Glitter

I knew I shouldn't have kissed him the minute his hand wound its way around my waist and his lips parted to welcome mine.

I knew I shouldn't have let his fingers run through my hair like they did, or his breath warm the side of my face when he finally pulled away.

I knew, even as I looked into eyes that resembled the brown depths I so desperately craved for, that if I ever had any intention of keeping my heart as unbroken as it could be, I had to walk away.

From both of them.

But I couldn't.

Jack never looked away from me. It almost seemed that he was afraid to, as if doing so would end an image that he'd rather stayed untouched.

I imagined that that was what my own eyes looked like when I saw Alex.

"Come with me," he breathed, thumb stroking my cheek.

I tried to calm the pounding in my chest and let my arms drop from where they had found themselves - around his neck.

"I can't," I told him, looking away. I couldn't let myself do any more damage than I already had.

"Why not?"

He took a step away now and the distance cleared my head.

As desperate as I was for Alex Gaskarth, I'd have to be dead to deny the fact that Jack Barakat was any less fascinating.

"I have to get back home."

Somehow, looking away from those eyes made everything better; the pain duller somehow. It was his eyes that got to me, and their uncanny resemblance to...

Shaking my head free of the cobwebs that gathered, I decided the brown eyes were not one that I'd take easy liking to any more. They were dangerous and hypnotising and belonged to men that I had no business wanting.

The flash of a sudden light disturbed us both.

Either Jack had anticipated it or been exposed to it way too many times, he certainly knew what to do when more flash bulbs exploded in my face.

I turned, disoriented, and tried to resist the urge to hit out at the faces behind the cameras.

Cameras. Voices. Questions.

"Fuck." It wasn't the first time I'd heard Jack cuss but it was certainly the first time I'd ever seen him truly angry. Moving an arm up, he pulled me towards him - covering my face with his jacket in the process - and half dragged me to the car I'd seen waiting for him just a few minutes before.

"...Jack, is that your new girlfriend? What's her name?"

"What will Holly think about this?"

"Does Holly know about your wild affairs?"

I tried to turn to face the voices, to confront them but Jack's hold on me didn't loosen. In a blur of darkness, shouted questions and flashing lights, Jack pushed me into the warmth of his car and shut the door behind him.

I scooted to the middle, avoiding the windows because of the flashing outside, and tried to find my breath.

"Go!" he shouted at the driver who promptly pressed the accelerator so hard we skidded out of there.

"Who is Holly?" I asked him softly.

I knew I had no right to, but I asked anyway.

He didn't answer me straight away. Instead, stubbornly, Jack ground his teeth and glared at the tinted glass of his windows. I wasn't sure who he was upset with more. The cameras outside or me.

"Jack, who is Holly? And who were those people?"

Finally, after a long minute, he turned those brown eyes onto mine.

"Holly is my girlfriend," he started, "and those fuckheads out there are the paparazzi who like knowing when I shit so they can write about it in their twisted little papers."

His cheeks had turned red and his eyes stormy.

I wanted to ask more, to ask him where we were going and why the paparazzi were trailing him and how was it that I'd never heard of their band if they were popular enough to be tracked by those people but stopped.

Unconsciously, quietly, I said the only thing I could.

"You have a girlfriend."

And he nodded.