"I mean"—I feel sweat building beneath my hair—"it's—"
"Because I think it's great." He smiles, pulling his hand back finally, clasping it with his other hand. "I think it's exceptional."
That's not what I’d expected. I'm almost taken aback by his compliment. "I really like it. I think the characters work well together. Our writing is complementary."
"I think you and I make a great team," he says. It's almost as though he didn't even hear what I said. "If this book does as well as I think it will, there's potential for many more after it. I've shared what we've written already with my publishers. Janine's read it too. They're all smitten with Ms. Miranda Cross." The crooked smile inching its way across his lips makes a knot form in the pit of my stomach. "As smitten as I've found myself." His smile deepens.
I swallow as an uneasy laugh makes its way up my throat.
He unlocks his fingers and picks up his menu once again. He opens it and hums as he scans the words. "I like the filet a lot, but really, you can't go wrong with any of the meat on their menu. They have an in-house butcher." A wry smile curves across his lips. "Cut fresh daily." Then he winks at me, his eyes locking with mine.
And it's in this moment I wish I were more practiced with social skills, more apt at figuring people out. Because in that stare, while he's attempting to make it warm, is something so cold and uncalculated. Or maybe, maybe that's a look of diverging motivations between he and me. I swallow, my eyes darting from his and down to the menu, which is now subtly shaking in my nervous hands. For some reason, I feel like small, helpless prey, and he's the hunter waiting in the bushes for the moment I step onto the snare he's so carefully laid out.
But, really, that's ridiculous…
“Ma’am?” The waiter stops at the table, his eyes darting nervously to Edwin’s seat. “Would you like to go ahead and order?”
“Yes, yes, we would,” I say.
He smiles nervously, jots down the order, and walks away. And I’m left here with Edwin. To awkward conversation and my own overactive imagination wondering exactly what he wants from me.
“Doomed”—Bring Me the Horizon
There are skeletons in every closet. In some, they're stacked ceiling-high. In this world, you're either predator or prey, and it's all predetermined. As predetermined as retardation or cancer. Those of us ingrained with the will to live, to survive, to thrive, and to kill if we must, we see the world for what it is. We understand the wicked within us all. We harness it.
The wicked side of me will always be the most powerful, and I think that's where I differ from most other alphas. I don't have a stopping point. I have no moral compass. I am not guided by unseen bullshit. I am the God of my own world, waiting for the outer world to crumble around me so I may laugh upon its ruins.
What if I told you we live, we die, and then nothing else? What if I told you I saw it coming long ago in a dream? I saw myself morphing, evolving into a beast, feeding off the fire and brimstone… the end of days… the forgotten souls. With each step, the earth shook in devastating fashion. I breathed fire onto the huddled remaining few. I watched their skin peel from their bones. And in the destruction, I became full.
Now, I find myself in this peculiar position, this position of fucking weakness, and one I have never found myself in before—wanting another human being for more than just blood or a fuck. As of late, my mind wanders to Miranda so often, and though I could fuck her to within an inch of her life, that's not what drives me insane. It's the desire to be near her, to love her, to make her mine. I knew it from the moment I saw her name… and the moment I read her words. She was meant to be with me, and I with her.
I thought about that phone call the whole dinner. The deep male voice over the line. The red in her face as she spoke to him. I tried my best to hold in my anger, to act normal, but it's fucking boiling inside me.
My hands grip the steering wheel so tightly my knuckles turn ghost white. Silence fills the car as it has since we left the restaurant, and if it continues, I just might run this fucking car into oncoming traffic.
"So who was that on the phone?" I ask—I blurt it, really.
"When?"
When? Bitch, don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about. "At dinner."
"Oh, a friend…" Her eyes narrow, the light from street lamps flicking over her pale skin as we barrel down the highway. "I guess maybe an acquaintance. I don't know." She glances out of the window. "He's a really big fan of yours."
My mind starts to sketch out what he might look like, what their connection is, what he could give her that I can't. "Oh yeah? Big fan, you say? I'll have to sign a book for him," I say, fighting back the urge to find out more about this friend.