Hunter uses his teeth to pull my bottom lip between his. He bites me—not to hurt, but it feels like a wordless, deliberate reminder of Sherlock, and it makes my heart kick up a few speeds.
He kisses me softly right after, making me wonder if I imagined it.
“Yes,” he murmurs.
A little less amused, a little more breathless and uneasy, I murmur, “This kinda feels like that.”
Now that the song has ended, the kitchen is dead silent. A foreboding tension suffuses the air around us. It wasn’t there before that kiss. Before that bite.
I can’t shake it now.
“That would make me the villain in your narrative,” he remarks, pulling back to look down at me with those intense brown eyes of his. “Do I look like a villain to you, Riley?”
“No. But the best ones never do.”
His question gives me pause. When I think of Hunter Maxwell, I think warm, loving thoughts. When I look at him, I see beauty, and not just the physical kind.
But if I take a step back and view him through a more detached lens, I wonder if the picture looks different.
Yes, he’s the vulnerable, hurt boy I met on a bridge by pure happenstance, the first boy to ever make my heart beat faster, to ever kiss me and fill me with infatuation.
He’s also the boy who broke my heart on purpose. Who swept in and wrecked the perfectly good relationship I was in. Who causes tremors in my rock-solid relationship with my mother, who tempts me to lie and keep secrets.
He’s jealous and vengeful, and kind of a bully when it suits him. He can be a touch manipulative if he thinks that’ll help him get his way, and he doesn’t stop until he gets what he wants, even when he doesn’t really deserve it. He took my virginity in an act of revenge, and the second time we were together like that… it was angry and spiteful, I didn’t even entirely want it to happen.
Looking at Hunter Maxwell on paper, I guess he does sort of have more villain qualities than hero qualities. It just… doesn’t feel like he does.
If he’s a villain, he’s the smoothest one I’ve ever encountered.
And since the thing he wants seems to be me, I’m not sure I’m cut out to be the hero who opposes him. I’m too emotionally wrapped up in him. He’s too hard for me to resist.
I tell myself I’ve managed to stand my ground, but looking at it objectively, I can see the ways Hunter has worked to erode that ground right from beneath my feet.
I’ve never been as tempted to betray myself as I am when he’s around.
Whatever else he just said, one thing is absolutely correct.
The more time I spend with him, the harder it is to keep resisting.
I know I wanted this weekend as much as he did, but this weekend was reckless. Not just because we’ve been careless with birth control. I’m being reckless by giving him so much access to my heart.
If I keep to this course, he’s going to win.
I can have Hunter or I can have my self-respect, but I can’t keep both.
When I was stronger, I told him that was one fight he would never win, and I meant it.
I have to mean it. I have to.
I refuse to give in when he put us here on purpose. He didn’t make a mistake with Valerie; he made a choice.
A choice to betray us.
A choice to hurt me.
A choice to lose me.
So now I’m lost, and I have to stay that way.
I can’t fall into his kisses or those big brown eyes, no matter how tempted I am.
I can’t say no, either. Not this weekend. It was one of his rules.
Hunter’s smart. He knows the hero can’t win if she’s been completely disarmed.
That’s all right. I can play by his rules and still emerge unscathed.
I may be his, but only for the weekend.
Come Monday, the only person I’ll belong to is me.
Chapter Fifty One
Riley
As it turns out, Monday is farther away than it seems to be.
Holed up with Hunter at his house, it almost feels like being in another world. But we’re not in another world, and the ugly parts of our reality won’t stop poking holes in our happy little bubble.
On Sunday, he gets another text message that pisses him off.
He doesn’t bother trying to hide this one from me, but when he shows it to me, I find myself wishing I hadn’t seen it.
Apparently, there’s a picture going around.
A poorly Photoshopped picture, but the poor Photoshopping doesn’t matter. It was never meant to be convincing, only to illustrate an ugly rumor in the crudest way possible, a way guaranteed to be passed around the whole school. Passed around until it became anonymous, impossible to remember who started it.