Page 101 of Sweet Nightmare

The stupid shit some people would do just because they can’t be without their damn phones.

I should turn away.

But I don’t. Instead, I stay where I am watching her like a fucking weirdo.

I don’t know what it is about this woman that keeps pulling my attention back to her, but I’m starting to find it irritating.

The snow catches in her pale hair, gathering along the strands and dusting the shoulders of her coat. The wind tosses her hair across her face, and a loose strand catches against her bottom lip.

She doesn’t even notice.

Then, suddenly, she goes still and for some stupid reason, so do I.

I’ve spent years surrounded by celebrities, models, actors, idols, and people whose entire livelihoods depend on being beautiful. After a while, you learn to look past the pretty faces and expensive clothes. Beauty stopped impressing me a long time ago.

This woman, however, is proving to be a fucking problem.

Because she’s breathtaking.

There. Fuck. I said it.

Her beauty is unreal.

I also don’t fucking like that I noticed.

The woman has a mouth on her and an attitude to match, yet no matter how hard I try, I can’t ignore the sheer beauty of her. She looks like something nature accidentally made only once to treasure it. Her pale hair catches the moonlight and turns almost silver. Her exotic features are so sharp they look sculpted rather than born. They aren’t delicate. Not soft either. They seem…perfectly carved. As if some obsessive artist had spent centuries creating her and refused to bring her to life until every detail was flawless and she was all he dreamt of.

Fuck… the tedious little heiress’s beauty isn’t only breathtaking. It’s otherworldly. But then she opens her mouth, and every magical thought her beauty inspires immediately dies. Because nothing sweet came out of it. Not one fucking thing.

She’s sharp, cold, and entirely too comfortable insulting people she’s known for all of five fucking minutes. Normally, that would be enough for me to write her off.

I’ve got no interest in spoiled heiresses, and I sure as hell don’t need one making herself comfortable in my fucking head. Yet something shifted when she looked at me earlier.

Something I barely noticed until it was already there. A strange movement beneath my ribs. A flicker in a part of me that’s been dead quiet for years.

I killed it immediately.

Because I know what happens when you let yourself want something. You start believing you might get to keep it and then life reminds you what a fucking idiot you are. I learned that lesson young and I don’t need a refresher.

Whatever that feeling was, it’s gone now.

Good.

Let it stay gone.

I’m not interested in whatever strange familiarity keeps tugging at the back of my mind whenever I look at her.

But then something lands on the tip of her nose.

A snowflake, probably.

She stops and for a moment, she just stands there, staring at the sky.

And then her expression changes.

Not much.

Just a slight softening around her eyes and a tiny shift at the corners of her mouth.