Pride

Melissa knows how she got here. She knows what has let her to the situation she now is in. It used to be a good thing but now it has turned sour. Her pride used to be the one thing that was good in her life but now it isn’t anymore. Her pride has hurt someone that she never thought could be hurt.

His eyes have gone dark. Eyes that have been alight with happiness and hope these past weeks have lost their spark and are overshadowed by pain that comes with betrayal. Melissa has betrayed his trust after he had opened up to her and had let himself be vulnerable.

Months ago, she would have felt satisfaction if she had seen him hurt like this – he had been everything she hated, egocentric, spoiled and a bully – but she doesn’t feel satisfied, she feels guilty. She feels bad about hurting him, about stringing him along while she knew what he wanted could never happen.

When Melissa shudders, she wishes she could blame the chilly, nocturnal sea breeze instead of the piercing gaze of the boy in front of her. She wished she could say the boy next to her gives her some comfort but then she would have been lying. The presence of the darker boy doesn’t make her uneasiness go away.

“Is this what you really want?” the boy with the feathered hair asks with a voice that’s laced with both hurt and anger. “Do you want him instead of me after all I have done for you?”

“After all you’ve done for me? There is nothing you have done for me,” Marissa hisses. She looks at the boy with angry eyes because, how can he claim he has done anything for her. “All you ever did was ruin my life. Should I feel thankful for that?”

“I brought you above your status. I let you taste the life that used to be beyond your reach.” Anger has the upper hand in his voice and it has made it louder. His face is a stone mask that doesn’t show any emotion. He has never looked that way before. “I introduced you to people who would look down on you if it wasn’t for me. I gave you the chance to be a part of my society. I gave you the chance to be somebody. I gave you anything you could ever want and you repaid me with sneaking behind my back. Doesn’t what I said tonight count for anything?”

“No, it doesn’t,” Melissa replies with a quivering voice. She doesn’t avert her eyes because he has to know she means what she says. Her few on him may have slightly changed but she cannot give him what he wants, if what he has said is true. She can’t give him what isn’t his. “Because I don’t believe you can feel that way. I don’t think you know what love is.”

The stone mask slips for a second and Melissa can see how bad her words have hurt him. There is a look of utter devastation on his face before the mask slips on again. Could it be that he did mean the words after all.

Ice-cold blue eyes become emotionless as they travel from Melissa to the boy behind her and back. A calculated look crosses his face and she has seen it before. It is the same one she had seen on his face when they had clashed for the first time. He had looked at her the same way the day that all the trouble had started.

The blue-eyed, feather-haired boy is making a decision and this decision is going to change her life once again, the way it did the day that she had let her pride get the best of her.

Notes

Here is the prologue. Let me know what you think.