to sleep in.

“Um, hello, psycho stalker.” She snaps her fingers at me to get my attention. “Mind telling me what you’re doing here in the middle of the night?”

I shrug the elbows tucked behind my head. “Thought I’d catch some zzz’s.”

“Are you drunk?” she asks slowly, as though my comprehension isn’t up to speed.

“I don’t drink anymore.”

She snorts like it’s impossible to believe. “Just the blood of undeserving souls, right, Killian?”

“Don’t call me that.”

The tension in my voice gives her pause, and she grabs a remote from her nightstand, using it to turn on the overhead lights too. When she looks at me again, her eyebrows pinch together, and I know she can see the red imprint from my mother’s hand across my face.

“Are you okay?” She blurts the question before she can help herself and then immediately shakes her head like she regrets it.

“I knew you were still in there somewhere.” I offer her a lazy smile. “Should I call the priest? Maybe it’s time to perform an exorcism.”

She sighs. “Why are you here, Landon?”

“I needed a place to crash. Just for the next few hours. No biggie.”

“You know that’s not going to happen.” She crosses her arms, retreating into her uncertainty.

My eyes do a slow, leisurely perusal of her face, her skin, her hair. It would be a hell of a lot easier to hate her if she didn’t look like everything I ever needed. Even now, I can’t tell if she’s playing a game or if she really is nervous around me. At times, the truth seems so obvious, and with most people, it is. But Kail isn’t so easy to figure out. She’s either the most deceptive liar I’ve ever met, or she truly is delusional enough to believe I’m the bad guy.

“Has it ever occurred to you that if I were really such a threat, something would have happened by now?”

She blinks, and her gaze grows distant, and I know what she’s thinking. Something already did happen. If either of us was brave enough to hash that shit out, maybe we’d find some sort of understanding.

“Why aren’t you at your own house?” She fiddles with the edge of her blanket, buying herself time to decide how to handle this.

“Because I don’t want to be.”

“Well, you can’t stay here,” she murmurs, but the hard edge in her voice has disappeared.

Her face is a battlefield of emotions, and I’d bet all the money in my bank account her thoughts are impossibly loud. She can’t deny the tension between us is laced with something dark and hungry. We can hate each other until the day we die, but that doesn’t change the fact that we want each other too. I’ve wanted her since the afternoon she showed up on my doorstep, like a gift straight from heaven. Now, I’m beginning to wonder if she was a gift straight from hell instead.

My gaze swoops over every curve on her body like a winding highway. She keeps trying to lose weight, but she has no idea how many guys wonder what those curves would feel like beneath their palms. It’s the thing that bothers me most about her transformation. She’s trying to convert herself from a renaissance piece into a digitized, lifeless printout. Kail could never see her body was exactly why the other girls felt she was a threat. She’s a classical film star, and everyone else is just an extra.

“Landon.” She snaps her fingers again, breaking my stare. “Did you hear me?”

“Yes,” I groan. “Alright, I’ll go. On one condition.”

Suspicion creases her features when I sit up.

She shakes her head. “There are no conditions. This isn’t a negotiation.”

“Everything is open to negotiation.” I smirk. “If it weren’t, you’d have already maced my ass with that canister on your nightstand.”

“You know, I’m beginning to think you actually want me to.” She rolls her eyes. “But sure, okay, I’ll bite. What do you want?”

“One kiss and I’ll leave.”

“You’re insane.” A pretty blush spreads down her neck. “You know that, right?”

“‘With long intervals of horrible sanity.’”