by Liza James
"She's a fucking wreck right now—my sister. She didn't know what she was doing when she took on this fight." I turn to look at him, noticing his bright blue gaze and dark, shaggy hair. It’s shaved close on the sides, longer on top, to the point where several strands hang low and in front of his eyes.
Damn, my jaw aches, and I lift my hand to absently run along my already bruising skin. I pull back when a sudden sting flashes over the wound and find a tinge of blood staining my touch. "Well, she got one solid hit in," I mutter under my breath as Cade leans down to get a better look.
A somewhat proud smile pulls along his lips, even though the sympathy in his eyes is still evident. "Yeah, she fucking did."
"Tell your sister she'll pay for the extra hit in our next fight, okay?" I yell over my shoulder as I step past him. I vaguely hear a snarky response, but glance back to see Riv working through the crowd as he continues collecting the winnings. He'll drop it off to me tomorrow, and I'm thankful for the routine we have set in place so I can try and sneak away.
I need to find her.
My fists throb at my sides, and I run my thumb over my knuckles while trying to massage the pain away. I'm not in agony, but my body is falling from the adrenaline high I was working through while fighting. Everything feels a little sore, a bit heavier, even with the minimal effort I needed against Roxy
She was hardly an opponent to begin with, and I didn't break a sweat throughout it. But I'm itchy nonetheless, an incredibly uneasy caution still spreading across my skin like goosebumps.
I swear I saw her. I push through the crowd, using my shoulders to nudge people out of the way as I move. Some shout congratulations behind me, or slap their palms against my back in order to offer some sort of accolade for my performance.
I don't even care in this moment. She was here, where she should never have been, watching me take on Roxy in the ring.
But that isn't what had my skin crawling and my stomach twisting in discomfort.
She was with someone else. Someone I refuse to believe was at her side.
Suddenly, one flick of unruly blonde hair flashes in front of me. Just for a moment before disappearing behind a set of college boys in baggy hoodies and layered flannels. I rush forward and push through them, but a thick and muscular arm wraps around my waist in order to pull me back.
"Let go," I snap, glancing over to see one of the guys with a wide smile on his cocky face. "Seriously, get the fuck off me."
I yank my way forward, and he shouts over my shoulder as I try to move on. "Don't you work at that club?"
Ignoring him, I take another step, following the quick and barely there flashes of blonde strands that absolutely have to belong to my girl—Lyp.
What the hell is going on inside of my head? I shake the accidental slip off free, and finally break through the crowd and to the back of the warehouse when I see her rush down another staircase and into the darkness.
"Lyp!" I shout, fully anticipating her turning around and stopping when she hears my voice.
But she fucking doesn't. The bitch. After everything she put me through earlier? And after clearly following me to this place?
I deserve a goddamn conversation.
"Lyp!" I yell again, racing down the staircase after her. She looks to be alone now, and I can't help but notice the way her body seems tense and frantic. I pick up my pace, reaching my hand out just as she hits the bottom of the staircase and moves to round the corner.
My fingers wrap around her arm, gripping tightly as I yank her back against me. I force her around and step us forward, deeper into the darkness and farther away from the boisterous crowd above us.
"What the fuck are you doing here?" I say, shoving her back against the cement wall while the sounds of little mice and rats scurry past our feet. My voice echos, the heated sound reverberating in the obscure hallway we're hidden in.
Lyp stares back at me, a vacant and detached look in her eyes while her head falls against the wall. She doesn't say a word, and the long strands of her messy hair fall in front of her eyes and over her mouth.
I narrow my gaze at her, waiting for her to respond, but nothing comes. I drop my eyes lower, noticing the way her shoulders are rising and falling rather quickly, her chest moving with each erratic breath as if she's struggling to hold enough oxygen.
"Hey," I say, dropping my tone a little quieter as I step closer to her. My chest presses against hers, and my hand lifts to her shoulder in some attempt to calm her with my touch. "Lyp, what's going on?"
Something slides underneath my skin, an uneasy vine slowly tightening in my gut. This feels off, again. And I remember the way things have felt recently with her at the club.
In the next instant, she's laughing, loudly and bitterly while the sound bursts around the walls surrounding us. She lifts her hands and shoves me away from her, and I stumble back while trying to regain my footing.
Anger bursts in my chest, that vine snapping and whipping through me in rage. What the hell is going on with her?
"I could beat the fuck out of you for whatever the hell it is you're doing. Everything you did earlier, with those two losers at the club. And following me to my fight?" I stalk toward her again while the words break through my gritted teeth and snarling tone. "Stay the fuck away from me."
My hand snaps forward and wraps tightly around her throat, that same smile pulling even wider across her lips as her back arches away from the wall. I force her chin up, and step against her so she's crowded in this stormy space.
She laughs again, this time time the sound even more detached and emotionless than before. Her eyes watch me, tracking my movements while irritated breaths fall from my lips. She notices that too, and I can't help the tension pulling in my chest as I try to catch my own breath.
I move against her with each rapid exhale—absently, uncontrollably, and my grasp tightens against her skin even more.
She gasps as if she's struggling to breathe and honestly, I like it. Watching her fight by my own hand, knowing I'm the one in control of this.
Just like before.
But it's in that same moment everything changes. And before I can shift away from her, she's launching forward and wrapping her hands around my own throat. She shoves me back quickly, and I almost trip over my own feet but remain upright by her surprisingly strong hold.
She keeps going, continues stepping and shoving until we're completely submerged in the darkness and it's my back pressed tightly against the opposing wall now. One of her hands shifts into my hair as she yanks my head painfully to the side.
"You think I followed you here?" She whispers, her voice uncomfortably calm and steady. "Do you think I want anything to do with you?"
"Why else would you be here, Lyp? Is this some kind of sick obsession you have with me?" I taunt, my voice dropping into a tone laced with mockery.
Her hand twists even tighter into my hair, and her fingernails dig into the skin at my throat as she roughly presses me against the gritty cement. Her body is plastered to my own, her chest dragging against my tits while she breathes. I can feel her anger, her resentment, that emotion I was looking for now back full force as rage burns between us.
"There you are," I whisper.
"Fuck you," she bites back and her voice breaks the tiniest bit as her lips brush against my ear. "When are you going to leave me alone?"
"Never," I reply, attempting to twist my face toward hers but failing completely. She won't let me move, and the strain on my own breath is starting make my head light.
"Please, K," she begs and I feel the words pulse in my blood.
I feel it.
I hardly feel anything anymore. But I feel this. Burning angrily, blazing slowly, building and building and building until it's bound to explode.
"You'll never forget it. That night. Those moments," I reply, my voice becoming hoarse and rough in the heavy silence around us. "Those will always belong to me."
"They shouldn't have. You didn't deserve tha
t from me." Her body moves even closer to mine, as if that's even possible. But I feel her warmth, her heat, sinking into my skin and rushing through my head. "Tell me you felt something then. At least give me that, K."
I want to feel it. Feel more of this between us.
But I can't, I won't ever let us get to that place again.
I hate myself for taking those moments and I hate her for running away from it.
"What do you want me to say, Lyp?" I snap, frustration blooming in my chest while I hold onto that emotion. I use it, like the weapon it always is. I hide behind painful words and the mask that so easily reminds me exactly who I need to be. "That I fucking loved you? That I felt something more when I fucked you?"
I laugh, the vile sound slithering between us like a snake. Toxic. Destructive.
Comfortable.
"I think you already know the answer to that." My voice is dry, my tone completely disinterested. I let my hands fall to her waist, my fingers twisting in her shirt as I slowly drag it up her stomach. My knuckles brush along her skin and I can hear the intake of breath as her lips still over my jaw. "You were such a fucking liar that night at the rave, weren't you? Did you like that? Making everyone believe you felt nothing for me?"
I mention that night all those months ago, only because it's something that still eats at me. She was so outrageously fake. Pretending to be someone who never existed. I knew what I was doing though, I knew she was remembering that day when we were sixteen years old.
Alone. In her room. While her family was gone and we had the house to ourselves.
I fucking know what she feels like when she falls apart.
"I'm not fucking bi, K," she snaps out, and suddenly her body is trembling against my own. A shift in the air takes place, making the space a bit colder, a bit more vicious and bitter.
But her hold lessens a fraction, and her head falls forward and rests on my shoulder. Her voice drops even lower, barely a whisper as she speaks again. "I'm not bi."
"What are you afraid of? Tell me," I ask, teasing that line I've already drawn between us. I don't want to cross it. I don't want to fucking feel it. But the question lingers in my mind and begs to be spoken in this moment.
God, I'm so fucking back and forth with her. I hate her, I do. But there are these other thoughts, these questions and desires flashing in my mind.
The need to touch her. To feel her. To hear her fucking voice.
"What am I afraid of?" She pulls back, her voice raising in obvious irritation at my question. "Are you fucking kidding me?" I can hardly see her in the darkness, but I can feel her eyes boring into me.
So much fucking emotion, and I instinctually want to close her out in order to stop feeling it.
She's too much.
Just as I'm about to tell her to forget it, to slam those walls back in place for the second time tonight, her touch changes.
She shifts her hand from my throat, dragging her fingertips up and over my jaw where I was bleeding. Her thumb brushes against my skin, slipping over the wound in a way that actually surprises me.
She isn't this gentle anymore.
Her vision has clearly adjusted enough in the darkness to see this. I can feel her, and while everything inside of me is screaming to pull back, there's something else dragging me forward. Begging me to let go, to find out whatever it is we ruined all those years ago.
"Just tell me," she whispers, her touch stilling along my face while her breaths finally steady. There's something still off about her energy though and I wish I could see her eyes. I know she's been drinking more often, getting high on pills and weed. And while I don't really give a shit about any of that, there's something different about what she's been doing recently. "Tell me you cared."
I'm silent, listening to her words and letting them sink into me.
I don't know what to say, and at the same time, I know exactly what to do.
It always comes down to this.
Do I protect her?
Or do I destroy her?
And what if....those two questions have the same answer? Require the same response?
She doesn't know what really happened all those years ago. She doesn't know why I did what I did or how badly I wished I could have changed things for us.
It wouldn't have mattered anyway.
So, I do what I have to do. Again and again and again. Because this hatred between us is necessary. These walls and lines are there for a reason.
"You've always been nothing," I grind the words out through clenched teeth, slipping back behind my place of safety and familiarity.
And then I feel it.
The detachment. The tension. The return of every ounce of anger and resentment.
"You fucking raped me." It feels like she practically shouts it, and yet it’s hardly a whisper. God, she sounds horrible. A cracked voice and agonizing cries. Her pained words break through and everything hurts. All of it. For a single split second before I force it all away again.
She steps back, releasing me completely and while I want her to get the hell away from me, I ache in her absence at the same time.
"You don't know what I fucking did," I bite back, refusing to reveal exactly what happened that day. She can never know, and this keeps her away from what could have killed her.
My family. Dom. Myself.
She scoffs, stepping back even farther. She lifts her hands in front of her waist and that's when I realize she's shaking as badly as she is. She picks at the edges of her nails and lifts her chin so high that she's staring at the ceiling above us. "I don't fucking know," she mutters. "I don't know, K? Really? You have no idea what's been happening since—"
"Sunflower."
She freezes. Her lips slam shut and her hands fall to her sides. That voice strongly speaks from behind her, and I can't even see who it is when I take a step forward.
What the hell? His tone is deep and familiar, and the thread of fear works its way through my stomach at the idea that it could be who I think it is.
But her arm shoots forward and she forces me back, refusing to let me come closer.
"I have to go," she whispers as her feet shuffle backwards and she begins turning away from me.
"Wait, who the hell is that?" I venture, stepping forward and quickly reaching out for her elbow.
She rips her arm out of my hold and her head snaps back to address me. "Don't fucking touch me. Don't talk to me. Leave me alone." The words are clipped and absent, but her eyes are wide as she watches. I glance behind her again, hoping to see whoever it is that's been hiding in the shadows.
But there's nothing, and I just as I ignore her again to look for myself, she twists toward me and uses every ounce of her strength to shove me away from her. "I said stay the fuck away from me, K!" This time, her voice blasts through the bleak corridor, the chill in her tone stabbing through my chest. I fall back on my ass, breaking my fall with the palms of my hands as they collide with the gritty cement below me.
She isn't usually like this. Even now, even when we have this hatred between us—she isn't erratic and aggressive.
Calypso's always been the sweet one.
She pauses for a moment while we both catch our breath, and then she's gone. Disappearing through a doorway that's even darker than we're standing in now. I scramble to my feet, hoping to chase after her but as soon as I enter the room I'm surrounded in even more silence.
I can't see anything, can't hear any footsteps. The waves of hesitation and uncertainty roll through my stomach again and the fear of what's ahead flashes through my mind.
I'm torn. Something inside is holding me back, telling me to wait this one out. And yet there's this tether between us, this draw and connection I haven't been able to shake even after all these years.
What the hell are you doing, Lyp?
His fingers press tightly over my mouth. My back is smashed against his chest as he holds me in front of him.
It's too tight—his hold on me, and his other arm w
raps firmly around my waist as K steps into the space.
Help me. I want to shout, to scream the words as fear pumps through my already cloudy blood. My brain is foggy, my head high and my movements slow because of the drugs.
More pills. More joints. More alcohol.
He gives and I take. Because it feels better than the reality I'm living in.
I don't want to feel anything anymore.
And yet, K drags these emotions back up and to the forefront, even after all this fucking time. God, I just wanted to forget you.
I can hear her breathing as she stands there for a moment, clearly deciding whether to follow me or not. But Dom grabbed me so quickly, the darkness so easily concealing us while he watches K in the narrow doorway.
She sighs, stepping back and turning around before walking away. My stomach drops, my mind panicking at the realization that she's leaving me alone with him. Even though it's exactly what I told her to do, the action I forced her to take.
God, what the hell is wrong with me?
I'm lost and afraid and alone. One second, I'm taking my anger out on her at the club, pushing her to hook up with a couple of guys I know she doesn't want to be with. The next? I'm telling her to stay the fuck away from me, and yet craving to feel her at the same time.
I'm so fucked up.
I wish I had answers, or solutions or an easy way to fix what's happening to me. But at the end of the day, it's all the same.
I'm numbing the pain and fear with drugs and alcohol. Then I torture myself with thoughts of the one girl who stole from me, who broke me all those years ago.
The one person I've only been able to distract myself from but never truly forget.
"What an interesting dynamic you two have, Sunflower." His lips move over my ear, his fingers slowly slipping from my mouth and dragging over my neck. I gasp, breathing in deeply while resolving to focus on the high my mind is carrying.
Maybe he has something else I can take before I pay my dues tonight.
"Go," he demands, pushing me forward as I stumble a step before regaining my balance. His hand rests on the nape of my neck, directing me through the darkness as we move through the basement of the warehouse. "I brought you here for a reason. Do you understand that?"
