The Girl looked over at her friend in shock. Slowly, a smile crept on her face and then she nodded her head a bit more shyly than she did anything. "Okay," she said.
"Now, darling," her friend cooed like a viper, "The cards will reveal things you might not want known. Your inner most secrets. Or maybe this mystery man isn't who you think." The Girl gulped. He knew why. God, this friend really was the fucking worst. He watched The Girl brace herself as long repressed memories flashed through her head like lightning. The incident that ultimately led him to protect her.
The Girl was estranged from her family because of this incident. Like a Phoenix, she'd risen in spite of it, though she didn't know it. Her family was always so cold, which probably explained why she hated winter for years. She had suffered an emotional chill forever, and then was frozen out after the incident. Looking for attention, looking for validation, looking for someone to accept her natural warmth- she had taken to a neighbor as a teenager. He seemed weird, but The Girl was friendly to everyone, often to spite her family. The neighbor had an obsession with young girls and abducted The Girl with the intent to kill her. But it was what he did to her while he abducted her that caused her family to cut off The Girl. She was "damaged". They mainly ignored her until she turned eighteen when she moved away for school.
There was nothing he could do to stop it then but watch it happen and stop him from killing her, stop her from killing herself. He thought she had to have been a punishment, the worst one imaginable. But then he watched her; he felt her pain, and the unimaginable happened. She grew on him. He didn't understand how anyone could hurt her, ignore her, shun her. He waited for her to do something, to avenge her pain. But she didn't. The Girl wanted to survive. She was the yin to his yang. And he wanted more. He longed for a life where he actually did stop her attack and where he did not attack at all. They were lifetimes apart, but so very close. He could feel The Girl did not tell her friend this- and she didn't have to- it was her story to tell. So, he had to protect her, he had to stop it. Even if it meant manipulating the cards and revealing details about himself.
He gulped. Looking at her face, he had to. This, he knew, he would be forgiven.
To be continued