Diamond Devil by Naomi West
TAYLOR
I only open my eyes again when I realize I’m not dead.
The car I thought was being driven by the Grim Reaper comes to a screeching halt about two inches away from my bare legs. I can feel its exhaust on my skin like it’s a wild animal breathing on me.
But the windshield is tinted dark, so I can’t see who’s actually behind the wheel. I just stand there, frozen with fear, and try to remember how to breathe.
The sun has extinguished itself over the horizon. Night is reclaiming Evanston. All the sidewalks are empty and, except for the purring engine and my racing heart, everything is quiet.
Then the driver’s door swings open.
A foot hits the ground.
A giant’s foot. Booted, huge.
A leg follows, just as massive. I watch, transfixed, as a man unfurls himself from the vehicle.
When he’s out, my mouth flops open. To call him “gorgeous” is a disservice to the word. Honestly, calling him a “man” is kinda rude as well. He’s the kind of man who makes you want to reserve that label exclusively for him. He’s that big, that stunning, that chiseled from marble.
But my god, he is terrifying.
His jaw is clenched so tight it’s a wonder that his teeth don’t shatter like sugar glass. Those eyes are roiling storms, black whirlpools that function like an express lane to Hell.
And when he speaks, his voice comes out like The Devil himself.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
I know what you’re thinking: this is the part of the story where I quip something witty and go about my way. Back to my miserable house and the miserable family that lives there. This is the part where you admire the heroine’s tenacity and you kinda sorta maybe start to girl-crush a little bit, maybe put yourself in her shoes, maybe start to wonder how she’ll mend her relationship with her daddy and nurse her mommy back to health and finally go about solving the mysteries of all those past sins she vaguely alluded to before.
This is also the part of the story where none of that happens.
What happens instead is that I open my mouth to unleash a clever, devastating retort on this six-foot-six titan, but all that comes out is…
“Big.”
The man pauses. Of all the things he expected me to say, that couldn’t have been in the top hundred.
Finally, he says, “What?”
My cheeks flame. “You’re big,” I mumble stupidly. “Like, tall.”
“And you’re a fucking moron,” he snaps back. He rakes a huge hand through his thick, dark hair. “It’s after sundown, and you just sprinted blindly across the street, a hundred yards from the nearest crosswalk, without even pretending to look to see if anyone was coming to murder you with a car.”
He’s not, strictly speaking, wrong. But he is being a humongous douche about it. I’ve never had someone talk to me in a way that made me feel this small.
“Is that what you were doing?” I answer, finally remembering how to patch a subject and a verb together. “Coming to murder me? Honestly, great timing. I won’t even put up a fight.”
“So you’re reckless and insane,” he mutters. “Fantastic.”
He pauses and surveys me as if finally seeing me for the first time. I can’t help but blush under his gaze. He’s got this way of looking at me that makes me feel like I’m in one of those bad anxiety dreams where you go to deliver the most important speech of your life and the whole crowd sees you naked. I wish I was wearing something less revealing than tiny pink Spandex running shorts and a black sports bra. Like a parka, maybe. Whatever it takes to conceal as much of me as possible from this man’s sinful eyes.
“I’m not insane,” I say. “Just casually having the worst day of my life. Well, one of them, at least. There’s a lot to choose from.”
He remains quiet for a long time. “Someone hit you,” he says at last. His eyes are locked on the cheek where Dad slapped me. I don’t even know how he saw the mark through the darkness and the flush from my running, but he did.
Something tells me this man doesn’t miss much.
I cover it up with one hand, while I simultaneously say, “No one hit me; what are you talking about?”
The man rolls his eyes. “I’d call you a terrible liar, but I’m pretty sure you’re already aware of that.”
“And I’d call you a terrible driver, but I’m pretty sure you’re already aware of that.”
“Bold words from Blind Bambi in a sports bra,” he drawls.
“Don’t you have somewhere else to go be an asshole?” I ask him. “Or were you just flying around the neighborhood, looking to smear someone across your grille like a new hood ornament?”
“If I was, I wouldn’t have chosen such a mouthy one.”
I frown. “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe your schedule isn’t that busy, if you have time to sit here and banter like the hotshot you so clearly think you are.”
He pauses, taking his time to drink me in again before answering. That’s how it feels: like he’s drinking me in. Slurping a little bit more of me up with every pass of his eyes, whether I like it or not.
Spoiler alert: I do.
“You weren’t kidding. You are having a bad day.”
“No shit, Sherlock. Is it written on my forehead?” I’ve got my fists balled up and planted on my hips, face screwed up in anger. The fact that he’s so obnoxiously calm after his initial bellowing outburst is irritating me.
I’m in one of those moods where I’m like, My world is shit, so everyone else’s should be, too. It’s not fair for him to be so cool and collected.
“No,” he murmurs. “It’s written in your eyes.”
I shiver involuntarily. “Are you a fortune teller or just a run-of-the-mill creep?”
“Neither. I’m a businessman.”
That makes me snort. “And your business brings you to the most boring suburb in the country at—” I check my watch—“ten p.m. on a Tuesday?”
“As a matter of fact, tigrionok, it does.”
“Sounds like you need a new line of work.” I blink. “Also, what did you just call me?”
“Tigrionok,” he enunciates in a cool, dark rumble. “It means ‘little tiger cub.’ Because you’ve got your claws out, but I don’t think you have the faintest idea how to use them.”
I back up a few steps. I’m suddenly, painfully aware of how isolated we are. This stretch of Evanston isn’t exactly the big city. It’s silent and still everywhere I look. The thunder clouds overhead seem to be pressing down on us like a big, flat palm smushing me into the earth.
“Is that a threat?” It takes everything I’ve got to keep my voice from trembling.
The man chuckles and spreads his hands wide as if to show me he’s unarmed. “I have better things to do than threaten feisty little girls who don’t know how to look both ways before they cross the street.”
“You came barreling out of nowhere! This is Evanston, not the Daytona fucking 500.”
“Excellent reminder. Let me get the fuck out of here then.” He turns to go back to his car, which is still growling and vibrating.
But just before he gets in, he stops and looks up at me again. It sends goosebumps racing down my spine. “Someone did hit you.” It’s not a question, so I don’t bother denying it. “Did you hit them back?”
I can’t help but let out a bitter bark of laughter. “Slapping your own dad is pretty unforgivable.”
“Slapping your own daughter is worse,” he lashes out, so viciously that my breath catches in my throat for a moment. “Any man who does that is a coward.”
I think about my dad’s frail, trembling hands. The way the skin hangs loose on his neck these days, so gaunt he almost matches Mom.
“Yeah,” I admit. “Maybe he is.”
Then, to my everlasting horror, a tear leaks down my cheek.
I clap my hand over my face almost as soon as I feel it. But, to pile horrors on top of horrors, the man sees it, because of course he does.
“I—I’m sorry,” I stammer, as more tears follow the first. “I don’t know why I—”
The words die on my tongue.
Because the man has slammed his door shut.
Crossed the distance between us.
And, with one swipe of his rough thumb, wiped the tear off my face.
I’m looking up at him, speechless and bamboozled and all the synonyms that go with this situation that cannot possibly be real.
He’s even more beautiful up close. But it’s a harsh kind of beauty. Like a profile carved out of stones that have been around for a long time and seen a lot of hideous people do a lot of hideous things.
Sharp jawline. Wicked chin. Eyes hard as ice.
Only his lips are soft, and the image of them tracing up my inner thigh flashes through my mind like a comet before I snuff that shit right out.
“I’m sorry,” I blurt again.
He rests his thumb on my closed lips. “Don’t apologize. You are not the one who has done something wrong.”
I sniffle and try to stop the flow of tears. But my cheeks keep getting wet. It takes me an embarrassingly long time to realize that that’s because the clouds overhead have opened up.
I turn my face to the sky and get rewarded for my curiosity with a fat raindrop directly to the eyeball. More rain comes after, plastering my already-sweaty hair to my scalp.
“Do you have somewhere to be?” the man murmurs. Somehow, his voice slices right through the growing cacophony of the storm.
I hesitate, then shake my head. “I… I don’t really want to go home, actually.” I know my dad and sister are probably worried about me, and if Mom heard the argument or the slamming doors, then she probably is, too.
But I just want a minute. Maybe two. Just three calm, quiet, silent minutes for me to pretend that my life isn’t in shambles.
“Why not?”
“Why not? Gee, let me count the ways. My dad is a wreck and my mom is really sick and my sister is just overwhelmed. I feel like I’m the only one holding it all together and I’m doing a worse and worse job of it with every day that passes,” I whisper. The words fall from my lips as easily and heavily as the rain. “They all hate me and I don’t want that, because they’re my family, you know? But part of me is so angry with every single one of them, too. I’m angry with my sister for trying to pretend like everything is just so fucking peachy all the time. I’m angry with my dad for, for… for hitting me, of course, but also for being so paranoid. The world isn’t out to get us, you know? But he acts like it is. He acts like if he doesn’t keep us locked up in this miserable little cage, that some big bad wolf is gonna come swallow us whole. Hell, I’m even angry at my mom for getting sick. How messed up is that? And then, most of all, I’m angry with myself. I should, for once in my life, just do what I want. No one’s ever asked me what that is. I don’t even ask me what that is. I just put my head down and hold onto this crumbling fucking family with my bare hands. And I’m failing at it. I really am. I’m failing so bad and I don’t know how to stop.”
My voice dies only because I’m doing my damndest not to burst into tears. At the end of this torrent of completely unasked-for word vomit, I risk a glance up. The man’s face is wet and his hair is dripping, just like mine, but you wouldn’t know it from the calmness in his eyes. Those haven’t changed one bit since he got out of that car.
He doesn’t seem to care that he’s wearing what I would guess is an extremely expensive suit in the middle of a thunderstorm.
He doesn’t seem to care that he’s holding a strange, blubbering girl he just met who’s telling him way, way too much about her personal life.
He doesn’t seem to care that none of this, not one bit of it, makes any goddamn sense.
He just puts that rough, soft, strong, tender thumb under my chin, lifts it up so I’m forced to meet his gaze, and he whispers a few little words that change the course of my life.
“So tell me then, tigrionok. What do you want?”