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Ars Longa, Vita Brevis. Art is long, life is short.
The message was clear: the only way to immortality was through art. Mediocrity was profanity. It was a dog-eat-dog world, and we were leashed upon each other, hungry, desperate, and blindly idealistic.
But if we were silver, Vaughn Spencer was gold. If we were good, he was brilliant. And when we shone? He gleamed with the force of a thousand suns, charring everything around him. It was like God had carved him differently, paid extra attention to detail while creating him. His cheekbones were sharper than scalpel blades, his eyes the palest shade of blue in nature, his hair the inkiest black. He was so white I could see the veins under his skin, but his mouth was red as fresh blood—warm, alive, and deceiving.
Vaughn was never uncomfortable. He wore his skin with arrogance, like a crown.
“Such a good, proper, boring girl.” “You’re ugly.” I shrugged. He wasn’t, really. But I wanted him to be. “Ugly or not, I could still kiss you if I wanted to, and you’d let me.”
“Because my dad told me good girls like bad boys, and I’m bad. Really bad.”
That’s when I realized I might be a good girl, but Vaughn had underestimated himself three years ago. He wasn’t a boy at all. He was a deity.
Thing was, the new Lenny didn’t turn a blind eye to Vaughn Spencer. I was no longer fearful. I’d suffered the greatest loss and survived it. Nothing scared me anymore. Not even an angry god.
She had on an OBEY beanie, but had corrected it with a Sharpie so the word was now Disobey. What a fucking rebel. Someone should notify the authorities before she did something really crazy, like eat non-organic blueberries in the cafeteria.
She was a dark shadow following me everywhere, and I always tried to maintain the upper hand in our imaginary relationship. Fuck, I even rummaged her stupid-ass Instagram and found out what she watched and listened to just so I could understand her cultural world better and crack her, should the occasion occur. And, well, it fucking had.
We come into this world alone, and we die alone. If we get sick, we fight it alone.
If you want to look at your fiercest protector, at the one person you can always count on, take a good look in the mirror.
My father was a lawyer, and semantics were his playground. I said I wouldn’t fuck her. I never said I wouldn’t fuck with her.
I fished out her house key, went downtown, made a copy, and returned just in time to slip it back in before she scooped up her bag and went for milkshakes with the band.
LMAOO OMG WHAT
I knew she read fantasy books and listened to The Smiths and The Cure and thought Simon Pegg was a comic genius. She knew I was the type of asshole to break into her house and demand shit, and that I’d been watching her.
“Careful. You’re not even on the vegan menu, Lenora.” “Bite me anyway.” “Only to draw blood, baby.” “Dying in your hands would still beat talking to you, Spencer.”
“This could get really ugly, Astalis.” “Already is.” She flattened her lips, looking unnerved. “But if you look closely, you’ll find beauty in the ugliness, too.”
Lenora was officially my business, and even though I wasn’t fond of complications, the thought of destroying her pierced me with euphoric desire. She made ugly things beautiful. I was going to show her my soul was marred beyond repair.
Fine-looking things required maintenance, and I lacked the desire to be another pretty face.
I didn’t understand the obsession with beauty. We all get old. We all get wrinkles. Life is short. Eat that pizza. Drink that wine. Shut down that bully eejit who tortures you.
He was gorgeous, and I was not. He was popular, and I was an outcast. He was everything, and I was…
One thing I knew about men like Vaughn Spencer—they either broke you or you broke them. There was no middle ground.
If I had to suck a stranger off to show him I, too, had a dangerous edge, I’d make the sacrifice and deal with the psychological damage later.
“Get the fuck out of here and don’t come near her again. Tell your douchebag, debate-club friends to do the same. They get near Lenora Astalis, they die. Everyone knows she is my property. And take her with you.”
I’d decided falling in love was pointless. We all die in the end. I’d even told Papa so—that I wanted to marry my art, like he did after Mum. Art never leaves. It never dies. It never ceases to wake up one morning. Ars Longa, Vita Brevis.
I liked that he was stunning, cold and promising like Christmas morning, and I had his undivided attention, even if it was the wrong kind of attention. And I was absolutely horrified to find out a part of me wanted him to bend my wrist harder until the dull pain became a sharp one.
“I could kiss you, and you’d still let me. Because you’re still good, and I’m still bad. Nothing has changed. We’re still the same kids. Our game is just more dangerous now.”
Kissing him was like standing on the edge of a cliff. Nice view, but you knew it was deadly. Still, a stupid, irrational, dangerously alive part of you still wanted to hurl yourself down to meet your own demise.
He smiled into our kiss. He liked it, I realized. Me hurting him. Making him bleed.
So this was the game, I thought. I hurt him, and he hurt me back, but only as much as I could tolerate.
“You were wrong. I didn’t want you to kiss me.” I licked the corner of my lips, mocking him. He smirked, leaning down and capturing the tip of my ear with his teeth, whispering. “You wanted it, you enjoyed it, and next time I touch you, Good Girl, I’m not only going to dirty you up. I’m going to make you filthy, like me.”
“You can be talented and completely horrible,” I said cautiously, thinking of Vaughn. “And you can also have not even one artistic bone in your body and still be the rarest thing in the universe. It’s in your actions. It’s your soul. You are special, Poppy, because you make people feel good. No one can take that away from you.”
I liked that Vaughn had pulled me away from Alice’s boyfriend, that he was possessive of me.
I’d always felt trapped. Even in the wild. I’d traveled all across the globe, spending entire summers in France, Italy, Australia, the UK, and Spain. And my damn demons always tagged along, like they were chained to my ankle, their shackles noisy in my ears.
How Vaughn put me in these situations, I had no idea. But I had noticed the pattern. It was always him who came to me. He dropped trouble at my doorstep like dead mice, untamed cat that he was. And, silly girl that I was, I always opened the door and let him in.
“Wanna know something?” He glanced into the bottom of the whiskey bottle. No. “You’re pretty.”
“It’s a slow-burn kind of beauty. The more I look at you, the more it sneaks up on me. You remind me of Robin Wright in The Princess Bride—the kind of pure, wide-eyed innocence no amount of black shit and piercings can tarnish. But that’s not why I don’t hate you.” He shook his head, his eyes trained on the side of my face as I stitched him. “Everyone in this town is fucking pathetic—slaves to materialistic bullshit and ticking the predictable boxes of school, college, football, cheerleading, jogging, fucking, falling in love, getting a job, blah blah blah. Money is cheap, dirty, and boring.
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“I put him in his place,” he finished. I poked his skin with my finger lightly, pinching it back together. This was where I was supposed to tell him he was delusional—I was not his—but I decided to listen to the entire story before I bit his head off.
He got stabbed because of me? “Is this a joke?” I frowned. “Do I look like the joking type?” He cocked his head sideways, looking at me like I was an idiot. “You made this mess. Only fair that you clean it up.”
I whimpered when he broke the kiss all of a sudden. He lurched back, like I’d bitten him. The look on his face was priceless—as if he’d just woken up and discovered me in bed with him. Like I was the one who kissed him, who invaded his universe repeatedly.
“I don’t want to like you, Lenora. I want to ruin you.” “Then do it already!” I broke free from his hold and threw my hands in the air, exasperated. “Why don’t you put me out of my misery and just finish the fucking job if you’re so high and mighty?”
Getting pushed around a little was just what the doctor ordered. By me. Not anyone else. Only. Ever. Fucking. Me.
Good Girl thought she was too good for me. Maybe she was right, but it was time to teach her a lesson. I was going to take every single thing she loved and cared about. Not because she interested me, of course, but because she was a means to an end. A way to get what I wanted.
“Here. I was going to indulge a little, but you seem to need it more than I do. Chocolate has always soothed you, since you were a kid. Now go to sleep, and have sweet dreams, all right? I promise you, life will be sweet from now on.”
They made it difficult to believe in karma, because if karma really went after the bad people, how come they had everything (including both parents)?
I clawed at the wood, feeling my nails chipping, and knew I had absolutely no shot at getting out of this room on my own. How had I been so stupid? Why did I fling my arm out, trying to talk to Vaughn, a guy who’d made it clear he wanted to hurt me? What the hell was wrong with me?
“Because it’s the truth,” I screamed. Our eyes met in the dark and held for a moment. “I don’t believe you, but I’ll still catch you,” he said. “I will always catch you, the fucking dumbass that I am.”
“What do you mean?” “You soften me.” “Why?” “Because I don’t want to fucking kill you! You’re too fun to fuck with. Now Get. The. Hell. Down.”
We’re safe, I thought. He saved me. Yet I couldn’t thank him. Not after what he did with Arabella. Not after he called me a liar. Not after he’d humiliated me so many times in front of the people I hated. I’d dreamed of piercing his heart with a spiked sword, and this act of kindness, of heroism, only made things worse somehow.
“Why did you even care? You said your father owns the police.” “I’d walk away unscathed. You, on the other hand…” he trailed off, watching the firemen roam my backyard. “And you care because…?” He turned around to look at me. “I’m not done fucking with you.”
