Page 178 of Falling in Reverse

“Answer my question first,” I dodge, because he’s not about to go do what I think he may be producing in his brain.

Again, South Shore.

“What was it again?” he grinds out, and I stop, making him come with me and turn to face my glare. “What?”

“Are you looking to get yourself killed? I have my sisters here. This is my home.”

“And?”

“Reeve,” I say slowly. “You’re in South Shore. Anyone could recognize you here.”

“That’s the good thing about being a nobody,” he tells me without emotion. His normal mellowed-out vibes void and depleted and my first thought is that I hate it. Reeve has always been that one who’s set me at ease. The easy one. “No one remembers who I am, so I don’t have to skate around with a target on the back of my head.”

“You’re one head of the Forsaken Crew.”

“So?”

Okay, something’s up.

“Reevie.” I say his nickname again because that seems to soothe him. “You’re one head of the Forsaken Crew who waltzed into a South Shore block party.” He continues to gape at me, causing my hand to reach up to his forehead to see if he’s sweating. “I think you’re ill.”

“Would you take care of me if I was?”

A smile breaks through my lips. “Why are you the way that you are?”

“How’s that?” His hazel eyes don’t budge from mine, sending a rippling effect down my body that only desires to…I don’t know.

While my feelings are pretty set in stone with Torin and Cairo, both of them pains in my ass, Reeve doesn’t fit in that category.

He’s just a dude.

And if you didn’t think long and hard about it, you’d forget he was part of the rival crew to my town. Reeve is the kind of guy that makes your toes curl. Those hazels so fucking clear and pretty that one look and he’s got you within his tight grip.

“Just”—I wave my hand between us, cutting into the unmalleable tension and unable to come up with the right forming of sentences at first—“you. You’re just you.”

“Is that a disease or—” I scoff-chuckle off his temperament that hasn’t matched what I’ve seen from him so far.

“Absolutely not. You’re…refreshing. However, I’m a little frazzled with your mental health. You seem upset or even suicidal, as you so put it to me before when I strode through enemy territory.”

“Maybe I am.” Those jumbled greens and browns plummet to my mouth. “Or maybe I just wanted to see you alone.”

If I wasn’t totally conscious of the yielding pull from him before, I’m definitely perceptive of it now. He’s everything a mother would warn her daughter to stay away from—handsome, a charmer, that smile that could make you wanna do anything, the heartbreaker. Reeve seems like the kind of guy who could easily slither inside your head and soul and combust it into a million pieces with the right words and that current way he’s looking at me right now.

I’m almost not able to stand it and keep my head together.

“So you decided to come to my street.” My comment doesn’t get countered with an answer, only the piercing way his eyes are pinning me to the cracked concrete beneath me. “I like it when you use words.”

“I like it when you look at me when no one’s around,” he puts forth. “That first time we met…you eye-fucked me like you didn’t give a shit if I saw you or not.”

“I didn’t.”

“And that’s why I like you, McQueen. When we’re alone, you settle. You’re yourself. When I’m close, you fight that attraction. And I get it, we’re sworn enemies, after all.” He takes one step, a singular leap that I’m not going to ward off. “However, I think you and I could make an explosion to where these stupid-ass old-timers who started all this are going to hear and shake after we break through this barrier.”

“Reeve—”

“You don’t have to bullshit me right now,” he quips, biting down on his lower lip. His nose ring moving along with his mouth. “But you’ll give me the respect to not lie to me, won’t you, McQueen?”

I’m immediately nodding before I can think not to or to do.

---