“Sorry.” I pull my hand away, embarrassed he caught me.
“Don’t be sorry.” He laughs, furthering my horror. I tip my head away, ignoring his eyes. Finally, he sighs and forces me to look at him by cupping my chin. I take in a deep breath as my skin crackles beneath his large palm, his thumb rubbing my cheek. “It felt kind of nice, actually.”
“Oh?” I creak like the door to the room.
The door…
I snap my head to the side and feel my heart jump at the sight of my mother peeping inside.
“What’s wrong?” He sits up and brushes my hair out of my face.
I barely ignore the little simmering in my stomach and lean back, very aware of the insane person looking in on us. Only God can see what’s going on in that loony brain of hers.
“With her? No idea,” I breathe, standing to my feet.
“What are you talking about?” he says. He still hasn’t noticed her. Thank God, because if he did catch her, he’d most likely stop coming over. I would.
“Nothing,” I reassure him, walking over to the door. “I’m going to use the bathroom. Nature calls.” I smile nervously as I block the cracked door.
He squints his eyes. “There’s an en suite bathroom just across the room…”
I look across the room, and sure enough there is one, wide open and welcoming in all its glory.
I am such a horrible liar.
My skin grows hot as I look back at him and his smirk. “I need to use mine…and, you know, shower with my products. I can’t smell like you. That’d be ridiculous.” I laugh and snort, actually snort. Can I be any more of a dork? Why are we in his room, anyway? I must have been out of it. Now I know not to take more than one pill at a time, lesson learned.
“I’m sure you already do, considering we slept in the same bed,” he points out. I bet he just loves to see me all flushed, doesn’t he? Asshole…so why am I still laughing, and why is he joining in?
“I’ll be back, okay?” I stop being weird, and he nods.
“I’ll be here.” He winks at me then falls back onto the bed. I still find it weird he’s staying with us, but apparently, he can’t stand to be around his mother and would rather spend the summer with me.
I slip out of the room and softly shut the door, then face my mother. She has a wide grin swept across her perfectly made-up face, lipstick and mascara and all. And when I take in her outfit, I see she’s wearing sky-high heels and a dashing, fitted red dress, hair in its home-style—a bun.
“What are you doing out here, peeking in like a crazy woman, Mother?” I hiss at her, careful not to have Noah hear me. I can’t have him know how much of an insane woman my mother is.
“I just wanted to wake up my lovely daughter for breakfast,” she lies, then smiles even bigger and glances at the door. “But then I saw you with him…you two are perfect for each other, don’t you think? Much better than that…other boy.” Her face glitches with a frown, but then she looks at me and is all cherry and smiles again, which is both unnerving and frightening. “This could be so much more—”
“Noah and I are just friends, Mother.” I cut off her daydreams, and she scoffs.
“Sleeping in the same bed doesn’t really look like just friends,” she snips, and I gulp and look away from her piercing eyes. “Though I don’t exactly like you flinging yourself at him, you’re getting close, and that’s all that matters.”
“But I didn’t just fling myself at him.” Who does she think I am?
“Sure, whatever you say.” She’s out of it as she soothes her fingers over my hair, then pinches my cheek.
“Ouch, Mother,” I snap in pain, but she is too high up on her cloud of insanity to notice.
“Now, go and get ready; you have a session with your therapist today,” she says, and my skin suddenly feels clammy and my throat feels dry.
“Can we please reschedule? I was thinking of going to the beach with Noah.” I use the fact that she wants us together so badly to get out of the dreaded appointment, but she is dead-set on fixing me before she can seal me forever in her image of perfection.
“You know you can’t skip sessions.” She pauses, and I feel like I am under her scalpel as she tips my chin up and examines me like a facial surgeon, rather a soul surgeon. Then she says, “I need my good girl all patched up and fixed. Can’t have you walking around broken at the hands of that monster,” she sneers in disgust.
***
I wipe my eyes as I numbly walk out of the house and down to the black gates with the “W” encrusted in gold. I pass through the gates and fall to my butt on the cold ground and sniffle back the tears clogging my throat. A large lump is lodged in there and makes it hard to breathe, so I close my eyes and welcome the little breeze rippling through my dress and my free hair.
The therapy session I just stormed out of, too caught up in my emotions to even speak as she prodded and pushed the idea of “moving past this bump,” is still fresh in my mind, and it’s absolutely crushing me. She swears she’s trying to help, to better me, but it just feels like she wants to bury me in guilt and pressure, along with my mother. Sometimes it can just be too much. So much that I feel like I’m being buried under concrete in preparation to be placed on my mother’s mantel and paraded as if I am perfection at its base.
“Livvy, what’s wrong?”
I open my eyes and find Noah staring down at me with a frown.
“Nothing, I’m fine.” I don’t even try to wipe away my tears or appear sane, because there is no way I can disguise…this. I can only embrace it with wide, open arms. I know my hair is crazy from my fingers constantly threading through them, and my face is most likely red, and the makeup my mother forced onto me is marking me.
He sits down next to me. “Don’t lie to me, Olivia.”
Oh, he’s serious.
I meet his stone-hard green eyes and listen to the wind whistle for a few seconds, then tell him, “I am broken, Noah.”
“I’m sure you can recover from whatever he did,” he says, and I laugh brazenly as I lean back against the gate.
“He’s not the one who broke me…I am.”
“What? That doesn’t make any sense.” He sounds so baffled, and I laugh again, the tears pouring down my face shamelessly now.
“I treated him like a fucking test subject,” I admit and feel my shoulders grow lighter. He stays silent, and I find it as my cue to finally enlighten him on how much of a monster. “He has a mental illness, and to get into an elite program that would help my career to be a psychologist…I used his disease against him and analyzed him like he was a fucking lab rat. I lied to him, I loved him, and I lost him. How tragic, am I right?”
“That’s horrible—”
“I know.” I cut him off and take a stinging gasp of air before whispering, “Now—now I’m drowning in guilt, and I don’t think the flow will ever stop. I’ve actually turned to literally drowning myself because it gives me space, and I’m suddenly not in the same world where I single-handedly fucked up the best thing that’s ever happened to me. And I mean ever. As in I don’t think I’ll ever get it again. But I deserve this—this pit in my stomach. I deserve every single thing coming to me, because I’m a lousy piece of shit for breaking him too. I didn’t mean to, though. But—t-that’s what happens when you fall for me, a monster.” I break into tears, breaking my tough exterior, and I tremble with tremors so strong, I shake.
He grabs me and pulls me into his chest and shushes me while gently rocking back and forth.
“You aren’t a monster,” he coos, and I open my mouth to say he’s wrong, but he does something that shuts me up right away.
He kisses me.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Grey
My breaths are hollow and rapid as I punch the moving hands in front of my face. I duck when they come for my stomach. I side-step when they come for either side of my ribs. And I jab and block whenever I get the chance, hitting his ribs if I can. Body shots can be important,
because nothing hurts more than getting sucker punched in the stomach. All the air leaves your body, like a balloon untied and let go into the wind. It goes wild and loses its strength, so I do my best to land punches square in his stomach and ribs.
“Good, good—remember to keep your face blocked,” David coaches. “You can’t let your face be unguarded. They’ll leave you reeling back while you’re going for their mid-section.”
I nod, unable to speak with the mouth-guard between my teeth. I keep in mind to aim for his mid-area when I get the chance and keep my gloved hands up in front of my face but remember to hit lower if I get the chance. I even chant his instruction in my head non-stop until I am moving swiftly, head shots and body shots when I can. He praises my quick foot movements, and I note each time his mouth twitches before throwing his right arm for me.
I’d be lying if I said I’m not imagining that David is that stuck-up asshole Liv’s associated herself with lately. He acts as if he’s so innocent, like he hasn’t mingled with the gang or the lower people in town. If only Liv knew the truth…oh, how he has her wrapped around his finger, it’s ridiculous. But of course, she’d just see his plastic smile and pressed slacks and ignore the darkness that lingers around his sprayed hair. He’s like a fucked-up Ken doll, and she’s become his naïve little Barbie.
My fists become lethal with each swing as I think of how much he’s playing her. She’s already fucked up as it is; she doesn’t need him messing with her head anymore.
But why the hell should I care? I’m the one who fucked her up in the first place.
I duck at the last second before I could get clipped in my jaw.
“Concentrate, Grey,” David orders, tapping my bare shoulders with his gloves.
I grumble a reply and put my fists up, signaling I want to resume.
What the fuck is going on with me? I’m thinking about her and that prick. I am not supposed to care about her. I am supposed to despise her with everything in me and focus on this tournament. The very tournament that will decide my career as an MMA fighter. I shouldn’t let her clog up my mind, and I shouldn’t worry about her well-being. She didn’t care about me or my well-being, so why should I for her sake?
David’s glove hits my jaw, and I stumble back into the ropes.
“What are you doing, man?” he snaps, annoyed.
“Nothing,” I reply as I take out my mouth guard. I try to avoid his eyes, but he bends his neck and meets my eyes.
“Oh, yeah?” He tips my head back, and I roll my eyes and brush past him.
“Yeah,” I answer him, stepping under the ropes and landing on the mat-covered floor with a heavy thud.
“Because it doesn’t seem like nothing.” He walks over to the ropes and glares at me as I plop onto the wooden bench in front of the ring and take a large swig of water. I may be avoiding talking to him by drinking water right now…He obviously notices, because he says, “You’re distracted, as you have been for the past few days…What’s up with you?”
“Nothing, David.” I shove my water bottle back in my gym bag and begin to undo my gloves.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he barks when I stand, dropping the gloves in the bag as well.
“Out,” I say simply and kiss my teeth when he slides under the ropes and storms over to me. “Like you said, I’m distracted. And what’s better than a lap around the block?”
He grips my shoulder and whips me around before I can even take a single step. “Telling me what has the most concentrated fighter I know distracted,” he says, and I shake my head, but his grip gets tighter and he narrows his eyes. “Tell me, Grey.” His tone is deathly serious, but what do I say?
That I am thinking non-stop about the love of my life with another shady boy? That I literally can’t sleep at night? That I feel like there is no purpose in even breathing right now, training to fucking hurt people? I don’t think he’d take any of that with a grain of salt.
“Nothing that either of us or I could possibly change…” I tell him.
He stares at me silently, but I have to look away or he’ll see how truly damaged I am.
I tear my eyes from his and jog away. I don’t look back once as I break through the glass doors and take off down the street. My heart is pulsating on the tip of my tongue as I run straight and don’t curve around the block like I told him I would. I don’t want to go back there; I just need some space. So I run straight ahead, ignoring the curses thrown after me as I barrel past people. But I couldn’t give less of a fuck about them.
I can practically hear my lungs scream for air. But I tell them to fuck off and leave me alone. My calves are begging me to slow down and take a break. I tell them to screw themselves too. Every inch of my skin is crying, but I don’t stop to even breathe. I am a running corpse, fueled up with rage and confusion and darkness and a ticking time bomb that’s implanted in my DNA code. I am so fucked up, I could almost laugh. But I push even harder and taste the salty sweat that falls down my face.
My shorts are buzzing, and instantly knowing who it is, my past that has caught up with me, I push even harder until I’m sure I am just a blur of black and red. A blur of fucked-up emotions, a blur of indecisiveness the size of the universe and deep as the ocean. I can feel the soles of my feet rub furiously against my Nike sneakers. I can almost imagine my feet are on fire and I am melting into a pool of ashes. Maybe then I’d be able to cool down because I am burning up too much, too fast.
I don’t know how long I run or where I am going; all I know is that I am creating distance from everything clogging my mind. I am creating distance from Liv, that preppy fucker, David, Rose—everyone.
When I finally do stop, I fall to my knees and hands in the middle of the road. But again, I couldn’t care less. A car could swing around a corner and knock me clean, but I can’t move even if I wanted to. I am glued to the gravel, sticky, and exhausted. I take deep breaths and listen as my heart has a rock concert inside of my chest. It’s swinging across the stage and doing mid-air kicks, and jumping in the crowd, and it’s singing in spite of my demise.
Hearing a blaring honk behind me, I take two more breaths before pushing to my feet. My legs are jelly, and I nearly collapse to the ground when I take a step. The honks grow, and I flip the asshole the finger.
“Go the fuck around, dumb-ass,” I find my voice and scream at him.
He goes around, screaming curses at me, but I fling them right back in his face.
Asshole.
I roll my eyes and stand on the side of the road, hands on my hips, as I try to catch my breath. My head is filled with lead, and a million colors burst behind my eyes. I pinch my nose bridge and curse under my breath as I lean against a car before I pass out.
Now that I’ve run my lungs dry, I should find out where I am. One look around at the green scenery and massive houses with steel gates and I know I’m in the rich fuck part of town. Where all the successful people reside, kicking back by their ridiculous tropical-style pools and laugh over shrimp cocktails.
I’ll walk around for a bit, steal all their glamorous air, then leave.
As I leisurely walk through the luxurious neighborhood, I vow to myself to get back in the game and focus on what is important: the fighting tournament. Nothing else matters but that. Not Liv and her blindness. Not that frat idiot and his manipulativeness. Not Rose and her attempts to draw me back into love with her. Not anything else, not anyone else. If I can manage to concentrate on one thing, maybe everything else will just fade away.
“I can do this, I can do this…” I chant repeatedly as I trek up the hill, another obnoxiously big house on my left. “I can do this, I can do this, I can—”
I stop in my tracks when I spot Liv and that shady motherfucker on the ground…kissing.
I can feel my heart split open.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Rain begins to pour rapidly, like it’s on a mission, as I run through the flashy neighborhood. Headlights blind me and cars honk at me
because I’m in the middle of the road. But I welcome the danger because anything is better than the cold, hard reality. The same reality in which I just caught Liv’s lips kissing someone who wasn’t me. Just the thought of it makes me want to stop and vomit, but I tell myself I just need to get out of here before I react irrationally.
Fuck rationality, my subconscious sneers, pissed off.
I kick a trash can and watch it roll down the road, hitting a car. The alarm goes off, and I slide against another car and cup my hands against my ears to block out the deafening sound. I shut my eyes so tight, my brain feels like it’s caving in on itself.
I have to calm down, but I can’t when my body is spazzing out.
I’m losing my fucking mind over a girl who ruined me. How is this possible? How is it that I want so desperately to run back up that street, yank that fucking boy by his collar, and pound his fucking face in until there’s nothing left but a bloody pulp? How is it that I’m the one hurt right now, yet she gets to go and kiss all the snakes she desires? How is it that she gets to be “happy” while I am so fucking miserable?
None of it is right. None of it makes sense.
And it makes me even angrier.
I jump to my feet and take off again. I have to keep moving or my body will instinctively trek backwards, and I’ll end up lashing out. The siren of the disturbed car fades the further down the hill I go. I quickly duck behind a car when I spot a security guy, who I guess patrols this neighborhood to make sure these rich fellows are safe, come running up the street. I watch him run past me, wait a few seconds, then get up and dash down the street. I don’t feel like being interrogated by a mall cop today. Not when my fists are itching to bash in someone’s head.
I run and run and run, faster and harder than I did when I made it up this fucking hill. I can feel my leg muscles tear apart, cell by cell, and I can’t feel my heart anymore, but I don’t stop. Not for a breath, not to save myself from passing out—I just keep running. Because if I stop even for a split second, I know for a fact I will turn around and wreak all kinds of hell on every single thing I see.
Grey: The Retribution (Spectrum Series Book 3) Page 22
