OLDER MEN | THE WEEKND

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dear @jargott, I hope you like that this chapter is longer ;)))

THEY'D BEEN DRIVING FOR a good fifteen minutes, in which Bella had not once looked back at The Weeknd, yet felt the tension between them crawl to an almost tangible suppression of lust, when they finally come to a stop right at the gates of her house.

She's never wearing skirts this short again.

The polished gates slide open. Abel's car makes its way into the territory, barren with hidden cameras and bugged as if it was a mafia drug den, Bella knows, his face calm and his features unable to be read.

The Bentley comes to a stop. With a horrified jolt in her heart — a mix of pleasure and fear, knowing her father's temper, — Bella notices the figure of her father's shoulders in one of the kitchen windows.

She watches as he walks closer to the window, his face almost pressed to the glass, and prays that The Weeknd just lets her open the door herself and run to the house — but there's no turning back now. Her father had cheated on her mother. He'd cheated on her.

So, instead, Bella watches numbly as Abel opens the door of his car and walks over to her door. She forces herself to tear her eyes away from the window and stare at the windshield, her skin prickled with the tension leaving her. When Abel'd opened the door, you see, it was as it a hot air balloon had been pierced, with all of its fumes and helium leaving it entirely, and she felt, strangely enough, as though she could breathe again.

    And yet, at the same time, there's a longing in her chest now — she's ready to throw herself at the once strange and unfamiliar older man in front of her as he opens the door of the Bentley and lets her jump out giddily.

  She's drowned herself in the part she needs to play already: joyous and preppy and delicate and in love.

So, she makes the hugest puppy-eyes in the world, her hands interlacing themselves with Abel's — the shock of electricity that jolts through her almost throws her off balance, but she recollects her wits rather quickly, his own hands taking the lead and a wicked smile playing on his lips. Bella feels it begin to rain.

She notices the way his eyes tense when she touches him. The way his muscles grow rigid. Her own fingers are cold and numb in his grasp.

"What do I do now?" She mouths, her lips stretched into a wide smile. Alright, perhaps she isn't the best of actresses — not when she's around him. Around him, everything is spinning and incredulously grey and all shades of cool and calm — the calm one feels before a storm, more of a premonition, a warning.

"A dangerous game you're beginning to lead, kitten," The Weeknd purrs into her ear as his hands slide themselves up to her shoulders and force her to face the door of their mansion. He lets go with one hand, the other snaking itself around her frame almost possessively, and leads her to the house.

She's praying that she doesn't stumble. "I— I didn't think this through," she whispers.

"There's no coming back now, is there? Or would you prefer to hide in my Bentley until your father flies off with his newfound ame-soeur?"

"Oh, be quiet," Bella hisses back.

"Relax your shoulders. You're all stone and goosebumps." He hesitates. "Are you cold?"

"Scared," she responds. They're approaching the door now.

"Of what?"

"You."

The door bursts open, and out flies one of the maids followed by none other than Mohamed Hadid.

His face is a shocked pale, yet his lips are an angered thin line, eyes blazing. He stretches the muscles around his mouth into a contorted smile and greets Abel Tesfaye frigidly. "Tesfaye. I did not expect you here at all."

Abel takes the hand outstretched by Bella's father and shakes it collectedly. "Isabella needed a ride."

"Oh, did she."

"Daddy!" Bella interjects, her voice sweeter than honey, and laces her fingers through the ones of The Weeknd, resting on her shoulder. She can feel the heat radiating off of his body in waves in the Californian chill. "I thought you'd be gone until dinner time."

"Bella, darling, go inside," her father muses, not looking at her — his eyes are glued to their interlaced fingers. Bella's charged with electricity — this is one of the bravest things she'd done with a man ten years older, a man with a story to tell and with its details to obscure. She's not stupid — the girl is aware of the certain presence of ulterior motives in The Weeknd's game. It isn't hers anymore — it's his, too. Perhaps it isn't even a game between her father and herself — its a deeper sort of maniacal convulsion of interests and willpowers.

Kitten and Isabella blend into one opponent, one conquest, one petulant little girl he cannot wait to bend over, to kneel for him.

Bella can play games, too. She'll learn as she conquers. Let's see who kneels first, she thinks, her smile ever present and her cheeks ever so flushed.

"Bye," she says affectionately, her eyes searching for Abel's. He pins her with a look. Kiss me, she wants to say. Kiss me goodbye.

He leans in. She can see her father tense with her peripheral vision— everything else goes blank, and it's just her and Abel Tesfaye at the foot of her mansion, raindrops piling around them like melted diamonds — and his lips caress her ear in a whisper, as if he'd somehow read her mind, ever so inconspicuously, —"you wish, little girl."

Abel leans away, leaving Bella trembling slightly, his hands back at his sides before wishing the two Hadids goodbye and walking over to the emerald-sheered Bentley.

Her father gives her one of the strictest looks she'd ever seen him give. In fact, she wasn't even sure he'd been capable of such until today.

"Isabella," He begins.

But he'd forgotten that Bella can give strict looks too. The anger that had flashed in her eyes once she'd remembered what he's done  is now boiling in her blood like acid, and her lips stretch into a scowl before she can stop herself. "I don't want to hear it," Bella snaps.

Her father grows speechless. Behind her, Bella can hear the engine of the Bentley roar to life once again, and forces herself to keeps her stern eyes on her cheating mess of a once loving father. She crosses her arms over her chest. "I'll do whatever I want, daddy. If it means dating The Weeknd—"

   "You don't know everything—"

"Then I will—"

   "Luca Nicholson is a much better match—"

    "And with— what?" 

  Her father exhales in exhaustion. "Get into the house."

    "No."

"Bella, get into the house; please."

"Not until you explain to me why you want Luca and I to suck faces so bad!"

"It's not about Luca and you." Her father divulges his words as if it pains him to do so. As if he's admitting to winning a bet he'd cheated in. "It's about Nicholson and Hadid."

"It was about Hadid," Bella spits, before she can stop herself. "Now— it's about Bella and Luca and you cannot change that. He's a little demon. And an annoying one, at that." She shudders internally. "Now, if you excuse me, I'd like to have a bowl or two with those chocolate-filled puffs mum bought last week in silence."

"Bella—"

She shuffles past her father aggressively, forcing back the tears with such fury that her tongue tastes the blood and cherry lipstick of the lip that she'd bitten.