Page 110 of Ominous: Part 1
I feel dizzy. He’s not gripping me too hard. If anything, his touch is light. But his words, what I want…
“Shut up.” I ignore the feel of his hand tightening around my jaw. I hold his gaze instead, adrenaline pumping, pulse flying, I even drop my hands and press them to the wall of the pool at my back. Total surrender. “Shut up, shut up,shut. Up—”
He lets me go.
Confusion cuts off my words.
“I’m not going to do what you want.” He narrows his eyes. “You keep trying to bypass connection, reaching for pain.” He shakes his head, and it could be my drunkenness, or the shadows thrown from the clouds overhead, but I think I see hurt flash in his eyes.
I slam my fist into the water, splashing it up over both of us.
He stares at me, unmoving.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Anger is heat through my limbs as I crash my fist into the water again, stepping toward him. “What thefuckare you talking about? You just held me under, youhurt me, and now you don’t want to do it anymore? What the hell is wrong with you?”
There it is. He snaps back into place again, donning his mask. His smile is twisted, and I have to remember how to breathe. “We shouldn’t drink together, huh?”
I roll my eyes, fed up. “Fuck you.” I turn away from him.
“I told you you’d run,” he says, as I make my way to the steps, wrapping my fingers around the metal pole bisecting them.
I stop, annoyed with him. With myself. General irritation clings to me, and I don’t get it. Everything was fine.Until you thought he might kill you.
Yeah, I guess that coulddampenthe mood.
“I’m not running,” I say.
“Promise?” His voice sounds small.
I swallow a lump in my throat, staring down at my feet below the surface of the water. But I don’t say anything except, “I can’t figure out what you want with me.”
I feel the water move as he steps closer. I see his shadow over mine again, but he doesn’t touch me. “I want to be nice to you.”
“Why?” I spit the word out, like the concept is unfathomable. I’ve had plenty of nice people in my life. Only a couple who were less than. I don’t know why I can’t believe his words. But his actions… they just don’t line up sometimes.
“I don’t know, Eden, it seems like a thing people do when they like each other.”
I ignore the way my stomach jumps with those words buried in his sarcasm.When they like each other.I’m just a way to kill time to him, like he is to me, right?
“Maybe I’m wrong, though, maybe they just punch each other in bathtubs or—”
“You held me down in a pool.” I cling to that.
His breath is over my ear when he says, “Remember what you said?You wanted it.I got these ideas fromyou.”
It’s only a half-truth, about wanting it. He asked. I agreed. I didn’t exactly know what I was signing up for,but it seems pedantic to argue the point.
“Let’s start this over.” He presses his mouth to my shoulder in something that isn’t quite a kiss because there’s teeth. His hands come to my hips, and I can never stay perfectly still when he, or anyone, touches me, but I try really, really hard.
He hugs me close to his body, and for a split second, I imagine him shoving me down again. I imagine him drowning me. I think of what he said, about Winslet’s clothes.
Do I only assume the worst about him? Why? Because it’ll be easier when it ends?
“Stay the night with me.” His teeth hit my skin again, and I keep my hands down by my sides as he makes me feel too many things, all at once. “Stay the night with me and forget about this shit and let me treat you better.I want to, Eden. I wantyou.”
“This will never work.” My worst fear, out loud. It feels good to say it, though, because I know it’s true. Some fears are not far-fetched, anxious thoughts. Some are just inevitable.
“Oh, it won’t?” His breath is warm on my skin, but his tone is too agreeable.
