Hurricane

"I don't know what you want, Shan," I spat, knowing in the back of my mind that I was being a little too aggressive, and also not totally caring.

"I want the fucking truth, Evangeline," he said, cool and calculated. I knew he was just seconds from losing it. I could almost see his blood boiling underneath his skin. His usually beautiful eyes had clouded over and looked so cold. They almost had a red tint to them the longer I looked, so I averted my gaze.

"I've been telling you the fucking truth for three hours, Shannon!" I screamed, and was surprised when I saw a momentary physical recoil from him. We had, in fact, been immersed in this argument for going on four hours. Thirty Seconds to Mars had just played their biggest show to date, and instead of celebrating, here Shannon and I were having a screaming match in a green room backstage.

He'd been weird all day and wouldn't tell me why; kept saying it was nothing when it obviously wasn't. Directly after the show, he'd stormed backstage and motioned for me to follow him into the green room. Once there, he began unloading upon me countless rumors that he'd been hearing about me, including one stating I'd been sleeping with his brother, and another stating that I was only with him because I thought he was going to be famous. While I was sure that he and the band were going places, that didn't matter to me at all, and as for Jared, he was basically my best friend in the world by that point and I'd never even had those sorts of thoughts about him at all to be honest.

I was absolutely furious that he'd even considered that any of them could be true, and he was absolutely furious because he seemed to genuinely think they could be.

"There's no way that all of these things have been circulating around for no reason at all, Evangeline. No way. We went so fast, and maybe it was too fast. Maybe we didn't get to know each other enough first, maybe we should've done things differently," he said, gritting his teeth between words. It was getting to the point where I couldn't really tell if he was more angry with me or himself.

Nothing he was saying was true, of course. The kicker of the whole situation for me was that he wouldn't even tell me where he'd heard these ridiculous things; all he'd say was that it wasn't from Jared. I didn't know what else to tell him.

"You know what, Shannon? If you're so quick to believe this utter bullshit from someone whose name you won't even tell me, maybe we really don't know each other very well. Because, see, the Shannon I thought I knew wouldn't believe any of this shit. He would have come to me calmly and asked about it instead of fucking accusing me. If this is the way you want things to be, if you're really not going to fucking believe me right now when, by the way, I've literally never told you a lie about anything, then fine. This is the way it can be. Bye, Shannon," I spat at him, anger boiling over inside me. I scrambled around the room to pick up my few belongings while he watched. His eyes followed me all around the room and then to the doorway. Without looking back, I moved to open the door.

"Evangeline," he growled my name, low and guttural. Against my own will, I glanced over my shoulder at him. His eyes were filled with something different now. Where it had been pure rage before, now it was pure lust. He ran his eyes over my body like a lion does its prey. All of the breath seemed to leave my body as I stared at him. Somehow I'd simultaneously never been more scared or more attracted to anyone in my life.

"What?" I demanded, trying my hardest not to give in to him in any way.

"Don't," he growled, and I offered him a dry chuckle.

"Don't what?" I threw back, trying my best to match his tone.

"Don't," he repeated, getting more and more intense by the second.

We stared at each other a few more seconds, and when he didn't say anything more, I turned on my heel and left. I didn't dare look behind me again until I was in the back corner of the small venue's parking lot. I threw my stuff into the backseat of my car and drove straight home to the apartment that Shannon and I shared. The last place I wanted to be was surrounded by everything that would only remind me of him, but I didn't have anywhere else to go.

Once there, I locked myself inside the office and did the only thing I could think of: screamed into a pillow for a good while. I couldn't tell you how long I sat there after that, just staring at the blank TV screen that I couldn't seem to bring myself to turn on. It started raining. It stopped. I stared at the blank TV, and finally I drifted off to sleep. I was awoken a while later by the phone ringing on the desk. I didn't make any move to answer it. The machine picked it up and Jared's panicked voice poured through.

"Eves. Eves! Fucking pick up! I know you're there, pick up the fucking phone!"

I didn't want to, but I couldn't ignore the fact that there was real pure panic in his voice.

"Jared?"

"Is Shannon with you?"

"What? No... we argued and I came home."

"Fuck."

"What?"

"What did you argue about?"

"Some rumors that he heard. He was being a fucking prick."

"And you have no idea where he is?"

"No, I told you. Why?"

"I haven't seen him since right after you left the venue. Almost five hours ago."

"So...?"

"So, Shannon can be kind of... self destructive... when he's upset. We have to find him."

"What if I don't want to find him?"

"I know you. You do. I need your help. Please, Eves."

"Self destructive how?"

"He just makes some bad decisions sometimes, okay? Nothing too serious. Just getting too drunk or getting into a fight he can't handle. Sometimes, especially if he's mad at himself, he talks about hurting himself. He's never done anything as far as I know, but I don't know what he'll do knowing that he made you so upset."

"Fuck. Okay. Come pick me up."

"Thank you."

"Fuck you and your brother."

"I'll be there in ten minutes."

"Okay. I'll be ready."