Wicked Love | √

Ten

"YOU think Preston would set me up with Everett?" Elizabeth asks as she sits at the vanity in my room and plays around with the new makeup that she just bought. Makeup that as a teen I would've loved to own. Sparkles and colors and metallics galore are spread before her in every shade and color imaginable. Makeup that encourages creativity and fun and to be bright and bold and never dull.

Makeup I was never allowed to wear. I once snagged a red lipstick from a friend when I was thirteen and I kept it hidden so my mother would never find it. I put it on only once, alone in my room, and my mother walked in and yelled at me and took the lipstick away from me saying I looked like a two cent whore.

She never used that term before. That was all my father. I noticed at a young age the way she let all his fears and worries and anger and resentment seep into her until his thoughts and opinions became hers as well. They blurred together in her veins until she couldn't tell the difference anymore. My mother is still there but not as much as she once was. Not as vibrant as she once was.

I still remember wanting to cry myself to sleep that night.

But I didn't, because I knew it would only result in me waking up with red swollen eyes and my father murmuring about how weak I was. He'd only ever called me weak to my face once and I promised myself I would never let him do it again.

I swallow down the acidic memory that burns me from the inside out and focus on the question she just asked me. "What?" I breathe with a dry chuckle confused as to why she would want to be set up with someone like Everett Kingston in the first place.

Elizabeth may be a wild child in my eyes but she's a tame house cat compared to Everett. He's covered in tattoos and his black hair is just as dark as his wicked soul. He goes to the extremes of everything from drinking to drugs to partying and of course women. The man lives in the excess of life constantly. Pleasure is his life's pursuit and nothing and no one can stand in his way.

Elizabeth flips on the stool to face me with a liquid eyeshadow clasped in her hand. "Come on he's hot," she insists with a shrug letting the dark hair on her shoulder fall back.

My nose scrunches. "He's also slept with half the female student population at this school," I point out with a shudder of disgust. Everett is hot. Actually no if I'm being completely honest he's more pretty. He's so beautiful it's almost haunting and such a juxtaposition to the dark ink scattered all over his body.

Elizabeth smirks before turning back to the vanity. "At least he knows what he's doing," she comments as she drops the eyeshadow and digs around for whatever she's looking for next. The freedom she has to express herself makes my chest clench, not with jealousy, but more with a wish that I didn't care as much and could be more like her.

More open. More carefree. Just...more.

But something holds me back. My jaw clenches because I know it has to do with my parents and it causes embarrassment to flush my cheeks and I hate it. I'm almost twenty-one and I know I shouldn't care what they think of me. But I do. I know I should grow from the childhood that created me to be this way, but I can't.

Not yet at least. I have to get into law school first. I have to prove my father wrong.

My blood runs hot throughout me and it shakes me up a bit. I'm rarely so heated and I hate the way my emotions are so close to the service and visible. Usually they reside so deep within me so I have a good grasp on making sure my emotions don't run me and that I run them. But lately they have been rising and growing within me and it makes me feel vulnerable as if everything within me is on display ready to be judged and picked apart.

My throat tightens for a moment before I shove down all my fears and weaknesses and turn my attention to my friend in front of me.

"What if he doesn't?" I counter with an arch of my eyebrow.