Page 40 of The Villain
“What’s the matter, Little Moth? Did you miss me?” he asks, his words slower than usual. He comes closer, wraps a possessive arm around my middle and tugs me toward himself.
I set my hands against his chest. “You smell like a bottle of whiskey.” Which maybe explains the wild look in his eyes.
“Tell me. Did you miss me?” he asks, ignoring my comment, eyes searching mine. “I might like it if someone missed me,” he continues making me wonder where his head is. “I might like it ifyoumissed me, Moth.”
Danger.Warnings ring loud in my head, and I push against him, intending to scoot past him, but he has no intention of allowing that to happen.
“You’re drunk. Let me go,” I say.
“Answer me. Tell me if you missed me.”
“No, Cassian. I didn’t miss you.” It’s true, I think. Maybe I missed him, but not for any reason other than that, without him, I’m pretty much ignored here among his guards. Ignored and preferably locked away. “You’ve been gone, just vanished, after what happened. After you almost killed my brother. Did you kill him? Oh my God, did you? Is that why you’ve stayed away?”
He looks confused, slow to process. He blinks and I see the moment he recalls what I’m talking about because he gets an irritated look on his face. At least he releases me. “That piece of shit is alive. Or he was when I left him. I’m not sure why you care though.”
“I care because he’s my brother.”
“I don’t think it’s him.”
“You don’t think what’s him?”
“Those marks. I think you’d kill him if he did that to you.”
Instinctively, my hand rises to touch the back of my neck, but I catch myself. Why is he so focused on this? “You’re completely drunk. I’m going to bed.”
“Not yet.”
I try to scoot past him, but he blocks my path.
“Get out of my way,” I say, sidestepping him.
He blocks me again planting the flat of his hand against my stomach and walking me backward until my back hits the altar. “Why are you angry?”
“Why am I angry? Really? I’m angry because I haven’t known what the hell is going on. I’m angry because this is three days of my week, and it might be the last week of my life, and you were just gone and?—”
“Last week of your life? What the hell are you talking about?” He shakes his head. “I had business that did not concern you. Don’t be fucking dramatic.”
“Well, I’m your prisoner so everything you do concerns me and it’s my life we’re talking about, so you’ll have to excuse the drama.”
“Don’t fight me, Allegra, not tonight. I’m fucking tired.”
“Well, send me back home and your problem is solved.”
He pushes his hand through his hair again and I see just how exhausted he is. How dark the shadows under his eyes. “It’s been a very long three days,” he says as if to confirm what I’m thinking. He slides his hand up my back and grips a handful of hair, tugging my head backward. There’s a rawness in his eyes, a weariness that runs deep like he hasn’t slept in years, not days, and it’s hard to look at him without feeling a tug, a strange need to lean close, to burrow into his chest and have his arms around me as if we could give each other comfort. As if that’s remotely possible when it’s completely ridiculous.
But the way he’s looking at me, it’s like he’s looking for the same in me. Searching for it in earnest. Like he needs it.
“I never really knew mine,” he finally says, voice different, uncharacteristically vulnerable. “My mother,” he clarifies because he must realize Ihave no idea what the hell he’s talking about. “I never knew her face apart from photos. Never heard her voice.”
That’s not what I expected. Not at all. I stare up at him, see the strange look in his eyes and I’m unsure how to respond. Why is he telling me this? We are enemies, he and I. When I made that comment about forgetting my mom the other day, I don’t know where it came from. I don’t know why I said it and why I said it to him of all people when I haven’t told anyone ever. I’m not even sure I’ve ever consciously thought about it. Why did I tell him and why is he telling me this now? I should never have given him that little bit of me because this? What he’s doing now? The way he looks so lost? It just confuses things, and I’m already confused when it comes to Cassian Trevino.
After my mother’s death, after what happened, I’ve learned how to hide myself, how to remain unseen. How to survive. I’ve learned to trust only myself because I know what those you trust can do to you and I refuse to give anyone that power over me ever again. I won’t be that vulnerable ever again.
“It’s what happens when someone dies,” he says like he read it somewhere.
“Why are you telling me that? I don’t need you to tell me that.”
His eyebrows furrow and I swear what I see in his eyes is hurt. Like he did not expect that rebuttal. Like it’s somehow a refusal of him and I guess it is. We can’t become each other’s confidantes. That’s not what we are. It’s not what this is, and I need to make sure he knows it. I need him to know that I don’t need him, and I don’twant anything from him and he shouldn’t expect anything from me.
