.you don't have to call me// kaitlin {clue}

Dying young was sad,she supposed. Even if it had been someone as annoying as Scarlett. But was she supposed to feel bad? The girl had lived as a nobody and died as a nobody. And it wasn’t as though she’d been the only one at the party to pull the prank on her. It had been a team effort, which was saying something, because group projects usually only had one person contributing.

It was amazing that’d they’d actually pulled it off. It would have been the prank of the century if Scarlett hadn’t gone and gotten herself turned into dog food. Instead, it was barely talked about except in whispers. Downcast gazes and awkward shuffling. All that hard work ruined and gone to waste because of some lunatic. The nerve! The prank had taken months to plan out.

But the past was the past, and the dead were dead.

When Maverick’s barbed wire tongue slipped out from between the smile he painted on his lips, she smiled frostily. There was a darkness drifting behind his eyes, something she recognized from anytime she looked in the mirror. The stains on her soul looked back at him and blew a kiss.

“Oh, Mavvy, you’re so—funny.” She said in a tone that implied he was anything but. He was trying to get a rise out of her, but she wasn’t about to let him know that. It didn’t particularly bother her whether or not people cried over her when she tragically overdosed on valium and wine at the ripe old age of thirty-seven. All that mattered was that they remembered her. And thus far, she’d done of a pretty damn good job of being unforgettable.

“You’re right though,” she said instead. “Hardly anyone seems to be tearing up for poor Frankie, and he definitely had friends.“She dabbed the corner of her monogrammed handkerchief at her tear ducts. Silk, imported directly from district eight. A gift from Grady. It remained dry when she took it away from her face.

“I’ll miss his parties, and the way he was a slack-jawed idiot when me and the girls stripped down to our bikinis in front of him before getting in the pool.” She shook her head. “Didn’t have a lot going on upstairs though.” Cleo leaned towards Maverick, patting his knee gently. “Not like you, such a sharp wit you have. You ever cut your mouth on that tongue?” The smile on her face was a coy one, though it didn’t quite reach her eyes.

Oh, I wish you would, she thought darkly as he cracked his knuckles. Did she strike a nerve? Say it ain’t so, Mavvy. There was a reason Grady avoided him, she knew that much. What she didn’t know was why, because Grady rarely talked about himself or his past. That was fine; it wasn’t as though she was tripping over herself to talk about middle school or that she used to be friends with a wallflower like Parker.

But she hated not knowing. Oh how she hated it. So she watched his face instead, something dangerous uncoiling in her chest. Had he been better friends with Frankie than she’d thought? It wasn’t something she’d bothered to pay attention to. Maybe that jab had been in poor taste, but it wasn’t like she was about to apologize. He’d just have to deal with it.

“I’d rather cut yours.”

Oh. Oh that was too good.

“Promises, promises.” She replied, giggling coquettishly, her eyes tracing the tension in his jaw, daring him, egging him on with a feral grin to match. So he’d rather cut her mouth with his tongue, would he? Cleo whipped her head towards him, darting like a viper, only an inch or two away from his face. “Go ahead. I don’t bite—” she trailed off, thinking. There was a fire dancing in her eyes. A challenge.

Maverick probably tasted like cigarettes and regret, venom and hard edges all rolled into one. She also figured he was too much of a punk to answer her challenge directly. He was the type of boy to kiss a gal behind the dumpster, wasn’t he? Hiding the monster in his heart behind a veneer of cool indifference. They were alike in that respect.

Though she was fire and he was ice. 

In any case he certainly didn’t have the balls to mess with Grady’s girl. Not that Grady had the balls to defend her, even if Maverick did. She looked up at the sky in a grandiose show of faux innocence as she finished her sentence.

“—hard.”

From as close as she was she could smell the smoke and nicotine that clung to him like a second skin. Could dearch his eyes for malice, mischievousness or something more. Those hazel eyes were like honey or maybe amber. How many students had gotten trapped in those eyes and slowly suffocated every time he blinked? And then of course he leaned in. Close enough to touch.

Close enough to taste.

Cleo’s heart beat a little faster.

It always did when someone refused to back down.

His lips brushed her ear and it took nearly all of her self-control not to nip his neck right then and there.

However, his next words were a bucket of ice water on her rising mood. She withdrew, recoiling like she’d just been slapped. What an idiot. Like he didn’t know who she was or what she capable of. The insults were blunt, cut right to the heart of what she cared about. He was doing his best to piss her off and it was working.

Followed by blankly looking at the field below and pretending she didn’t exist.

What a tease.

Cleo rolled her eyes. A beat passed. Maybe two. And then she hastily dug her compact mirror out of her purse and flicked it open, worried that he hadn’t just been talking out the side of his ass. What an infuriating boy. She grimaced. Son of a bitch, it was. It wasn’t a disaster, but it was noticeable enough that she was horrified.

Swore to God that Clara had taken her lip liner because she couldn’t find it before she left her school in the morning. She pulled out a little packet of sanitary wipes and opened it, blotting the offending makeup and checking her progress in the mirror.

An easy fix.

The compact mirror snapped shut and she turned, narrowing her eyes at him. He was going to regret antagonizing her. Because now of course, she had to prove him wrong. If not for the very public place they were in she’d have leaned over and clamped her mouth down on his shoulder until he shrieked.

She rummaged through her purse instead.

“Mav,” she said quietly. If either of them was a dog chained to a post and unable to do anything but bark it was him. “I think you’re the one that would look good in a collar.” She hissed the last word as she whipped her eyelineing pencil out of her purse and stabbed him in the leg with it. It wasn’t hard enough to make him bleed, but she hoped to hell that it left a welt.

She smiled sweetly.

Maverick was an interesting boy.

For all his effort to stay out of the spotlight, acting like he didn’t care what people thought of him, it seemed like he liked it. He stood out. And he had to know he stood out, just like he had to know why so many people were interested in him. Perhaps he really didn’t care about anyone other than himself. Maybe he was tired of games. But that was what made him so fun to mess with. To flirt with.

He was a walking natural disaster; a hurricane in human form, destroying everything that crossed his path and then moving on with all the regret of an uncaring god. Other students were caught in his pull and buffeted and bruised by the storm, only to thank him for it with starry eyes, each hoping that they would be the one to change him, to peel back those layers of indifference and find the caring, beating heart that surely lay within.

Idiots.

Maverick was like her. A temper he was terrible at controlling. Always finding people’s buttons and pushing. Forcing people to look at themselves. That’s who he was. That’s who she was. Mirrors that reflected people’s jealousy, their shortcomings. To people like each other, they reflected the darkness that they held in their hearts, the sum of a score of bad choices. Of hearts hurt and apologies left unsaid.

It was what made him hot. Even after he snapped her eyeliner in two and threw it to the ground.

She could always get Grady to buy her another one. The important thing was that she’d gotten a visceral and thrilling reaction out of him. Made the indifference crack and revealed the red hot lava that was simmering beneath. No gentle heart, just fire and heat.

Her eyebrows raised in shock and a slight hint of titillation when he threatened her.

That low and angry rumble in his throat made her heartbeat quicken, made her breath catch. The scowl threatening to take over his face. A shiver ran up her spine and she reacted to it involuntarily. Cleo stared at him dangerously, hungrily, like he was a fly that didn’t know how close the spider’s fangs were to sinking into his neck and drinking deep. She moved her hand up to her neck and squeezed it playfully, a cheshire grin on her lips as she blew him a kiss.

“Look me in the eyes when you do,” she winked, feeling a mirthful laugh bubbling somewhere in her chest. “It’s so hard to find boys that can keep up.”