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“Maybe I just wanted an excuse to take you in my arms,” he whispered huskily, dipping down so that his lips were so, so close to mine.
He smirked. “Only addiction I got is to bikes, books and babes.”
his head and laugh that laugh I had fallen in love with in the parking lot, that laugh that had been the final catalyst in my marriage. I barely knew the man, who he worked for, what he believed in, what he desired, and yet he had already irrevocably changed my life.
“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell or a hell of heaven.”
Elvis Presley who was the original hottie—didn’t
I tried to be annoyed but it was hard when his beauty literally made it difficult for me to breathe.
“Tell us again why Satan is your ultimate book boyfriend,”
“A character that assumes the guise and most of the characteristics typical of villainy but throughout the narrative, the reader develops empathy for him or her,”
“People judge everyone based on shallow crap: how hot they are, how rich and academically accomplished. It’s bullshit, because at the end of the day, the one thing everyone can relate to is the grind to get to that place. We all suffer, we all fucking grieve and sin every damn day. It’s that dark stuff that makes those characters real to us.”
I thought this approach showed that King’s antics were fruitless but he persevered, which made me wonder if he knew that I pulled out the notes to read them every day after a class. They were both a torment and a treat, lines of poetry scrawled in block letters.
I could feel his eyes like sunbeams against my face. They warmed me always, made me feel watched in a way that was pure admiration, like he was a painter and I his muse. In a way, through his little apple poems and one-line compliments, I was.
It was quiet and beautiful and I wanted to love my life now that I was free, but even liberty couldn’t close the yawning abyss of loneliness in my soul. It overtook me in the darkness between falling asleep and slumber
I’d had no friends, only family, and even that was fractured irrevocably by the time I was eleven.
It also came because I was a romantic and yet, I had no romance. Not ever.
Yet, as I sat by the fire and delved into one of my countless paperback romances, I found myself crying silently as loneliness sat beside me, my only companion.
“Never met a woman like you. Know I won’t again. You find somethin’ worth keepin’, you find a way to fuckin’ keep it. Not gonna stop, and just so you know, I got it that this could get you fired, that this could cause you embarrassment but what I got to say to that is this: whatever pain and ugliness I bring you by bein’ with you, I promise I’ll bring you double that in sweetness and beauty. You hear me on that, because I may be a man without a normal moral compass, but I’m a man who makes a woman a promise, and I’ll die before I break it.”
Nova’s face broke into an even more beautiful smile. “No worries, doll. Both King and Zeus told me you got spirit, not at all surprised to find they spoke the truth. Wouldn’t like you much if you didn’t.” “They both told you?” I echoed dumbly. “Sure. Zeus was spittin’ mad when he came back from pickin’ up Harleigh Rose from school and there you were bein’ fuckin’ accosted by your slime ball ex. That’s why King’s not here to take you home. He and Zeus are fixin’ to do something about that motherfucker.” My eyes widened until they hurt. “What?” He laughed. “Don’t worry your pretty face about it.
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“And, Queenie, don’t think I won’t be tellin’ King that your car and your husband aren’t the only pieces of shit he has to make right.”
“Babe,” he said with a frown. “You needed help with your yard, yeah? I brought my brothers. We’re gonna spend the morning working on it and you’re gonna reward us by making some of that pulled pork Rainbow Lee is always talkin’ about.”
“Second, you’re right. I’m not your fuckin’ boyfriend. Children have girlfriends and boyfriends. Idiots let their women walk around unclaimed, secured by a fuckin’ hope and a prayer because they don’t make their women feel owned, cherished like the ultimate prize. No, I am your man, babe. The fuckin’ man that sees you strugglin’ to make ends meet because of your prick of a soon-to-be ex-husband, so he calls in his brothers to help her out even though he knows they’ll give him shit for being pussy whipped. I’m your fuckin’ man because I love being that for you. Now, do you hear me?”
Zeus stared at me, humor forgotten. “Boy’s got it bad for you, teach. He’s made no fuckin’ bones about it. He wants you. In his mind, it’s a done deal. Raised ’em spoiled but you can’t blame me. My ex-wife is a crazy cunt, so I mighta overcompensated, but he’s a good kid, a good son and brother, and one day he’ll be a good man for The Fallen. He’d make a damn good partner too, all that love and loyalty wound up in him just waitin’ to unspool and attach itself to the right people.”
He was it for me, and it could have been the book geek in me, the eternal romantic suffering from a lifelong lack of romance, but I really believed that. King was everything I’d dreamed a man should be; a real man built of loyalty, tenacity and verve, who laughed like the world was made just to entertain him and loved like crazy.
I was a good woman who had fallen in love with the ultimate bad boy.
