A Scarlett Ruin

Chapter Eleven

Maybe because Julian had promised that he wouldn't watch her leave, Scarlett immediately swivelled in her seat to peer out the back window. It was tinted dark enough that she hoped he wouldn't see her staring after him.

Yet it was of no consequence, because he stayed true to his word, just like she'd always known he could. And just that easily they were gone.

With no one to see, Scarlett allowed her face to fall as she turned, far slower this time, to face forwards properly. She couldn't say if she was pleased or disappointed that he kept his word. Actually, that was a lie that felt like acid in her stomach. It was clearly disappointment. The emotion had her slinking back into her seat, like she wanted to disappear or at least coil into herself. And even then, shoulders slumped; Scarlett knew it was her own fault.

When she'd called him a liar, despite it being light-hearted, Julian hadn't bothered a word in his defense. She'd known what he was like. Yet she let her hopes up, something about the week spent alone together having dug beneath her skin and burrowed there.

It had to mean something, didn't it? They were something even if she couldn't put a name to it, or else they wouldn't have spent every night in one another's beds. Spent them in each other's arms.

She wouldn't have caught glimpses of the soft smiles he wore in the morning, before he had time to work up that spiteful edge on his jaw. There would have been no silent moments where he sat cross-legged, working through some sort of composition for the piano with his bottom lip worried into his mouth. He wouldn't have leaned over her shoulder while she read The Picture Of Dorian Gray to recite lines that caught his eye until she was giggling into the pillow as he pressed light kisses into the swoop of her neck that made her shiver.

Even if they never put a name to what lay between them, it had to mean something.

The thought had her letting out a shaky sigh as she ran her hands over her face. Out of the corner of her eye, Scarlett could see the driver but she barely noticed him, adept at sinking into the woodwork.

Really, she'd never expected him to kiss her goodbye or watch her leave; she'd never have asked either. But she would have liked a backwards glance. One look to assure her it wasn't all in her head. Scarlett wasn't sure if she could trust her own thoughts, because it seemed as if he could reach in and twist them about until it fit his need.

She couldn't help how easy it was to be drawn in when she watched him smile in a way that was so far from his eyes that were dark enough to be a hurricane, and she wanted to know. She wanted to know every little thing that went through his head. The things that changed his expression, no matter how insignificant, like the way his eyebrow would quirk sometimes in a silence. Scarlett wanted to crack open his skull and take every thought for her own.

Maybe that's how it was supposed to feel, she wondered. The sick feeling in the pit of her stomach that rolled about, lessening when he glanced her way but swayed dangerously when the look became impassive. He was the king at distancing himself. It didn't matter that moments later he was as close as ever, it was like a constant game of ping pong with Julian ricocheting towards and away from her in equal measures. It was exhausting.

With a huff of a breath, she pulled on her hair until it stung in some attempt at grounding her in the car. It was better forcing herself into the present than allowing herself to go back to his dorm room where he was obviously curling back in bed and falling asleep as if it none of it mattered. Scarlett couldn't help but wondered if he would have moved had she not forced him. Some might have said that it was manipulation that had him walking her to the car, but she knew better, Julian Chase didn't do a thing unless he wanted to.