Chapter 4
He pushed away from the tree and walked toward us one step at a time.
His rose-gold hair caught the light under the streetlamp.
Only when he got closer did I realize Lucas was dressed in the exact opposite style.
Black hair.
Black-framed glasses.
Shirt buttoned neatly to the top.
Soft, clean, serious.
The perfect gentle honor-student image.
Lucas stepped slightly in front of me and asked in the same calm voice, “Harper, who is this?”
Xander didn’t answer him.
He just stared at him for a long time.
Then he looked at me and said with chilling certainty, “So that’s why you made me dye my hair black.”
I blinked. “What?”
At that exact moment, after all these days of barely moving, the irritation number above his head suddenly jumped.
It shot upward so fast I almost gasped.
The system started blaring warnings in my mind.
I barely even heard what he was saying.
“What… why?” I asked stupidly.
Xander looked at my blank face and let out a humorless laugh.
Then the irritation meter hit ninety-nine percent.
His eyes darkened.
For the first time since I had known him, he spoke to me with open anger.
I was so startled my mind went blank.
By the time I fully reacted, he had already dismissed Lucas and sent him away.
Then he grabbed my wrist and dragged me into a shadowed corner hidden by the trees.
He pinned me lightly against the wall and stared at me.
“Who was that?”
I swallowed.
“My… my childhood neighbor. We used to play together when we were little. He just got back.”
Xander’s grip tightened around my wrist.
“And me?” he asked, each word slow and sharp. “What about me?”
I stared at him.
He looked straight into my eyes and said, “Was it fun, Harper? Turning me into someone else for a whole year? Making me dye my hair, wear glasses, change everything about myself?”
Only then did I understand.
That was why the irritation had spiked.
He wasn’t just bringing up all the ways I bossed him around.
He thought…
He thought I had been using him as a substitute for someone else.
Hopelessness spread through me.
No wonder the number had gone up.
He still resented everything I had done.
Even though I’d already tried so hard lately to change.
I looked at him and thought wildly, Then what am I supposed to do? How do I make him forgive me?
Xander took a slow breath, like he was trying very hard to hold himself together.
Then he asked another question.
“When you were chasing me in the beginning… who were you really thinking about?”
I went still.
Because in the beginning, my motive really had been impure.
I chased him for the mission.
If I succeeded, the system promised me thirty million dollars.
Thirty million.
My parents and I could never earn that much in a lifetime.
Even if I spent thirty thousand a month, that money could last for decades.
It would be enough for me and my family to live comfortably forever.
So when I first approached Xander, the only thing in my head really had been money.
Logically, I knew I should say something sweet.
Something romantic.
Something that would calm him down.
But when I looked into his eyes, I couldn’t lie.
Xander saw my silence and laughed once, low and cold.
“What are you feeling guilty about?”
Then he bent and kissed me.
No.
Not kissed.
Bit.
The Xander I had dated for the past year had been so patient, so indulgent, so easy to bully that I had almost forgotten who he really was.
Campus bad boy.
Schoolyard menace.
Something half feral and impossible to fully tame.
I nearly couldn’t breathe.
He let me slide down the wall until I was weak in the knees, then caught me, hauled me upright, and said in a rough voice, “Stand.”
Then he kissed me again.
I had no choice but to grab his neck and fist my hands in his rose-gold hair to keep from collapsing.
My lips hurt.
Tears started to sting my eyes.
I wanted to yell at him.
Then I glanced up and saw the furious red number over his head again and remembered that I no longer had the right to make a scene.
So I endured it.
Until he tasted salt and abruptly stopped.
He stared at me.
I didn’t bother wiping my tears.
I just gave in softly and said, “I won’t control you anymore. Okay?”
He brushed away the wetness on my face and let out a short laugh.
“You think saying things like that can threaten me?”
I was stunned. “How is that a threat?”
He ignored me completely.
Instead, he took my hand and started walking toward the gates.
“Save the tears for tonight, baby.”
That was the night he took me to his apartment off campus.
And the first time in my life, I realized just how long one night could be.