Page 230 of Ominous: Part 1
My face still tingles with his hit. It wasn’t hard, and it didn’thurt,but I didn’t use our word. I didn’t want it, and I didn’t expect it.
These fucking expectations.
“Get off of me, Eli.”
“Tell me all the terrible things you think about me. Are you wishing I was Dominic now?”
“Youhave the hang up about Dom, not me. Maybe because you know he deserves me, and you don’t—”
“Yes, Eden, giving you coke and getting you high so you end up just like your brother certainly means hedeservesyou.” He presses his thumb into my bottom lip, hard.
I pull against his hold on me, arching my hips to give me leverage, but he just smiles, unaffected.
“When something happens to me, you’ll run to him, won’t you?”
I still.
His smile pulls higher. It’s blank, and eerie, and right now, I kind of hate him.Not soulmates. Something terrible. Far more tangled.“We both know I won’t behave forever.”
“That’s your choice.”
He cups my face, squeezing. “Is it?”
“Yes. Whatever is… iswrongwith you, your actions areyour choice.”
The smile leaves his face. He pulls down my bottom lip, glaring at me. He nudges his nose to mine, but it’s rougher than usual. “It’s like,” he says through gritted teeth, words on my mouth, “you don’t know me at all.”
“Maybe I don’t.” I want to hurt him with my words because he hurt me first. “I don’t know you because you won’t let me. Get off of me. I’m going home.”
“I’m not letting you leave me.”
“I’m not fucking asking.”
“Good. The answer would still be no.”
“You slapped me.”
He pulls back then, space between our mouths, but he doesn’t let me go. “You’re mad about that? I thought I could do whatever I wanted to you. Hit you? Almost fuckingkill you,and you’re mad I touched your face? It’s like you don’t want these fantasies at all. Like you’re just trying to be a tough girl, edgy and fucking hardcore, but you’re so fucking fragile—”
“You don’t respect me. You don’t respect anything though, so I’m not sure why I thought I’d be the exception.” My heart hurts with his words. Throwing my insecurities in my face.
His eyes narrow into dark green slits, ringed by black. He looks as if he doesn’t understand me in this moment.
The feeling is mutual. I think back to before I knew him, sitting at the desk a few rows in front of me, the girl beside him who always kicked his chair, his easy smile, polite, correct answers in class, but the feeling something wasoffabout him.
I wanted it, his strangeness.
It drew me to him.
But I never expected to get so close. I never thought, if I did, he’d try to hide his sinister side from me. I naively believed, in my fantasies and my daydreams, if we ever met, he would be the wild animal only I could understand.
I never believed I could tame him. I just assumed he wouldn’t bite me.
“Youarean exception. Toeverything.”He releases me all at once, standing and backing away. I’m too stunned to sit up immediately.
I blink, looking up at the ceiling.
What will we be?
