Free Pretty Wicked by Georgia le Carre

and flee,
his hand shot out and snagged mine.
    He didn’t look smooth or charismatic then.
For the first time he looked broken. ‘Don’t, Sky,’ he whispered.
‘Don’t fight me anymore.’
    ‘ You hurt me,’ I
sobbed.
    ‘ I know. I can’t tell you
how sorry I am for what I did.’
    Tears were running freely down my face. I
bit my wobbly lip. ‘You’re a son of a bitch, Miko.’
    He didn’t flinch. ‘I was. I was a mean,
selfish, shallow jerk. And what I did to you was sick. But I’ve
changed, Sky. You changed me.’
    ‘ That’s bullshit,’ I
spat.
    ‘ No, it’s the truth. I was
a spoilt kid, high on adulation. Everybody wanted me. I could have
had anything I wanted. Any girl. And it made me careless and ugly.
But the truth was they were using me and I was using them. And then
you got into my car so full of truth and softness and I felt
something. Something I’d never felt. I was so shocked. I’d never
met anyone like you. And if you remember I didn’t want to go to the
party. But you looked so crushed that I had the crazy idea I could
slip you in and slip you out, and nobody would be the wiser. How
wrong I was.’
    I shook my head. ‘That doesn’t make sense.
You never once tried to contact me. Why did you wait until
now?’
    He frowned. ‘Didn’t your mother tell
you?’
    ‘ Tell me what?’
    ‘ I drove around looking
for you for hours but you were nowhere to be seen.’
    ‘ Mr. Hutton found me
walking by the side of the road and gave me a lift in his
truck.’
    ‘ By the time I drove to
your house later that night your mother told me you were too upset
to see me. She told me to go home and come back the next evening.
When I went back the next day, she told me you never wanted to see
me again, and closed the door in my face. Then you never came back
to school.’
    ‘ No, I left for England to
live with my aunt. I was so humiliated. I couldn’t go
back.’
    ‘ For years I tried to
forget you, but I couldn’t. No matter who I went out with I
couldn’t completely get you out of my mind. I felt something that
night in the car with you that I had never felt before or after. So
I hired a private detective who found you with great difficulty.
You’d changed your name and left the country and you looked nothing
like the picture I had given him.’
    ‘ What picture?’
    ‘ Want to see
it?’
    ‘ Yeah,’ I said
curiously.
    He went to the kitchen table and I watched
him open his wallet and extract a small picture from it. He brought
it to me and I stared at the blurred image in disbelief. When I
raised my shocked eyes to him he shrugged.
    ‘ It’s not your best, but I
had nothing else, so I had to take something from a yearbook. I had
it professionally aged. This is what you should look like without
any…interventions.’
    I dropped my eyes back to the picture.
Indeed that was the bespectacled me of seven years ago, but made
heavier, with jowls, and faint lines running between my cheek and
mouth.
    ‘ You were looking for an
ugly woman,’ I whispered.
    He shook his head. ‘I was looking for you.
For that magical girl who sat in my car, tilted her chin and looked
up at the stars. No matter what you look like. I just love
you.’
    I stared at him. Could anyone change that
much? Surely this couldn’t be true? In real life every man wanted a
beauty to hang on his cold arm. Rich or poor, beauty was the most
prized ingredient in a woman. But what if his tale of redemption
was true? What if he was the last true romantic on this dead earth?
What if he was truly changed?
    He was staring at me. ‘People can change,
Sky. I did.’
    I nodded. My heart was glowing. ‘So did
I.’
    His finger tilted my chin up. ‘You’re a
Jezebel, you know? Your scent tortured me for seven years and then
I find you and you tell me you’re pregnant.’
    I laughed. ‘I didn’t know how else to
explain the fact that I was swooning at your feet.’
    ‘ Do you know how
devastated I was when you said that?’
    ‘ Oh,