Page 40 of Pretty Threats

If I talked to my dad about my complicated feelings for Killian, Dad might tell me the reason Killian’s consistent obsession with me feels good is because my mom left me without a second thought. She was supposed to love me unconditionally and to want me with her always. Instead, she discarded me like last week’s leftovers.

It makes no sense that Killian’s presence in my life would be more intense and consistent than a parent’s, especially given his antisocial personality disorder. Since sociopaths really only care about themselves, most of them would have replaced me the minute I started making things difficult. And it’s not like Killian would have a hard time finding someone else. People have always been drawn to him. I really can’t understand why he hasn’t moved on. But then, I’ve never really understood why he is the way he is.

From his actions, he seems to want everyone but me to stay away from him. If he were ordinary, like the rest of us, he would’ve found it very easy to be ignored in high school. Many kids were. But he was larger than life. Exceptional in every way. The best student. The best athlete. The best-looking. He was cool in that singular way that people who truly don’t care about popularity can be. A complete enigma.

Because there was no ignoring his blindingly perfect—at least on the surface—existence, he mattered to people. Our classmates wanted Killian to like them, and they wanted him at their parties. Which increased my own popularity because, for Killian, there was one person who mattered, and I was her. So if they invited me to things and I came, he would show up.

My thumb rubs the side of my coffee cup absently as I stare at the peach sky. There was powerful armor that surrounded me because of his attraction to me.

I remember feeling very self conscious at a pool party. I overheard one of the girls say I had the body of an eleven-year-old boy. A football player agreed I “had no tits at all.” They decided if I didn’t fill out by nineteen, I should really invest in plastic surgery.

I remember standing silent, unable to respond. Until that moment, I’d felt good in my sleek, black two-piece swimsuit. The scorpion sting of their words forced me into a shady corner of the yard. I stood under an umbrella, trying to journal in my phone, which my dad always suggests as a good way of processing painful emotions.

But before I could tap one thumb against my phone’s screen, Killian showed up. He’d spent a lot of the summer rowing and swimming at Liam’s house. Now his all-muscle, six-three frame was sun-bronzed and breathtaking. Like a god. That’s what I thought when he pulled off his shirt. Apparently I wasn’t the only one to think so. All the conversation around the pool seemed to stop as everyone looked at him.

Killian chose the only lounge chair with an empty one next to it. After setting his shoes and socks under the one he was sitting on and tossing his shirt on the other, he strolled around the pool to where my wrap and bag rested. He picked them up and came to where I was standing half concealed by the tiki bar. He ignored the ice-cold sparkling juices and frozen mock-tails.

“We’re sitting there.” He cocked his head to the lounge chairs centered in front of the pool’s deep end. “Let’s go.”

And I did.

Killian’s unwavering interest in me did more for me in that moment than any amount of journaling would’ve done. It conveyed a secondary popularity on me and somehow validated my worth.

Yes, in a baseball cap and slouchy clothes, my body could pass for a middle-school boy’s, but there was no way I could be completely self-conscious about my looks when Killian liked me for myself.

Settled on their loungers, the people who moments ago dissected my appearance unfavorably now looked at me with blatant jealousy.

“Killian?”

He rolled onto his side to face me and waited for me to speak. Even that small action was a stamp of approval, seeing as he hadn’t acknowledged anyone else, not even the guy whose party it was.

“Um, what do you think about me maybe getting some work done?”

“What for?” He squinted in the sun, his pupils pinpoints, making the blue of his irises seem like lapis rock. “Why renovate your bedroom when you’re not even gonna live there after next year?”

I covered the surprised laugh with my hand. “No, not on my room.” It amused me that, at times, someone so smart could be clueless. “I meant on myself.” I gestured to my chest. “On my body. Maybe breast implants?”

His face shuttered. “No.”

Immediately feeling better, I kept my gaze fixed on him, looking for any sign he might be lying to be polite. “Other people think I should.” My eyes darted to the people in question. “You have to admit parts of me are too skinny. Even when I work out, my legs are still sticks.”

His expression remained unyielding.

“Haven’t you ever thought I’d look better with bigger boobs?” I pressed.

“No.”

The tension in my body eased as the last of my doubts drifted off at his stalwart conviction. My happiness in that moment was golden.

Killian’s expression darkened. “There’s no fucking way I’d let anyone cut you open and put their hands inside you. To change you.” He put his arms out, like a priest putting them above the communion in blessing. “You look exactly the way you’re supposed to look. Exactly perfect. And that’s the way you’re staying.”

Perfect. That word itself was perfection at the time. Because Killian’s opinion mattered to me. More than my own or anyone else’s. Even my missing mom’s.

During high school, it was addictive… that feeling of having his attention completely to myself. Is there anything better than feeling chosen by the person everyone else wants?

“Hey,” Killian says, as he emerges now from the Corvette.

Being pulled back to the present, back to Granthorpe and my current situation of being the semi-prisoner of a group of dangerous young men, isn’t what I want. What I’d really love to do is bask in the memories that came before things fell apart for Killian and me.

---