Yeah, I know. What the hell was wrong with me, right?
Therapy anyone?
“So, that’s why you offered to show me around? To antagonize my best friend?” I asked.
I couldn’t take the silence anymore, or the thoughts circulating in my head.
“No,” he replied bluntly, walking past another row of black lockers. “You remember that saying—keep your friends close?”
“And your enemies closer?” I finished.
“Yeah.”
“We’re enemies? Wow. Didn’t know I affected you that much,” I quipped. Judas clearly had more issues than I had counted on. Maybe he’d join me in therapy; lord knows we’d both come out as certified.
“We’re not enemies and we’re not friends. We’re something that holds more meaning and can’t be labeled.”
Um. What? “That doesn’t make sense. What does that even mean?”
“It’s not supposed to make sense. It’s meant to be twisted, dirty, and chaotic. Like us.”
Tension filled my pinched expression. He sounded like the Riddler. And I had never been good at solving puzzles.
“There is no us,” I rebuffed when I failed to come up with anything else.
He turned into a staircase and began ascending, leaving me to follow.
“Keep telling yourself that.”
“You know there’s this insane thing called consent? Maybe you should Google it.”
He laughed softly. “You remember that monster I was talking about?”
“Hard to forget it.”
“Let’s just say he’s ready to reclaim what’s his.”
“Reclaim?” I frowned. “How do you reclaim something that was never yours to begin with?”
Judas slowed and turned around. “This is you.” He nodded to a black, medieval style door.
British Literature. Yay me.
“How did you know what my first class was without looking at my schedule?”
“I knew your schedule before you knew you were coming here.”
My composure slipped and I gaped at him. How would he know that unless he was in on my transfer? And why was he so casual about invading what should have been personal?
“You’ve got a real problem with violating people’s privacy, you know that?”
He looked right at me, his face a perfect mask of stoicism. “When it comes to you, there are no boundaries.”
Oh, this fucking guy.
“I think I’ll be the decider of that, since I’m a big girl and all, capable of making her own decisions.”
“I disagree. You’ve made enough bad choices as it is. Seems to me I stepped in and took that ability from you just in time.”
I choked on a laugh. This could not be real life. “I don’t know what movies or books you’ve been reading, but being a self-entitled asshole isn’t going to get you anywhere with me. And to reiterate what you said, we aren’t, nor will we ever be friends. So, you know what? Kindly fuck off.”
He looked at me for what felt like an extremely long minute, with no immediate change in facial expression. A sinister smile gradually spread across his face, causing chills to race down my spine in parallels.
He reached out and cupped my chin. “I think I like you as much as I hate you. I’m somewhere between wanting to tear you apart and consume every inch of you.”
“You—”
“Be a good girl and go to class now. While you’re in there, think about how good it’s going to feel when I fuck you with my hands wrapped around your throat.”
He let me go and turned to the door, knocking on it twice. He walked off just as it opened.
British Literature was exactly as I expected it to be.
Boring as hell.
Unlike at my old school, Pesadilla Prep didn’t believe in going easy on the students the first day.
Miss Richards came off like a real hard ass too. Class wouldn’t have been so bad if people would’ve stopped staring at me. The Brenda Songs replica was also in here. She’d tried to get my attention when I first came in, and I pretended not to see her.
I know, how petty.
This was Judas’ fault.
But whatever, the extra attention didn’t bother me. I could handle it.
What did bother me was the fact that Judas had just openly stated that he hated me. I didn’t like him in any capacity beyond a sick type of infatuation and intense physical attraction. After what went down between us, that seemed natural. Or perhaps disturbingly unnatural. For him to hate me…that was a little extreme. Especially after what we’d done.
Then there was that kiss from just a bit ago. It wasn’t a big deal really. I was more pissed he’d taken liberties with me that I hadn’t granted. Not that my body cared.
And that promise he’d just left me with…
I could picture it, exactly how he’d do it. How he’d done it the first time. With an internal groan, I mentally flopped my head onto my desk. It was too early in the day to be worried about this bullshit.
I did my best to pay attention, but it was pointless. Judas had temporarily evicted all thoughts to do with anything but him from my head and taken up sole residence.