I sat silently next to Malio and watched the world go by outside of his black Lamborghini. The tall trees that stretched mightily up one side of the road blurred with the darkness into huge jet-black smudges, while on the other side of the road the raging sea broke on the cliffs. Now that I was slowly coming to rest through the steady driving, the past caught up with me in the most brutal way. I felt my hands start shaking and I press them tightly together. "Look at the street!" I said when I saw Malio's expressionless gaze resting on them. "Everything okay?" Malio asked after he had looked away again. "Of course," I said quickly, fighting the rising panic that was slowly but surely choking my throat at the sight of my torn dress beneath his sweater. I just couldn't have a panic attack in Malio's presence! "You know, you could use the way to talk to me. It must have been a traumatic experience." I heard his soft voice pulling me back to the present. I'd rather bite my tongue off here and now than talk to Malio about my messed up emotional world. His offer or not, I was sure he wasn't interested and was only offering it out of politeness. After a while, Malio broke the silence that still reigned between us. "Alex is my older cousin, you know." My head snapped around and I stared at him in horror. "Your cousin?" I asked in disbelief. "Yes, we have certain deficits," Malio turned sharply around a curve, which made me slam the door roughly. "Why, what happened?" I asked curiously. "That's a long story." Malio said, apparently ending the topic. "Could you perhaps drive slower?" I asked suddenly as a wave of nausea overcame me. I glanced at the pace mark. Malio drove 220 km/h. Not only was this way too much for me in my current state, but even if I had been sober. I just didn't like high speeds. I swallowed against the ever-increasing nausea. Unsure if it was really the alcohol that had triggered it or if it was the rushing panic. "Could you please stop for a moment?" I asked Malio when I had the feeling that I couldn't stand it any longer. The car seemed way too narrow to me, my heart was racing and I could already hear the rushing of my own blood in the ears. Malio stopped the car on a small ledge a few steps from the huge cliff and I, knees shaking, tumbled out into the darkness of night before the tires even stopped. Where the icy air made me shiver earlier, I now enjoyed the cold, which immediately tugged at my body and blew through my hair. It was a feeling of being alive. The feeling of still being able to feel something. I held out my arms and scrapped my plan to look super serious in front of Malio once and for all. The next moment I was screaming at the top of my lungs. I just started screaming. Against fear. Against the pain. Against everything I had to endure today. "You okay?" I heard Malio's amused voice, who was now leaning on his car roof with his arms folded and watching me with a grin. I ignored him and approached the cliff. "Hey, what are you doing?" I heard his voice. But I didn't care. Very slowly, I put one foot in front of the other until I was only a few inches from the ledge. The wind had increased and I felt how it slowly brought tears to my eyes. Or maybe it was the memory of what Alex wanted to do to me. The realization of how narrowly I had escaped from his clutches. I took another step toward the chasm when Malio grabbed my arm and pulled back violently. “What are you doing there? he yelled over the howling wind, glaring at me angrily. "Let go of me!" I tugged at his grip but he didn't let go, pulling me even further away from the cliffs . "Are you somehow crazy?" He looked at me furiously and I wondered why he was suddenly so embroidered. "Nothing happened!" "Nothing happened? You're the biggest chub on this planet! I wouldn't have been surprised if you tripped over your own feet and pushed yourself down the damn cliff! Are you kind of suicidal or something ?" I gazed at his beautiful, sculpted face in the moonlight for a moment, then realized what I was doing and said quickly, "Apparently, when I'm hanging out with you, that's me. You're throwing knives around, beating up your family and apparently changing your wives non-stop!" Damn, before I knew what I was doing, the last part was out. Malio stopped, pushed me an arm's length away and looked me straight in the eyes. "What do you know about me? You come here strapped in, constantly getting in my way and now coming at me with jealousy?" "That wasn't jealousy!" I said, snorting. ,, Oh no? What was it then?" Malio asked defiantly. “A statement that didn't even take me twenty-four hours to make. You're an arrogant, irrelevant..." "Watch what you say." He cut me off. There it was again, the subtle threat in his voice, just like it had been at the Academy. He slipped a hand from my shoulder and ran a single finger down the collar of the sweater. "What am I? Do you think I don't notice how your body is shaking under my reassurance right now?" I rolled my eyes but didn't dare move an inch. And he was right. My body trembled. He trembled with desire for this bastard. Stupid telltale body! "You're arrogant!" I said, but I heard my voice tremble. He touched the small vacant spot on my neck that wasn't covered with fabric and I inhaled sharply. "And you're cheeky!" He said with a dangerous undertone. "Then fuck off!" I slapped his hand from my neck. He raised an eyebrow and whispered, "Don't provoke me, Jolien." I summoned up all my self-control and glared at him angrily: "Just leave me alone!" "Fine." He let go of me, turned on his heel and rushed towards the car. "Are you serious?" I called after him, stunned at what he was about to do. “ I drive. Happy running." Malio confirmed my suspicions as he slammed the door of his black Lamborghini, revved the engine and disappeared into the darkness. *** Angry, disappointed and feeling left alone, I angrily kicked a small stone away with my feet. He actually ran away! Sure, I had provoked him somewhere, but still, he really just took off and left me somewhere in the middle of nowhere. I briefly considered my options. Admittedly, I didn't have many. Actually, three came to mind. Either, I would walk, which was out of the question. Even if I wasn't so incredibly unsportsmanlike, I had no idea how and, above all, where to go. Also, it was 02:00 in the morning and just too dangerous to do the walk all by yourself. The other option was to stay here and hope for Malio's return, which was just as ludicrous as the first idea because Hell would freeze over before Malio returned. The other and therefore only way to get off this cliff was to call my father and ask him to pick me up. This possibility was anything but tempting - he would freak out, but really! I threw my bag on the ground in anger and cried out briefly. When I finally realized that my behavior was not only childish but was also getting nowhere, I picked up the bag again and dug out my cell phone. My father didn't pick up the phone until after the fourth ring, which was a bad sign, of course he was already asleep. “Jolien? Why are you calling me?" I heard his sleepy voice. "I...", I lost the remaining words. How do you tell your dad that you sneaked out on a Monday night, went to some unpredictable guy's party and are now standing on some cliff in the middle of nowhere because that same guy just ran off and left you alone. Every attempt I played through in my head suddenly sounded bizarre. "Can you pick me up?" I asked directly. "From your room?" My father's voice was still totally sleepy. "I'm not at home." "What?" he asked, surprised, but a lot clearer. "I snuck out. And now I'm stuck somewhere." "Jolien, where are you?" His voice had gone from sleepy to skeptical to worried in seconds. “I will send you my location. I hope it works." "I'll be right there!" With these words he hung up and I sent him my current location directly. Thank goodness it worked! It wasn't ten minutes before I spotted the glaring headlights. With screeching tires, my father's car pulled up right in front of me. He got out of the car angrily and just glared at me for a few seconds. Then he choked out three words: "Into the car. Instantly!" Damned. I was totally wrong in fearing my father was going completely nuts. It was even worse. Much worse. He didn't say a word to me on the drive back, and my mood got even worse when I realized that stupid cliff wasn't even fifteen minutes from our house. If I had walked the path, I wouldn't be in hell now. In my mind I cursed the actual culprit. Malio. It was all his fault! "How do you look anyway? Where have you been? And Whose sweater is that?", those were a lot of questions to which my father actually didn't want answers, but asked them anyway for pedagogical reasons. “ At a party. You said make friends," I kept the answer as neutral as possible. "Mmm," I heard him say as he quietly closed the driver's door and I followed him into the house in silence. “ Stop! You're coming with me!", I saw how he pointed to the kitchen, to the huge table. Crap, so the topic wasn't over yet. “Whose sweater is this? And why is your dress broken?" he repeated the questions I'd skillfully dodged in the car. Involuntarily, my thoughts and feelings were catapulted back to the memory of what had happened in the forest. I felt my hands start shaking and I quickly sat down, tucking them under my legs to hide the shaking as best I could. “An accident. I got stuck and tore it up. The sweater is from a nice guy who loaned it to me." Calling Malio nice made me cringe for a moment. Nothing about him was nice. In no way. I watched my father exhaustedly drop into one of the chairs at the table, just the one across from me, so he could look me in the eye. "Jolien, you can't just sneak into a party when I'm not home. I thought what made our family is trust." I saw the disappointment in his green eyes and immediately had a guilty conscience. What was I thinking? "I'm sorry," I said sadly. "I have to punish you," was his reply. Actually, my father didn't believe in punishment, but I knew as soon as he got out of the car that I couldn't avoid a punishment this time. "I know," I said. "You're grounded and you're taking Amelie to kindergarten for the whole week." I rolled my eyes. I could live with the house arrest, I didn't have any friends anyway, but the fact that I had to take Amelie to kindergarten all week was the real punishment. Meanwhile the hand of the clock pointed to three. "You should lie down for a few more hours," I heard my father say as he followed my gaze. "I'm really sorry, Dad!" Without saying a word, he waved my apology away. Two hours later, when the alarm clock jerked me out of my fitful sleep, I felt horrible. I was so tired that I was sure I would fall asleep in history class today. My bones ached and I was cold, which was probably due not only to the lack of sleep but also to the time spent on the cliff. For a moment I wish I didn't have to throw on that stupid school uniform and put on a heavy sweater. "You look awful," Silia greeted me when I entered the kitchen. Amelie ignored me and happily shoved one spoonful of cornflakes into her mouth while my father sat silently in front of the newspaper and drank his coffee without to appreciate a greeting or even a look.Silently, I took a cup from the cupboard, in which the plates were now sorted, and poured myself the valuable liquid. "Amelie, I'll drive you to kindergarten," I said while taking a large sip of the hot drink. Today I even gave up the milk. “Why that? What have you done?" Silia asked directly. Before I could say anything, my dad folded the newspaper, put it on the table and said, "It doesn't matter, she just does it." Silia didn't say anything, but gave me a look that clearly said that this topic wasn't over for her. "I'm looking forward to it!" Amelie said, and I prayed that at least she didn't make a move to go to kindergarten that week. I knew she didn't like it there. In fact, I was right in my fears, which is why I reached the Academy too late on Tuesday. I knocked softly on the door and heard a woman's voice say in. "I'm sorry I'm late." I said quickly, looking around the room. I rolled my eyes in annoyance when I saw his grin from afar. Of course, there was only one seat available. Of course it was right next to Malio. I haven't been spared anything lately! "Good morning Jolie. Have a nice walk?" I heard Malios whisper as I pulled the chair as far away from him as possible. Without even looking at him, I unpacked my things. Block. Mobile. Pen. Just as I was about to pull the book out, I felt Malio pull the chair closer to him. Our bodies were only a few millimeters apart and the air around us seemed electrified. "Do you know that you look hot when you're mad?" Malio whispered so softly in my ear that I dropped my bag in shock. Again, I tried to slide away with the chair, but he held it, forcing me to be at the mercy of his beguiling closeness. I swallowed a few times, making him laugh softly in my ear. "Go away!" was the only thing I could get out from under his proximity. "Do you really want that?" No, screamed my insides. "Yes!" I replied. Malio lingered for a moment so I could feel his warmth through his school uniform. So close his breath brushed my ear. Something I was supposed to find uncomfortable, actually, but I didn't. But on the contrary. Then, after what felt like an eternity, he finally leaned back. I breathed out a sigh of relief while I heard his soft, arrogant laugh and was certain that I would not notice anything at all about the upcoming double history lesson.