A Gorgeous Villain (St. Mary's Rebels 2)

Also, his hoodies are his favorite thing to wear.

Because he always has them on — well, except in summers but still. That and his dark jeans.

Black and white.

And needless to say, girls around town are obsessed with his hoodies.

They stare at them. They talk about them. They want to touch his hoodies and play with the strings. They want to wear his hoodies too.

Which from what I’ve heard is a privilege.

Not every girl gets to wear them, only the special ones, and so it’s a coveted thing: Reed Roman Jackson and his hoodies.

Even now the girl who’s wrapped around him is tracing the fabric, pulling on the strings, fingering the edge of his sleeve at his wrist as she laughs at something he’s said.

Stop staring, Callie.

Right.

I need to stop staring. But the thing is that it’s very hard to do.

See, that’s his magic I think.

The dark magic that I was talking about.

It makes him glow.

Like his very skin absorbs whatever light is in the vicinity, leaving the rest of the world in darkness.

So much so that the only thing you can see, the only thing that you can focus on, is him and nothing else.

But.

But, but, but.

I’m one of the Thornes. I’m my brothers’ sister. I know better.

So I should look away, and I do.

Well, I try to.

Because the moment I make the decision to look away, he decides to look up at me.

And I step back.

As if someone has pushed me. As if he has pushed me. He has put his hands on me and I had to step back, had to, under the weight of his touch.

The strength of his gaze, his wolf eyes that land right on me.

And now that he has found me, he’s not letting me go.

He’s absolutely not letting me leave. My legs won’t even move. They won’t.

Because they somehow, the traitors, know that he wants me here.

It’s in the way that he slowly straightens up, the way he completely abandons interest in the girl beside him. It’s in the way something breaks open on his face, on his gorgeous, gorgeous face made up of sharp, smooth, fascinating lines as soon as he sees me.

Something that looks a lot like interest. Curiosity.

Something that makes his pretty eyes go slightly wide followed by a tiny smirk on his lips.

It’s like… he’s excited that I’m here.

It’s like he’s thinking, now the fun begins…

I’m not sure how I know all of this. But I do.

It’s not as if I’m an expert on Reed Roman Jackson.

I mean, we haven’t even talked before.

This may be the first time that he’s looked at me, and this morning when I woke up, I had no idea that today would be the day he’d look at me for the first time ever.

So yeah, I have no clue how I know all this except that I feel exposed under his eyes. I feel vulnerable and fragile. I feel like I’ve somehow walked into an evil den.

His evil den.

Which isn’t that far from the truth.

I am in his evil den and I need to move. Right now.

I need to run. I need to…

Suddenly there’s a commotion and Reed’s attention breaks away from me. And I think I draw my first breath since he found me in this chaos.

It’s Tempest. The source of commotion, I mean. She’s running toward Reed.

Yikes.

I’d completely forgotten about her. I don’t even know when she broke away from me and made her way through the crowd to go to her brother.

Who definitely looks surprised right now.

He even stands up from his kingly perch just as Tempest launches herself at him. Squealing, she wraps her arms and legs around him and hugs him tight.

And right in front of my eyes, I see a new side of Reed.

A side that hugs his sister back just as tightly. A side that smiles — a true smile — and laughs when his sister moves away and doesn’t stop talking. A side that looks at her with a fondness that I’ve never seen before.

Or rather, that I’ve only seen on my brothers’ faces when I surprise them with a new pair of knitted socks or some chocolate chip cookies.

Right in front of my eyes, I discover that Reed Roman Jackson, the gorgeous villain, my brother’s rival and enemy, loves his little sister.

Something moves in my chest at this.

Something achy and swollen.

And God, I have to leave now.

I have to.

The longer I stay here, the more restless I feel. The more likely it becomes that someone might recognize me and tell Ledger.

It bugs me to leave Tempest like this because I really like her. But I have to go.

So taking a deep breath and with a last look at Tempest talking to Reed, who’s chuckling, I turn around and start walking.

I hunch my shoulders and duck my head, trying to make myself as invisible as possible so no one pays me any attention. Although I’m not sure that I’m walking in the right direction or the direction that I came from.