Page 90 of The Kiss Of Death
“No, you’re nota freak! Neither of you were,” I insisted, my resolve firm. “I don’t care what they all say. It’s not true!”
“Always so naive, Dalia,” he sneered. “I never tried to hide who I am from you, yet you still think you can change me. This word was meant to suffocate me, to demean me, but it was liberating. I’ve accepted who I am, and it’s time for you to do the same.”
“Then show me. Show me who you are with a memory,” I challenged, leaning in closer, my arms planted firmly in the grass. “All I’m asking is for you to trust me to be on your side.”
“On my side,” he repeated, his gaze shifting from my lips to my throat. Then he petted my cheek with a touch surprisingly soft for him. “Very well.”
I nodded and settled on my knees, ready to listen to him.
“I went to school with the butterfly I captured in the jar,” he started, his stormy eyes not wandering away from mine. “The popular kid showed up at my table. I was minding my own business alone, eating the same goddamn sandwich my mother made me everyday, because she didn’t understand the concept of eating in the canteen. He purposely knocked the jar to the ground and crushed the butterfly under his foot. He laughed as she agonized—its legs struggling, its wings broken, its blood inking the floor.”
I gasped. Dad was right. The world was a dark place, where being different meant being excluded.
“He was one of those kids who came to my house, spreading the rumors of us being freaks to his parents. I gave him a bloody nose and was called into the headmaster’s office, where I was forbidden to bring my butterflies to school. I had the best grades, so unfortunately, they couldn’t afford to get rid of me, like the other worried mothers wanted.”
He tore his gaze away from me, staring at the void. His jaw clenched tightly, muscles tensing beneath his skin.
“My mother had no social skills. When she wasn’t offending people who couldn’t handle honesty, she’d blurt out random facts at the worst moments and ramble about it for hours. She didn’t even notice they all made fun of her, taking her for a circus freak, and when they criticized her, it remained engraved forever in her brain. On the contrary, I felt nothing. So I gave them something to talk about other than my mother’s weird behavior.”
I kept still, afraid that if I moved, he’d stop telling me the story of how he had become the bully by being bullied himself. My heart, nevertheless, thudded wildly in my chest.
“After that, I broke each thing they possessed and took what they cherished the most.” Levi’s features contorted into a mask of disgust, his lip curling slightly in a snarl. “Their bikes were deflated, their soccer balls went missing, their phones were hacked. None of them dared to look me in the eyes; they just whispered the word freak behind my back. I humiliated them one by one because I wasbetterthan them. I made each of them pay for my own amusement. I made them fear me.”
A chill swept through the air, and I cinched my coat snugly around my neck while strands of his hair veiled the blackness of his gaze. Since Levi couldn’t change people’s nature, he would change the outcome and have the power of the narrative. That was why he’d never talked to me when we were children. He was mistrustful, waiting for me to treat him like he had been treated. So instead of being pitied, he preferred to be hated.
“You defended your mother,” I whispered, the words caught in my throat.
“And all I ever got in return was just blunt ignorance,” he cursed, meeting my eyes again. “She never saw me; she keptrepeating that she had failed, but it wasn’t about her or the goddamn world she was living in.”
I reached out, my fingers curling around Levi’s hand.
The hard truth was that deep, deep down, Levi wanted to be loved by someone.
For someone not to leave him.
“If I would have been at your school, I’d have stood by your side.” I smiled. “You wouldn’t have had any other choice but to accept my friendship.”
“We’ll never be friends, Dalia. Not in this lifetime, not in the next.”
Oh, we so were becoming friends.Nine years too late. Guided by an unseen force, I crawled to him and closed my eyes. With a deliberate slowness, I pressed my lips against his soft ones, savoring the moment as if time had frozen. I mirrored our first kiss amid the solemn quiet of death’s embrace around us.
“It’s the first time I didn’t have to trick you into kissing me, my little thief.”
I pulled back, my heart pounding in my chest. “Second time, and well, you have kissable lips.”
But Levi wasn’t about to let me escape so easily. With a firm grip on my nape, he pulled me back toward him, his possessive kiss sending shivers down my spine. “You can’t kiss me like that and back off.”
“What’s next?” I moaned between our kisses.
We were diving headfirst into our first official make-out session on a date. I wasn’t supposed to kiss him until the end of the date.Screw the rules.
He handed me my violin case. “Time for you to make the world beautiful again.”
“You’re getting moody because you’re starving. Let’s go eat somewhere nice,” I groaned, dissatisfied with the cheap trailer food she had made me buy and the wrinkled, dirty coat I was wearing.
This date didn’t fucking go as planned. A cemetery was like Disneyland for Dalia, and I wished I was buried three feet under at this moment.
“I’m fine,” she grumbled.Clearly not.“You don’t need to spend money to impress me. This is nice.”
