Mia.
As Shakespeare once said, What's in a name? That which we call a rose / By Any Other Name would smell as sweet. I shouldn’t take it to heart. It truly is just a word, but it means so much more. It stands for so much more.
“I won’t stay long,” Maxx promises, tucking his battered hands into the pockets of his jeans. Even the way he does that, such a casual, normal move, makes my heart jump. I frown and Parrish notices. His eyes take me in from head to toe, absorbing the careful waves of my hair, the makeup on my face, the black leather sandals.
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Tess says, putting on a smile. “Come on in.”
She pulls Maxx ahead with her to chat, but I don’t miss the way his gaze lingers on me, almost apologetically, like he wants to correct the Mia thing for me. But that would blow our cover, and I can’t have that. The last thing I need is Tess knowing that Maxx is dating my sister. She’d probably ban him from the premises, and I’d feel even more trapped in this icebox.
“Did you seriously sneak out to go on a date?” Parrish asks me, and I notice that his left hand is bleeding. There’s a fresh tattoo there, one that I can’t quite make out beneath all the blood. He notices me staring and then frowns even harder, glancing down at the design before swiping the blood across his pajama pants.
“No, actually,” I retort, feeling that strange sense of competitive spitefulness take over me. Why the hell am I letting this dick dig at me like this? Parrish isn’t the first asshole I’ve ever been around. I usually try to take a page from my favorite Twitch streamer’s—negaoryx is her online handle—book and educate trolls, assholes, and misogynists the best I can. “My sister just so happens to be dating your bestie. He gave me a ride so that I could see her.”
I decide it’s best to keep the Chasm bit to myself. Somehow, it feels like I might lose something precious by giving that up. Silly, I know, but there it is.
Parrish stares at me for a long moment, wiping the blood on his pants again. That can’t be good for the tattoo, can it? My eyes drop down to his hand before lifting up again to his face. For the briefest of seconds, it looks like he might say something meaningful. Because I’m an eternal optimist, I get a strange hope inside my chest that he might be considering an apology for the other day.
Then he blinks, and his mouth twists into this sharp frown that would take a team of specially trained psychiatrists to diagnose. They’d all need advanced degrees in filthy rich boys just to figure him out.
“I guess you’ll keep your mouth shut and help me escape this dungeon tonight, won't you?” he asks, but it’s not just a question, is it? No, it’s a threat.
My defense mechanisms slam into place, and that happy, floating feeling that Maxine left me with disappears in a puff of smoke. A fairy-tale is what that was. A fairy-tale where I’m still Dakota Banks instead of Mia Patterson with a stepbrother who hates me for reasons that are completely out of my control.
“I never asked to be kidnapped, you know?” I snap at him, feeling my hands curl into tight fists. The day of my kidnapping remains a mystery to me. I have no memory of it. How could I be expected to? “I was two freaking years old. I was stolen from daycare. It wasn't Tess’ fault, and it most certainly wasn’t mine either.”
Parrish looks taken aback for the briefest of moments, but his eyes narrow even further, as if the hooding of his lids can protect him from the reality of the situation. He’s decided to hate me because he’s jealous. Because he doesn’t like change. Because Tess was an overprotective parent for most of his life and he feels like he missed out on something. From what I can see, maybe he didn't miss out on enough?
“You're so spoiled,” I breathe, feeling my own eyes narrow. I should probably stop right there, but I can’t help myself. My tongue feels like a wild thing, a caged animal trapped inside the confines of a perpetually smiling mouth. That’s one thing I can say about Parrish Vanguard: he frees me from the shackles of my niceness, from my attempts to be pleasant, from thinking of other people so much that I sometimes forget to think about myself. Around him, I can just be selfish and cruel, unfiltered and angry. “How can you be so mad and so unhappy when you’re so goddamn spoiled?!”
“Oh, you just wait,” he hisses, a cruel smile taking over his lips. They’re very pretty lips, too, as if somehow the universe deigned to grant him this cruel and unusual means to lure in prey. “Until you see what you’ve gotten as a birthday present. Then we’ll see who the spoiled one truly is.”
