Devils Roses 01 - Cursed

intense blue eyes through his long black lashes. “I don’t want you to get over me.”
    I felt like I needed to back up, his stare locked me in and was pulling me to him. If he stood up, I would scream I told myself.
    “ You’re bad for me. You’re going to leave in a few weeks if that. Once the pervert is caught, you won’t need to hang around and that feeling is going to come back. You’ll need to move on to the next people.” I spoke the words fine, but to my heart they were hollow.
    He nodded, still smiling dangerously at me. “I know, it’s a predicament.”
    “ I have to get ready, I need to go to Giselle’s and get her dress for the dance tonight. Plus I need to go see Jaime, she’s awake—no thanks to you.”
    I remembered how angry I was with him. ‘Just keep chanting Jaime’ I told myself.
    He stood up looking deeply into my eyes, as he seemed to fill the entire space of my room. “You’re going to the dance?” His tone was not something I had heard before. It was dangerous.
    I nodded.
    “ With Shane?”
    I chose not to answer.
    He crossed the room in a step and looked down on me. “This is what you want?”
    I nodded again, not able to speak, seeing his lips so close to mine. His scent filled the air around me making me frown, not at him but against my feelings for him.
    He shook his head. “I don’t think it's what you want. I know it’s not what I want.”
    “ I can’t go with you.” The words were so much bigger than the dance, they were everything. No matter what he did from then on, I couldn’t go with him.
    I gripped my towel and walked past him and sat on my bed. He closed my door and came to where I was sitting. He knelt in front of me and took my left hand in his. It looked tiny and thin compared to his huge hands. “Aimee.”
    He kissed my hand once and spoke, “I am in love with you.” He kissed it twice and then turned it over and kissed my palm. He was driving my body crazy and my brain started to get foggy again. I couldn’t think around him, I seemed to only feel.
    I pulled my hand away and swallowed hard. “I want to go to the dance. I want a normal boyfriend who isn’t going to abandon me. I want something in my life to be regular again.” I paused for a second, knowing that if I finished my thought, he would be hurt. As much as I knew I needed him to go away, I also knew it was going to crush my soul to make him go. I closed my eyes and let my mouth say the words. “I want a boyfriend who will answer my questions not make more.” I opened my eyes, terrified of his reaction.
    His left eye twitched, as if his face would have flinched, but he fought it off.
    He leaned into me and it was as if his body grew in size. Somehow he took up all the light in the room. “You’re mine, mine.” His words were spoken softly but the meaning was clear. His love scared me. I understood what my sister meant when she said that she was scared of Blake and losing him.
    Aleks leaned in slowly and brushed his lips against mine and then he dove out my open window and was gone.
    I still felt the warmth of his lips against mine as I attempted to process him in my mind.
    I got angry again, but I smiled. He hadn’t bested me; he had come back and made me doubt my ability to be with anyone else, but never answered a single question. I, unlike him, was a mental case who contemplated everything. I had learned to shut my heart off, not around him, no, but when he was gone I could do it. I chuckled to myself. I could force myself to be the girl I was, only weeks earlier.
    I got dressed, more determined than ever to make things work with Shane, or at the very least, make it through the dance. Then I would take it one day at a time. Shane was the boy I had loved for a decade; it wasn’t going to be work with him.
    I made it down the stairs to see my sister watching TV with headphones on, listening to her iTouch. I laughed tapping her on the arm. “Hey, ready?”
    She nodded shouting at me, “Yeah, let’s go.”
    I pointed to her ears and she pulled the baby-blue head phones off, laughing. “Oh, yeah.”
    She babbled the whole drive over to Giselle’s parents’ house. I tuned her out right away with my usual thoughts of how annoying I found her friends to be. I hated how the petty story she was telling, was nothing but dribble. I stopped my thoughts mid criticism and looked at my sister. She was babbling and her story was dribble but it mattered to her. She was a passionate