Thank you all so much! Thank you for making something that I never thought possible happen, something that has me crying tears of joy and jumping up and down, something INCREDIBLE. Thank you for 1 MILLION READS!!!!!!
Of course, I've gotta grant you all with a bonus, and this one has been heavily demanded. I hope it doesn't disappoint!
Thank you again! Love you all so much!
Ann
Before you start reading, two notes:
ONE - this will have spoilers!! consider yourself warned.
TWO - these characters do NOT need to be romanticised! I've been deliberating whether Francis is a character who should be written in teen fiction, and your reactions will help me decide whether I'll be sharing Maddy and his story later on.
Bonus 4 - Francis
My ego, her pride, some recipe
We're our biggest fans and our own worst enemies.
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His eyes found hers, and as always it was like flipping a coin. Heads, she infuriates him, and he wants nothing more than to squish her like a tiny insect, perhaps a delicate butterfly, beneath his palm. Tails, and she's the only thing connecting him to the earth.
Tonight it was tails.
She was sitting across from him, legs folded gracefully, just like the proper lady she was when she wanted to be. Her high cut top and below the knee skirt didn't fool him though, he'd seen her at her most clean and her most dirty.
Lola was a people pleaser. The way she smiled and nodded at the perfect times was an art, and at the table full of formalities she was working her charm.
"And so you've sent your applications then?" his step mother asked her, resting her chin on her bony finger, which was draped in rings worth much more than her side of the prenuptial agreement.
"Yes, last month," Delores said, her glossed lips smiling politely.
"What are you to do when you're off at college and Franc is back home repeating school?" she said, sipping her red wine, which left an imprint in the corner of her wrinkled mouth.
Lola shifted uncomfortably, and Francis downed the remainder of the scotch in his glass. His eyes didn't go to the jewel covered woman, instead finding the ones belonging to his girlfriend, trying to convey some of the lust he felt in his gaze. He didn't care for the conversation. It was like a broken record to him now.
"Francis is just going to have to work extra hard to keep her his," his father said from beside him, clapping a hand to his shoulder. He was in denial that his highly esteemed eldest son had dropped from his place at Arlington College.
Lola's gaze fell to the table in annoyance. She hated being referred to as an object, and it was exactly what the Greene's loved to do.
Francis tormented her with his foot grazing her heel under the mahogany table. She didn't look up, instead tightening her grip on her fork.
He truly adored that she hated him. It was one of his favourite things to know that his control infuriated her.
After dinner, his parents continued to pester her. They were trying to keep her happy, to rub her up the right way. When she wasn't in the house, he was the object of their disgust. When she was here, they were an angelic couple, and she needed to be groomed and petted and they needed to be reassured that she'd behave.
They didn't trust Francis to keep her around. Truthfully, if it was just between them, she'd have left a long time ago.
He reveled in the moment his parents dismissed themselves to venture down to the greenhouse before dark. He grabbed her hand, warm and alive in around his fingers in comparison to how dead and cold his own body felt. He was devoid of senses, trapped in his own body with no root to the real world. Trapped in the chaos of his mind.
She was his only escape. But she could never know she had that power.
"Come to my room?" he asked, his voice low and delicate, a gentle request despite the desperation in his mind. There was a frantic need to have her under his spell, to be reminded that even she could want him in some way. Even after all he'd done to her.
She shrugged, keeping the bitchy look on her face that she used as her disguise as she stood from the table and folded the napkin that had been sitting on her lap.
"How is school?" he asked, letting a hand wrap around her waist as they traveled down the high-ceiling walls of the grand hallway. The Greene's lived in one of the oldest mansions in the area, and though its features were magnificent its insides were cold, in more ways than one.
"The usual," she said, her tone distant as it usually was. It had been a while since they spoke intimately with each other, or with any kind of affection. These days, their words were coated in suits of armor, careful not to show any vulnerabilities.
"Soph still behaving?" he asked, opening the door to his bedroom. The curtains were drawn, keeping out the day. Lola was familiar with the room, she didn't hesitate to slip out of her heels and sit on the bed, pulling her feet up underneath her.
"Yes. She still won't tell me who the boy is though. And Maddy is back to acting as if nothing ever happened, which is good. I think she learnt her lesson," she said, playing with a strand of golden hair before tucking it behind her ear. The easiest way to pull her into conversation was to ask her about her pawns.
Francis shrugged off the blazer he'd been wearing for the day at his father's office, and kicked off the polished shoes. He gave a wry grin. "What lesson?"
She looked at him as if he were a viper, she was disgusted and nervous at the same time, waiting for him to snap. "She's learnt not to fuck with you."
He laughed, and let himself fall beside her in the covers. "So protective, Lol."
"More like I'm trying not to give my friends power over me," she said with a snarl. "Did you not learn anything from Monica Pennington?"
His mind flashed to the red head, who was so eager to please the night he took her virginity. His smile grew.
"You're disgusting," she said, but she said it in a defeated tone. Like she'd already accepted it long ago.
He leant closer to where she was laying on the silk duvet, so that he was on her side. He played with the diamond necklace which sat in the crevice where her collarbones met. "You told me you weren't wearing this anymore."
She pushed his hand away, a brave move, and tucked the necklace back beneath her shirt. The first gift he'd charmed her with. "I didn't want to make your parents suspicious."
"Such a good show," he murmured, letting his fingers trail along her jaw instead. Even if she wasn't the only girl he slept with, she was the most mesmerising, the only one he'd ever call his own. In fact, if things were black and white, he'd only ever sleep with her. But she was too powerful for that.
He kissed her sweet tasting lips, gently. The way he'd never kiss anyone else. And then he deepened it to a much more passionate level, letting his hands cover the bare skin that wasn't covered. The skin that belonged to him.
He'd never get over that rush. Even when he marked it, and ruined it with a lost temper, he still kissed it, and made it better. He kept it smooth. Like his most prized belonging. He wouldn't say he deserved it, but he was not one to take for granted his wealth.
Lola kissed him back, with a ferocity that he was sure she used to translate her anger. She'd never dare to say it as words, or punches to his skin, but in bed? As rough kisses to the most delicate parts of his skin? She could speak worlds of anger.
Her hands scrunched in his hair, making him moan in a painful pleasure as he pressed her arms back against the bed. That's when she spoke, and ruined it all, the pieces of glass shattering to the floor like a broken vase.
"I want to break up, Francis. Really."
He could feel her pulse beneath his fingers, it was racing. She was scared. They'd broken up a thousand times before, and never truly gotten back together. That's not how things worked for them, and it wouldn't be how things worked now.
He straightened, conscious of his temper enclosing his fingers tightly around her wrist. He let her go, inhaling.
"What this time?"
She was quiet, her lips struggling to form words. Behind her eyes though, he could see her cold and calculating mind whirring away.
"Is it Will?" he asked, his face getting closer to her own. "It's him isn't it? Now that Chloe's gone."
"It's not Will," she said, her voice fighting for audibility over her constricted throat. "It's you."
"What's changed?" he challenged.
He thought about that asshole, and all the attempts he'd made to steal his power in Lola. And then there was the time he punched him in the face, all because Francis had made an offhand comment about what Chloe could be like beneath the sheets.
"Nothing has changed, Francis," she said. "Look, we can keep it up for our parents, but at school, and at parties, I just want to be... free."
Free. Because both of them knew she was the princess trapped in his castle. He was the dragon, the beast that kept her for his own enjoyment. He knew she was greater than both of them, and with him she wasn't free. But he needed her. She was the only one that knew who he was, for better or for worse.
"No," he said, his mind racing. The only time she showed any traces of wanting him was when they were alone, and pressed against to each other in the most intimate of ways. He needed to remind her why she wanted to be around, before he brought up the reasons why she needed to be around.
He kissed her roughly, in the way he knew she enjoyed. She was frozen, but her hands soon found the place on his back that they usually did, the place where her nails would draw red marks over his skin.
But then she pulled back again. She was brave tonight.
"I'm serious, Francis. You can't control me anymore and you know it. You're not there at school. I don't go to parties if you do, unless it's to make a show. The only time we see each other is now, you don't have control of how I act anywhere else."
"Lola," he said, his voice tight with trying to keep his temper. "You're mine."
"No, Franc, I'm not," she said, and he saw the glittering of tears present in her wide eyes. "You can't keep a hold over me because you're lonely."
Since when had she grown a voice? The nerve to test him like this?
She pulled away from him, detaching herself from him like a brittle leaf blowing free from the branches of a tree in anticipation of an oncoming winter.
His arms were tense as he leant back, propping himself on his elbows, watching her clip her shoes on, her blonde hair like a waterfall of gold against the lighting.
"You're serious?" he asked, a demeaning laugh intertwining his words. "You think you don't need me?"
She shot him a pissed off expression which was guarded with caution. "No. Don't try anything. Your parents are downstairs."
"You're serious," he confirmed, ignoring her warning, straightening so he was standing. Then he let out a long, sardonic laugh. "Are you stupid, you think you're anything without me?"
She didn't reply, screwing her eyes shut instead before turning to his chest of drawers. Of course, they were going from making out to breaking up in seconds. Just like true Francis and Lola fashion.
When she started fishing out the products she kept at his house, like makeup remover and random items of clothing, he walked towards her, slamming the door shut with a deafening thud that made her wince.
"Have you forgotten how you got all of the power you cherish so much?" he asked, still refusing to take it seriously. The devilish grin was still plastered joyfully over his mouth.
"Just let us go, Franc. You know we died ages ago," she said, but her voice was thick with pleading.
"You're nothing without me but a manipulative bitch. You're not smart, Lol. Who's gonna clean up that mess you're always making with me not here? Who's even gonna give a shit about you when you walk into a room if you're not tied to me, huh?"
She didn't look him in the eye. She never could. "It's already happening. People are already forgetting you."
Francis took a step forward, clasping onto her shoulders. She couldn't do this. She couldn't prove just how weak he had become, or lose to someone like Bishop.
"How dare you."
She pulled away again, ducking out of his range. He kicked the paper-bin by his desk in rage, hoping to scare her into complying. But it only made her work faster, picking up her phone from the bed and scurrying to the door.
People may be forgetting him, but she couldn't. She really did need him. Who had pulled her from her mute state after Pennington died? He had. He'd ripped her heart out and put it back in place, stitched with a few firm cords that had it claimed.
"I'm serious, Franc. The best you're getting is some show for our parents. It's that or nothing. I don't care how much I lose, I can't keep doing this," she said, the tears thick in her voice now.
"You're fucking crazy," he said, his tone increasing in volume as he followed her down the hall. "One second you're all over me, the next you're trying to tell me what to do?"
She didn't reply, her heels clicking their way to the front door.
"You're a crazy bitch. This isn't over, Lola. You're mine. You know that. You'll never be anything more!"
His voice followed her as she stepped into her car, unable to spare another glance his way.
He stopped himself from pulling the door open and pulling her out. She'd be back. She always was.
And as she drove away from his house, he was left alone again, with nothing but the chaos in his mind. Once he had been happy. Once she had made him the happiest man in the world, and he had made her a queen. But once something changed, and now things had turned evil.
She wasn't back. And she never would be.