Behind the Evil (Villain Series Book Two)

The Love

Chapter Thirteen

The Love

Duke and I are walking through the gardens; we just finished our massively long meeting and are taking a break before dinner. We have an beginning of a plan but even I found the meeting was becoming tedious and I’m normally interested in these things.

Duke stops and bends down and I turn lazily around to see what he’s doing, “What are you doing?” I ask, peeping over his shoulder.

He picks out a flower and it instantly crackles into its brown death in his fingers. He smiles and uses his other hand to take my hair out of the ponytail that was holding it up. My black and white hair flops onto my shoulders, I glare at him as he giggles sheepishly and puts the dead flower in my hair.

I’m about to snap at him when he runs his hand gently through my hair, the feel of his fingers wipes the glare off my face and a smile creeps onto my lips.

“There, you’re so much prettier when you smile.” His hand still holds the back of my head and he pulls me closer into a kiss. I close my eyes as his lips press softly against mine. I wrap my arms around him, wanting him to kiss me harder but he pulls away and smiles cheekily.

I look at him with a hurt expression and he kisses my cheek, “I’ve been wanting to do that for a while.”

I smile and entwine my fingers with his and we continue to walk through the garden, enjoying the temporal bliss. I really love these times we have together, my eyes scan the garden as I take the scenery under a new light. My eyes stop on a blue flower and I am reminded of high school and then to Darla. I steal a glance at Duke; his lips are curled slightly in a peaceful smile. I never found out what happened between him and Darla. I know it’s probably an uncomfortable subject to bring up but I know I have to if I want to progress further into this relationship. I take a deep breath and try and prepare myself for this question.

“Tell me what happened between you and Darla.” Like always, I can’t help but be blunt and of course I curse my lack of delicacy.

Duke stops walking, I had clearly taken him off guard. The smile had left his face and he looks away from me but doesn’t stop holding my hand. I think he knew I had to ask at some point. Duke sighs and returns his gaze to me, “After I finished school I took up advanced power studies. I wanted to become something like a guard or police officer to protect people in some way. Um… do you remember that guy at the Atmosphere festival who was with me?”

I nod, it was the guy who had said to Darla that I was the one who was going to dance with Duke and not her.

Duke continues, “Yeah that’s Adrian. Adrian took all the same classes as me except for one and we naturally became friends. Adrian had a party one day and I didn’t go because I was studying for this test I was taking.”

I sense the build of tension and I ask an unimportant question to lighten the mood, “What test?” I question with a smile.

Duke looks at our hands and he brings them closer to him, squeezing them. “The one class I didn’t have with Adrian, politics and strategy. It isn’t a pre-requisite for the job he wanted and he thought it was too boring.”

I pull a teasing face, “You are boring.”

Duke laughs, “You would take it too, don’t lie.”

I giggle and nod because it’s true. If my life was actually normal and I wasn’t a drop-out, politics and strategy would probably interest me and I think it would be a good skill to learn anyway.

Duke continues again, “Anyway, it was a big test so I spent almost all night studying it and after I finished it the next day, Adrian came up to me and told me Darla had slept with Troy. It felt like high school all over again and I didn’t believe him and got angry at him, but even so I questioned Darla about it and of course she got emotional and started crying and all her shit, saying it was all untrue and Adrian was trying to break us up because he liked her. The really stupid thing was I believed her. Adrian was set on proving to me that Darla was cheating so he finally convinced me to follow Darla one day and sure enough I saw her making out with Troy.