by Addison Jane
The quirk in the corner of his mouth as he pushed off the doorframe and backed away stirred my stomach but in a whole fucking new way. I held my breath as he turned and pulled the door closed behind him, taking what felt like all of the air in the room with him.
My cheeks were burning.
My heart felt like at any moment it could pound straight out of my fucking chest.
I already knew he could see through me. Myth was just one of those people who could read others, their body language, their facial features, every little nervous twitch or shudder, all things he learned from getting in the ring. It was one of the many reasons he was so fucking good.
This was the first time in a long time that I’d felt like maybe there was something more out there for me, something worth fighting for me. But fate had once again thrown in a curveball and a big fuck you. Like yeah, I’ll give you an opportunity to climb out of the hell that swirls around inside you every day, but first, you’re going to have to gamble the lies you’ve told with one person who may be able to call you out on them.
Insert Myth.
Tall, dark, sexy.
Has the ability to tell my secrets to the world.
Lives across the hall.
Fuck.
MYTH
“You’re slowing down,” I taunted, swinging my pad and collecting the side of Brook’s head.
She shook it off and came at me again, a determined look in her eyes.
“Come on,” I snapped. “Don’t give up now.”
The girl powered through finding some strength deep down inside her somewhere and hammering through her last few punches. She had been here with me enough times that she knew the drill. We’d been sparing three mornings a week for almost four months, and not once had she been late, or made an excuse, but I still caught that teenage attitude every now and then. She was dedicated, though, and I had nothing but respect for that, especially given I didn’t know many eighteen-year-olds who were willing to get up at five in the morning for fucking anything.
“All right… jog out to the gate and back. Cool down,” I announced, pulling the pads from my hands. “Then you should probably go and get ready for school.”
I’d pushed her a little harder this morning, and she’d given it straight back.
I knew for next time.
Brook blew out a slow breath, her nose crinkling at the mention of school.
“You having problems at school?” I asked, leaning back against the ropes which lined the ring.
Brook had her moments where she could be hard to deal with, which sometimes made you forget what she’d had to go through growing up. Every now and then, though, I caught one of those cracks before she covered it. And right now, it was glaringly deep.
She shook her head. “You know what kids are like,” she tried to explain away with a wave of her hand. “They can be assholes.”
“Mmm… but if they’re being assholes to you, that makes things different.”
Brook had become somewhat of a little sister to all of us since Repo claimed Kennedy. They’d been through enough bullshit in life as it was, but to now having to be dealing with little fuckers at school, that was a big no.
“Stop!” she cut in, rolling her eyes as she tugged off her gloves and started unwinding her wrapping. “It’s fine, okay? I will handle it.”
“You don’t, and I will.”
Brook knew she didn’t want me coming to that fucking school. And she for sure did not want fucking Repo finding out she was having problems either.
Those bright blue puppy eyes pleaded with me to just leave it alone. So, for now, I would give her the chance to sort it out on her own.
“I’ll go and grab us some water.”
She waved me off as I turned and headed for the kitchen.
The clubhouse would usually still be shrouded in darkness at this time of the morning. No one really surfaced until after six, so I was surprised to see the light beaming out from underneath the kitchen door. With a heavy frown, I shoved it open, probably a little too hard as it swung back with a heavy thump against the wall.
“Shit,” Laken gasped, the sound making her jump. Unfortunately, she had a hold of a pot that was sitting on the stovetop, and the steaming liquid sloshed up over the side with the jolted movement. Her face instantly screwed up painfully.
I rushed forward, taking the pot from her hand and switching off the hot element before placing my hands on her hips and directing her toward the sink. She didn’t say anything, allowing me to thrust her hand under the cold water with nothing more than a hiss coming from her mouth.
One hand pressed to her lower back and the other wrapped around her forearm, I watched as a large red mark bloomed across the side of her hand and down her wrist within a few seconds. Laken’s body pushed back against my hand. It was a natural reaction to try and escape the pain, and I knew it was probably stinging like fucking hell under the cool liquid.
“Fuck! Cunt! Whore!” she cursed, tilting her head back and pinching her eyes closed, squeezing out a couple of stray tears.
Pain is one of those emotions that’s hard to fake. When you feel a certain level of agony, it’s difficult to control exactly how your body will respond to it. You can’t fight those tears, you can’t smile through it, you have to bear it. And she was bearing it.
“Kiss your mother with that mouth?” I tried to make a joke, hoping to distract her from the excruciating pain in her hand.
Laken huffed out a soft laugh, her eyes pulling up in somewhat of a smile before it clicked back in, and she crinkled her nose. “Maybe I’m lost? I thought this was a clubhouse, not a church?” she teased mockingly, trying to hide the way her voice was shaking. She could definitely talk a tall game, but she’d never be able to disguise her eyes. They were the color of rich dark toffee, holding all the sweetness in the fucking world, but would easily break your damn teeth if you weren’t careful.
“We have church,” I threw back with a shrug, leaning against the counter. A little voice in my head questioned why my hand was still wrapped around her arm, holding it in the water when she was fully capable of doing it herself at this point. Maybe I felt guilty for scaring her enough to spill the hot water. Or maybe I was worried the second I let go, she would try to escape again like she did last night.
Why the hell was I so determined to chase her?
“Your church is not the same as a normal church.”
“We pray.”
She scoffed. “For what?”
“Alibis. Short jail terms. No scratches on our chrome.”
Her face brightened with a striking smile, but she instantly dropped her chin like she was hoping to hide it from me. Because it was fucking real. And for some reason, like last night when she had ducked out of our introductions, that was something I wasn’t meant to see.
I lifted her hand, drawing it close to my face for a second and scanning the light burn. “It’s gonna hurt for a few days, but I don’t think it will blister,” I told her, looking past the injury to see her eyes were watching me in silence.
Neither of us moved, though there was this swirling effect.
“What happened?” I looked over my shoulder to find Brook standing inside the kitchen doorway with her brow furrowed. My movement allowed her to catch sight of Laken’s hand under the running tap, and she instantly rushed around to us. “Are you all right?”
I took that as my moment to step back, both of us watching as my hands slowly slipped from her arm, and I let Brook slide in beside her.
“I was boiling some water,” Laken finally answered after a few frozen seconds. She smiled softly, pointing to the red mark. “It’s fine, it’s been under here a few minutes, and it’s feeling better.”
“Boiling water,” Brooklyn deadpanned causing Laken to let out a raspy laugh.
“My nan was English, this was how she made coffee.”
Brook wasn’t convinced. Because well, she was a teenager. Anything that wasn’t mechanical was foreign t
o her.
“I scared her,” I admitted as I put a little more space between us. “I’m heading out for a run.” I could feel something building in my gut, this burning feeling, but it wasn’t anger, it was something else. Something I suspected didn’t like seeing Laken in pain.
Laken finally looked at me over her shoulder, twisting her body awkwardly to keep her hand in the water. “You only ran last night, are you training for a freaking marathon?”
Brooklyn laughed, leaning back against the counter with her arms folded across her chest, eyeing me with an attitude that I was going to make her pay for when we train this morning. “See, I’m not the only one who thinks it’s weird.” She nudged Laken with her elbow. “He also only drinks decaf coffee.”
“You get up this early and only drink decaf coffee?” Laken confirmed in horror, pursing her lips and narrowing her eyes as though she couldn’t trust me.
“I have ADHD.” I shrugged like that one sentence could basically explain my fucking life. I didn’t hide my shit, everyone knew what I had going on. It was better that they knew, so they were aware when to have conversations with me, or when to keep an eye out for me losing my shit. My brothers had my back with everything. “My shit is electric enough without adding caffeine to the fucking mix.”
I was one of those kids who struggled to sit still at school, who acted up when they were bored and needed to always have something in my hands or be constantly moving. I was the kid the teachers yelled at because they didn’t understand why the hell I couldn’t remember what they had told me five minutes ago. Simply because while they were talking to me, all I could think about was the bird flying around outside the window.
At that age, my ADHD basically ruled me.
I was restless, unfocused, impulsive, and hot-tempered.
Or if you asked my father, I was a big fat fucking disappointment.
“All the fighting, the running,” Laken noted, a smile curling the corner of her mouth as she leaned against the bar, her eyes bright and warm. “It’s to satisfy that need to be constantly doing something.”
She got it immediately.
I was surprised because not many people did.
It was one of those things that still wasn’t talked about, a disorder I guess you could call it, which was still looked down on like it was my fucking fault I was the way I was, and I should be able to change it. Behave. Sit fucking still.
I didn’t hide it, but I still saw that judgment in peoples’ eyes.
Except for hers.
There was no judgment, just a strange understanding in those bright doe eyes.
Who was this woman?
I exhausted my body, so my mind could focus. That was the bottom line.
Things hadn’t always been so simple, though, and they still weren’t. I still felt the effects. I still fought every day to fucking concentrate, to think before I jumped both feet into a shitstorm. But it was all a part of who I was, and I learned how to live with that part of me. Instead of constantly fighting against it like almost everyone around me at that time seemed so fucking determined to do.
My father, especially.
He was in the army. Well respected. Looked up to.
So having a kid at home who was unpredictable and uncontrollable was a complete and utter fucking embarrassment to him as a military officer and father.
“Better get ready for school,” I ordered Brook, nodding toward the door.
She took in a deep breath, and I could tell she was fighting the urge to roll her eyes as she slipped out the door. I turned my attention back to Laken who was slumped against the counter, her hand still in the water, but surprisingly, her eyes on me. “You’re good with her.”
“She’s a good kid.”
Laken nodded. “She’s seen a lot of shit.”
“She’s fighting back, though,” I noted honestly, having seen the way Brook was when she first arrived here. How unwilling she was to trust us or even get close. A lot like someone else it seemed. I started to back away, my entire body itching to move, my muscles already starting to twitch uncontrollably.
Laken licked her lips and smiled, her eyes lost in the stream of water. “Yeah, she is fighting back.”
I paused for a second in the doorway, catching her eye as she looked back at me. This time, the hard toffee was gone, and a rich, warm chocolate brown was there staring back at me.
“You feel like you wanna do the same, just let me know.”
Her brow furrowed. “Do what?”
I walked out, calling back over my shoulder.
“Fight back!”
LAKEN
“How’s your hand?”
Tucking the phone into my ear with my shoulder, I pulled at my shirt, trying to get some kind of airflow moving. I could feel the beads of sweat building at the nape of my neck, and it wouldn’t be long before it dripped down and soaked through my shirt.
“It’s doing okay today,” I told Kennedy, looking down at the bandage I had wrapped around it, trying to protect it somewhat because holy shit, it hurt.
“So you and Myth just both happened to be in the kitchen together at what time yesterday morning?”
I rolled my eyes. “Five-thirty, and I am not having this discussion with you.”
I didn’t need to see her to know she was grinning from ear to ear. Kennedy was determined to pin something on me after she noticed the way I fled the other night when he came in from his run. She had a theory. The thing was the bitch may not be completely wrong.
Myth was a force of his own.
Like fucking gravity.
And I just wanted to throw my hands up, say fuck it, and let his pull drag me in.
Maybe it was the way he didn’t really have much to say, but how he let his actions speak for him. He didn’t play a part or talk a big fucking game.
A stark contrast to the constant flow of lies and bullshit I’d listened to being spewed for so many fucking years. Maybe after so many years of life in a world of fakes, I couldn’t help but be drawn to someone so unapologetically real. Or maybe it was simply nice to know I wasn’t the only one hiding from my past in Phoenix.
“Lake?”
“Sorry, I better get going, I can see kids coming out,” I announced to Kennedy as she continued to hold through my daydreams, trying to toss the uncomfortable subject away.
Kennedy softened her voice, and I knew then that this wasn’t just a joke. “You know I only want you to be happy…”
I pulled in a long deep breath. “Kenz, I am happy.”
“But are you?”
There was a worry in her tone I hadn’t noticed before. See, the problem with now and then is that Kennedy doesn’t have to stress anymore. There’s nothing hanging over her head weighing her down, haunting her. She can finally take a moment, take in the world around her and notice the things life before wouldn’t have given her time to. Unfortunately for me, it also means she’s noticing things about me she wouldn’t usually.
“Babe, I’ve gotta go. We’ll talk later.”
I scrambled with the phone, my hands shaking as I hit the end call button.
Not fucking suspicious at all.
I could already feel my fair skin burning as the sun had no mercy. I wasn’t made for this kind of weather, my Irish roots made sure of that. My tans were always of the fake kind, partially because I didn’t enjoy being roasted like a damn chicken, and partially because I hated the way too much sun made the freckles which littered my cheeks far more prominent. They’d been something I was teased about when I was younger until I figured out how to cover them with makeup.
I’d been wearing it ever since.
Kids could be cruel.
Always so eager to find those things you’re most self-conscious about, that you really hate about yourself, and use them to hurt you. Or maybe that was simply life.
A loud and obnoxious bell screeched above me, and I screwed up my nose, shaking my head to try and dislodge the buzzing which was now left in my ea
rs. It was only a few seconds before the once empty paths that lead up to the school buildings were suddenly packed with teenagers.
My stomach twisted a little.
Some people felt nostalgic when they returned to the high school environment, the memories of old friends and this part of their life where things were so much simpler making them smile. For me, though, it just made me feel sick. The person who I was eight or so years ago was not a girl I was proud of. And I was fucking thankful I’d dug a hole and buried her.
“Laken!” I looked up from where I was standing, pushing away from the cherry red Mustang behind me. I’d borrowed it from Crush, one of the brothers back at the club. He was like the head mechanic in the workshop attached to the clubhouse. I’d been helping him out with things there while everyone else was running around panicking about Dynasty opening this weekend.
He mentioned the car needed a run.
I was the girl to do just that.
“Hey, kid.” I grinned as Brooklyn came jogging toward me down the path, ducking around a couple of girls as they dipped their heads in deep conversation. I’d lived in the apartment next door to Kennedy and Brook since she was eleven. Classed them as family. So I’d picked her up from school more times than I could even count.
I could tell when she’d had a good day and when things hadn’t been so good.
And right at that moment, the way her shoulders were hunched over and her eyes locked on the concrete path told me everything I needed to know.
“What’s going on?”
She pulled up sharply in front of me. “Can we go. Now. Please?” she urged in a harsh tone.
Brook had been fine this morning when I’d dropped her off.
“Brook—”
“Please,” she hissed, hiking her backpack further up her shoulder.
Brook was one of the most beautiful girls I’d ever seen. Her skin had stayed pretty damn clear over the past few years. She wore very little makeup and had never put any kind of dye or product in her hair. Her beauty was au naturel, something she didn’t have to fight for. That, I was thankful for, because the kid had been through hell in so many other aspects of her life. And she’d done it all without becoming bitter or angry at the world.
