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Mary Ellis, Adrian’s mom, is even more elusive. She spends her free time hosting charity events, and has only ever done one interview – some Us Weekly exclusive about her loving, thirty-year marriage to Edward and how motherhood has been her single greatest joy in life. I wonder if she knows what her “single greatest joy” spends his time doing.
And I hate the wide grin he’s giving me. I hate the way his cheeks flush from exertion. I hate his dark eyes, twinkling with victory. Because when he looks like this and he smiles like that, I almost forget he’s a killer.
“I assumed my growing interest was because I’d never had a friend before,” he confesses. “It wasn’t until this morning that I realized I’d misread our situation entirely.”
“Well, you’re right on one account. I’m not thinking very clearly,” he huffs, his voice thick with frustration. “Which is the problem. I’m always thinking clearly. I don’t worry. I don’t get emotional. I am always in control. Of everything. Except when it comes to you. You do this to me.”
“Please,” he cuts me off sharply. “This morning, when you looked at him, it took every ounce of my self-control to avoid walking over to Freddy Rook and bashing his skull in till he was no longer worth looking at. You do this to me.”
But you and me –” “Could be perfect together,” he cuts in. “Till you decide we’re not,” I snap back. “The stakes are high. For me more than you. And I’m not entirely convinced you won’t decide I look better six feet under than on your arm the first time I piss you off.”
“Well, I never said I was a saint. Or above blackmail. You should get used to it.” “Should I?” “Yes.” There’s no room for argument in his tone. “You’re mine now.”
“Just what I’ve always wanted,” I reply sarcastically. “A relationship built on a foundation of blackmail and secrets.”
Freddy is smiling, and Adrian is smiling, and I’m smiling – but it feels like I’ve been strapped with chew toys and thrown into the ring with a golden retriever and a pissed-off panther. One of us is blissfully unaware of the danger here, and it’s not me.
“There’s nothing to be ashamed of, sweetheart,” he murmurs. “This part of you…it only confirms what I realized earlier this week.” That we’re perfect together,
I’ve got a stubborn streak a mile long and I never learned to share. What belongs to me –” He hooks a finger under my chin. “ – belongs to me. If you think I’m going to entertain someone else even thinking they might have a chance with you, you must not have been paying very close attention tonight.”
“You can choose to keep Freddy around. You can even choose to pursue him romantically if you wish. I just don’t think you’ll like the outcome of those particular choices.”
“You’re a monster,” I whisper. He just blinks at me – unfazed. “You knew that already,” he says quietly and strokes the mark he left on my neck. “But I’m a monster infatuated.”
“You don’t need to be worried, sweetheart.” He swipes a thumb over my furrowed brow. “I’d never let my family touch you. There’s only one Ellis you need to concern yourself with.”
Adrian’s parting gift strapped to my back– a new leather bookbag. It’s not a big deal. You need a backpack anyway, he’d said, but the subtext was clear: I needed a backpack that hadn’t come from Freddy.
“When you confessed your feelings for me, I joked that we’d have a relationship built on secrets and blackmail, but I’m not sure I actually grasped what that meant at the time.” “Well, it’s not all blackmail,” he shoots back. “Maybe only fifty percent.”
“People are easy, you know. You figure out what they’re looking for – praise, admiration, money, social prestige – and you feed it to them so slowly that they never realize they’re eating out of your hand to begin with. But you…”
“I can’t feed you a line. I can’t curate a version of myself that you’ll respond to because you already know exactly who I am. It’s why I’m so drawn to you.
“And now I don’t know what to do with all these…” He shakes his head. “Feelings. You say that I’m standing on solid ground, but you’ve stolen every bit of it right out from underneath me. You have a hold on me that nobody ever has.
These three weeks…I couldn’t stand it. All I can think about is you. I can’t stop worrying that if I let you slip through my fingers – even for a moment – you’ll decide you’re done with me, and there will be nothing I can do to convince you otherwise. And ...
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“Sweetheart?” He gives me an expectant look. “You sound like the devil on my shoulder,” I mutter. “I’ll gladly be your devil.”
“It’s like an…impulse. I need to know everything about you. I need to see where you’ve grown up. I need to see your family. I need to see every single part of your life – past and present – till I’m sure I know you better than you know yourself. It’s not a want. I have to.”
“This isn’t his fault.” “He cornered you in a garage and held you at knife-point,” Adrian says flatly. “I’d kill him for that alone.”
“You’ve got a lot of moral hang-ups for someone who could’ve called the cops but, instead, called me.”
“You take everything I give you. You take it all, and you never break. You never even waver. You withstand me in a way that nobody else ever could. That’s how I know you’re mine. We are made for each other.”
“You’re mine,” he affirms. “There’s no going back – not anymore. This is forever. Do you understand me, sweetheart?”
“It doesn’t matter if you change your mind,” he groans. “It doesn’t matter if you wake up one day and decide you hate me. I’ll never let you go.” His pace quickens, but his strokes have begun to get sloppy. “I don’t care what I have to do. Who I have to kill. I’ll break you into tiny pieces and rebuild you myself if it means I get to keep you. You’re never leaving me, sweetheart.”
“You’re going to come to Harvard with me.” My answering moan doesn’t seem to be good enough for him. “Say it,” he grinds out. “Say you’re going to come to Harvard.”
“Say we broke up –” “We wouldn’t break up.” The flat, knee-jerk answer is exactly what I’m expecting to come out of his mouth. “But if we did –” “We wouldn’t.” “But if, for some reason, we did –” “We, for some reason, wouldn’t.” An exasperated sigh escapes. “Okay, in a hypothetical situation, if we –” “There is no situation, hypothetical or otherwise, where we’d break up.”
Have you forgotten the part where I tolerate just about everyone else in the world but you? I didn’t even realize I was capable of desire – true desire – till you came around.”
“But what I feel for you –” His pitch eyes zero in on me, the light of the flames reflected in them. “It’s more. It’s not some vague, fleeting emotion. You’ve consumed me. You’ve crawled into my brain and infected every inch of it. You’ve turned me into a man obsessed. What I have for you…” He pauses. Searching for the right word. “It’s not love, it's limerence.” His grip on my waist tightens. “It’s not patient. It’s not always kind. It’s not selfless. It’s as dark and twisted as I am.”
“This isn’t over,” he interjects, every ounce of supplication gone. “You have to know that, sweetheart. You may not take your promises as seriously as I do, but when I told you I’d never let you go, I meant it.”
“Well, right now, that is,” he amends, and my body stills. “But make no mistake: I intend to take back what belongs to me.” I can’t tell if my shiver is from dread or anticipation. “I don’t belong to you. Not anymore.” “But you do,” he purrs. “We belong to each other, sweetheart, and this game you’ve started
“It’s not a game.” “But it is.” His chuckle vibrates through me as if he’s ten inches away, not ten miles. “I’ve already told you. There’s no going back anymore. This is forever.” A pause. “Who knows? Maybe in a year or five or ten…”
“Go ahead,” he says. “Run as far as you’d like. Run to New York, to California, to Europe, to Africa, to the ends of the earth if you’d like.” His voice pitches so low I have to crane to hear him. “Because when I find you, and it is when, not if, sweetheart, I intend to collect my prize. I’m not sure you’ll like what happens when I do.”
