PROLOGUE: COLLIDE

Abashed the Devil stood,
And felt how awful goodness is.
-Paradise Lost

Xavier's

It all started when Xavier Wolf walked into his Senior year's photography class.

A class that he didn't even want or need to take, without it he'd had enough credits. Yet still, he let himself get talked into it by his best friend.

Because his best friend would say "It will be fun!" and "All the Seniors who sign up for it get it together." and honestly, more than he wanted to have at least one class with someone he could tolerate, he just wanted that person to shut the fuck up about it.

Calum Hilton was more annoying than he was convincing.

But Xavier guessed he got what he wanted in the end, so it didn't matter what way he got it.

Often, the Wolf boy would solve problems with his fists. That's got him into almost as much trouble as his foul mouth did.

So him being the town's biggest delinquent—one of it's biggest problems—wasn't much of an overstatement. The stone faced, unaffected and normally secluded boy was called the Devil.

A nickname he got from his father. 

Something everyone from the police to his teachers called him—maybe it was due to the unnaturally sharp canines he inherited he'd use to snarl at people, his massive frame or the way his clenched fists were a threat of their own but it was rare for anyone to risk saying his name.

Making Xavier Wolf mad didn't usually end well.

People didn't like to bother him.

And well, nothing much bothered him anyway.

He was the Devil and he was surprised—no, not surprised, he was shocked—to stumble in step and feel his heart beat erratically in his chest the first time he saw her.

The brunette looked tiny, fragile in some fatal way as she sat atop one of the desks, jacket slack on her shoulders as she leaned back, tank top tight enough to show off her curves but loose enough not to get yelled at by a teacher.

The ends of her baggy jeans were tucked into dirty black boots, and, with one foot balanced on her knee, he could see that on the bottom of the sole the words 'Fuck Off' were sharpied into the boots.

Her brown hair was in a falling apart bun on her head and the girl looked like she could care less. 

There were red marks on her arm and she looked exhausted and, as Xavier passed her, walking slow, he realized she smelled like smoke.

It was the kind of smell that made him think of his father, who used to smoke in the house and car, sending him to school reeking of the stuff.

Xavier would rather a parent be smoking than her anyway.

The girl wasn't particularly attractive, she had bags under her eyes and a scowl on her lips where two snake bites curled around her lower one, but she was still pretty to him.

It helped that her pearl-grey eyes were stunningly captivating.

And she was sitting closer to him than anyone else, him at the back of the room and her just one desk up to the right. Calum would be the only person that could get in their way.

His fists clenched as he watched her sigh, hand coming up to grip her wrist as though she was in pain, making his ultramarine blue eyes narrow.

She was in pain.

As was proof by the white bandages wrapped around her wrist when she moved one hand up to touch the necklace hanging down to her collarbone.

Xavier thought that maybe, the worse part about it was that she didn't even care enough to hide it.

There was seven feet between them.

He wanted to make that number less, maybe tell her the things he learned that made him smell less like smoke, maybe even try to help.

But he didn't.

Xavier Wolf was all too aware he wasn't good for someone, let alone a girl who was already struggling to cope with life.

Calum was the first to arrive, giving his usual twinkly-eyed grinning greeting as he pretending to tilt a hat at his best friend, who, as always, pointedly ignored him.

They live together, for fucks sake, and had seen each other all morning until Cal got caught up with some blonde.

The Wolf boy had no fucking clue why he had to act so happy to see him.

A blonde, one Xavier knows he's seen hang off Calum before, bounced up to the grey-eyed girl and poked her in the cheek before squealing out, "I missed you this morning!"

She opened one eye again, having been relaxing, to give the blonde a questioning look. "Jessie, we see each other every day."

'Jessie' pouts, crossing her arms as she stomped a white heel on the ground making her friend—he assumed—scowl and scoot off the table to slink down in the chair, legs on the other one so the blonde can't sit down.

"You said we'd meet up this morning before school. It's the first day. Of Senior year! I didn't even get any cute pictures, you know."

"Bitch please," The brunette scoffs. "You probably took a million cute selfies of yourself and your boy toy over there."

By 'boy toy' she meant Calum.

Who, by the glance Xavier spared at him, didn't even looked bothered by hearing that. Fucking idiot.

"Emma," Jessie whines. "I wanted cute pictures of you. God knows your mom didn't take any."

Emma.

It wasn't a name Xavier planned on forgetting.

And he didn't say it for a month.

For a month he didn't dare mention a thing about her, he didn't ask Cal to introduce them, he didn't say a thing.

It was a month full of watching Emma slump into class, feet shuffling. Of watching her say sly things to her best friend that made the blonde laugh loud enough one time to get sent out to the hall. One where she'd give bullshit excuses of why she was late to the teacher but clearly hadn't slept the night before and smelled like the outside.

A month during which Xavier found where she sat at lunch because she's the only person he looked for and noticed that she danced in her seat when she ate, because her and Jessie would listen to music and it was the only time he saw her smile. 

She didn't like pears and it was one of the only things he knew about her.

The more he saw her, the more he noticed the self-inflicted injuries on her wrists.

That made him hate the space between them.

Then, rather abruptly, that space was canceled out to zero, all because Emma bumped right into him when coming out of the library—Xavier on his way out the school doors after getting out of detention for skipping Calculus.

Simply because, he was skipping that very same class again. Calculus wasn't on his list of priorities.

And really, who could blame him?

Feet shuffling, blurry-eyed tiny Emma didn't stand a chance against his massive frame, even if the mad-at-math delinquent had notice the library door open in time to slow down.

So they collided.

And as someone clung to Xavier's—Xavier 'who growled at anyone who touched him and punched those that didn't take it seriously' Wolf's—chest, he went to react on instinct.

Which was, to him, shove them away, snap a curse and walk off like nothing happened unless the fucker was in a mood to start a fight and consequently get their ass beat.

But then the girl muttered out "My fucking nose." and clenched his leather jacket tighter in one hand, trying to stabilize herself as his hands settled on her hips.

His heart soared to his throat.

And he realized touching her wasn't... it wasn't bad.

There wasn't that need, that itch, to get away from her. The feeling on his skin that urged him to end contact with anyone else, wasn't there.

A fact that really, only made him want to touch her more.

Which didn't quite help the way all of Xavier's thought were starting to be of Emma, it really didn't.

Maybe that wasn't a bad thing either.

"Sorry," Xavier coughs out, the word foreign on his sharp tongue. "I didn't see you."

"S'kay, wasn't watching my step." Rubbing her eye with one hand, Emma pats his chest with the other—much too tired to be intimidated at the moment. "Thanks... for not dropping me. I guess."

Sharp teeth digging into his bottom lips, the Wolf boy feels the blood rush in his ears at how god damn adorable Emma looks when she's this tired. 

"No, um, no problem." The Devil—the Devil—stammers, jaw clenching as he realizes how tame he sounds. "Just, be more careful, okay...?"

Trailing off, clearly asking for her name, Xavier waits patiently for a reply as Emma yawns, stretching slightly.

"My middle name's Rose..." Emma tiredly mumbles, giving him a small smile that nearly makes him flush. "Like the princess." 

"A princess?" Xavier hums, thinking about just how perfectly that suits her—about how he doesn't doubt she could be royalty.

"Yeah," She says, pearl-grey eyes meeting his. "That's me."

"Well, Princess," The Devil tugs her backpack properly onto her shoulders, managing to smirk as he clips her chin up. "Go to class and take care of yourself."

Emma wrinkles her nose like she doesn't know what sleep is. "You're not... Xavier Wolf, are you?"

It's dangerous, Xavier thinks, how nice it sound when she says my name.

His jaw clenches, "And if I was?"

"Then your reputation is in trouble," Emma says. "For being nice."

Xavier scoffs at the 'insult', dropping his hands from her shoulders and shoving them in his pockets, moving around her only to say, "Get sleep." over his shoulder.

Doing nothing more, forcing himself to do nothing more, was hard. She needed help—but he doubts the Devil could be the one to give it to her.

Life is hard, something Xavier Wolf knew well. 

Often, you meet people and you start to love them and then you lose them, because of that you sometimes end up never seeing them again. There's nothing he could have done about that fact, someone always has to leave first. It's inevitable and he's lost people before.

Yet Xavier is convinced that he's the kind of person who's destined to be alone at the end of the day.

The one part about this that he could control is who he let in, who he decided to love. He didn't want Emma to be one of them if she was just going to leave.

He's the Devil.

Everyone leaves him eventually.