Page 34

CHAPTER 34

Butterfly Man

I was hunched over my sketchpad, pencil flying across the page as I tried to capture the angular depths of the barista’s face, unaware of the bustling coffee shop around me until...

“One Americano to go, please.”

Her voice, calm and raspy, cut through the dull roar of the world. My hand stilled, and I had to look up, to put a face to that voice.

From where I sat, I could only see her from behind. Her blond hair cascaded down her back in gentle waves, the color striking against her leather jacket. Her dress was sunset orange, and she wore black boots. The barista asked for the name to write on the cup, and she said, “Reagan.”

“Reagan,” I whispered to myself, a sweet secret lingering on my tongue, a taste I’d longed to savor.

Then her face turned in my direction as she opened her purse. One gaze at that shade of blue of her eyes and everything I’d ever known fell into insignificance. All at once, she became the entire world—the only thing that existed or mattered. I drank in the slight crease between her eyes as she concentrated on retrieving her wallet. The way her slender fingers wrapped around it. The subtle flicker of her eyelashes as she blinked. The effortless tuck of hair behind her ear. The slight uptick at the corners of her mouth when she gave the barista her card to pay. Each minuscule shift in her expression etched itself into my memory, pulling me in like ivy, choking every part of me, piece by piece, until I lost my whole being to her.

Reagan. The queen. My queen.

When she stepped away from the counter, her eyes found me. Look away before she notices you’ve been staring. Fuck, what if she has already? My heart pounded out a frenzied staccato, but I didn’t dare take my gaze off her. I couldn’t.

There was no flicker of recognition or guarded assessment in her expression. Stranger meeting stranger with no intention of crossing paths again, unaware of the havoc she left in her wake. Does she even see me? Does she feel the inescapable spark that will burn our souls into one?

To my relief and ruin, she answered me; Reagan’s lips curved in the ghosting of a smile towards me. An unmistakable acknowledgment, the opening chapter in the rewrite of both our fates. In that moment, I became eternally, unshakably bound to her.

I tried to return the smile, but my lips were heavy with unspoken promises I intended to keep no matter how long I had to wait. She will be mine, and I will be hers.

“Good morning, Ms. Fletcher!” A tall boy, muscles bulging under his jersey, approached her.

Her body stiffened in his presence, and her smile vanished. “Morning, Aaron.”

“Fancy seeing you here, alive and well.”

“Excuse me?”

“When you didn’t show up yesterday, I thought something happened to you.” He took a step too close to her, invading her personal space, and his eyes roamed over her body like she was a piece of meat. “You got me so worried I was this close to stop by your place to check on you myself.”

Reagan recoiled, revulsion clear on her features as his tongue swept out to crudely lick his lips before giving her an obnoxious smirk. She strode back to the counter and asked if her coffee was ready.

Rage blazed through me at the nauseating display. How dare this oaf make her feel violated and unsafe?

Reagan collected her coffee and swept out the door, the bell jangling at her abrupt exit. Part of me ached to go after her, to apologize on behalf of my entire gender for that vile pig’s behavior. But the stronger instinct urged me to deal with the source of her distress in a more...permanent way.

Aaron turned to me, as if he sensed the scorching weight of my glare, that insufferable smirk begging to be knocked out of his face. “Hey, asshole, what are you looking at?”

An arrogant jock overcompensating for his tiny dick. I looked away, refusing to be baited.

But he puffed out his chest like a territorial ape as he advanced a step. “You got a problem?”

I took a steady breath and held my ground, meeting his glare with an unflinching stare. The only problem here is the likes of you making the world a sorry place.

With a guttural growl, Aaron lunged, only to be swiftly intercepted by the burly barista, who inserted himself between us. “Take it outside if you two wanna scrap. I’m not having that mess in my café.”

Chest heaving, Aaron shrugged off the restraining hand. “Whatever man, he’s not worth the charges anyway.” He shoved past me, offering one last parting sneer. “It’s okay. You’re not the only prick who wants a piece of that ass. Every mother fucker at school is hot for teach.” He bent to whisper in my ear. “But that piece of ass is mine . They can’t have her, and neither can you, not until I’m done with her. Only then, you can have what’s left.”

I watched in seething silence as he swaggered out. As if in trance, I grabbed my sketchpad, the barista’s face long abandoned, and Reagan’s materialized on the page almost of its own accord.

A silent vow stitched itself into every stroke, every captured piece of her essence. No matter the role I was destined to play, I would shield Reagan’s light from the creeping shadows that threatened to extinguish it. She’d consumed and shaped my entire existence in a handful of seared moments. And I would live and die to safeguard her, no matter how darkness tried to intervene.

Reagan Fletcher, you will be mine.