His chest rises.
“Break up with him.” His words are flat.
But I know he doesn’t mean break up with him so you can be with me, because if anything, I know that wouldn’t be Knox’s style. He cares about Chance and he’d never in a million years pick up where his best friend left off. Goes against everything he believes, I think. Loyalty pours out of every bunched-up, tense muscle in his body right now.
Shame washes over me. Dipping my head, I rub my eyes.
I just…
I just…
His scarred face.
His deep, stormy eyes.
Something twisted and dark that resides in me yearns for him.
And I don’t even know when it snuck up on me.
I just know the real me gravitates to broken people. Their secrets. I wonder what mysteries made him like this, what or who gave him this fragmented heart, the fractured sense of how he sees himself with that slash on his face.
“I’m sorry,” I mumble, and I guess I’m sorry for not being strong enough to say those words out loud.
“Nothing’s happened between us, Ava. Get that sad look off your face.”
He misunderstands.
I’m not sad for what I just did. I’m sad because he’s out of my reach.
He swallows. “Shit, don’t break up with him. I shouldn’t have said that. He’s good. He’ll treat you right.” Then, “Just stay away from me,” he pushes out, his voice gravelly and rough as he puts his back to me, and I sense him gathering himself, fortifying, building up his force field.
His shoulders heave with a long exhalation.
“Knox?”
He puts his hand on the doorknob. “What?”
“You’re not ugly. You’re beautiful.”
He pauses but opens the door and slams it shut.
Eventually, I come out of that bathroom after I hear slamming doors and cars driving away. I tiptoe out and find Chance passed out on the couch. Even in sleep, he’s handsome, his full lips parted as he breathes heavily. Beer bottles litter the coffee tables. A half-smoked joint burns in an ashtray. My gaze goes back to him. I should break up with him. Can you even call it breaking up when we aren’t technically dating? His eyes open and he groggily sits up. “Babe…where did you go?” He gives me a squinty look. “Did I screw up? You look weird.”
I sit next to him. “Are you embarrassed by me?”
“No!”
I nod, forging ahead. If I want this, we need to talk. “You keep pressuring me for sex, but I’m not easy, Chance. I want a guy who’s proud to be with me, one who takes me on dates.” I wave my hands around at the mess of his house. “And before you say this was a date, you’re wrong. I want you to come to the group home, meet my brother, and pick me up.”
He recoils then frowns, his forehead scrunching up. “I didn’t realize you were…old-fashioned like that. It’s just the height of football season and being a Shark, we kind of just do what we want…” He trails off, wincing. “That didn’t come out right. I’m sure as shit not talking to any other girls right now, Ava.” He reaches over and cups my nape, pulling our faces close. “Hey, don’t get any crazy ideas of leaving me, okay? We have a game Friday, but Saturday it’s just me and you, feel me? I’ll do whatever it takes to make you happy.” A lopsided grin curves his lips. “And I’m sorry for pressuring you. You’re just so beautiful and I’m horny. Plus, everybody else was getting lucky.”
I give him a wan smile. “Yeah.”
That Saturday night never came, though.
Because on Friday, I went to the keg party.
With a deep breath, I come back to reality and class. I push those moments with Knox away from me.
Not able to help myself, I look back at Chance, feeling that wave of disappointment and anger that inevitably strikes me when I see him.
As if he knows I was thinking about him, he looks at me. His hand is clasped tightly with Brooklyn’s. Oh, how fast he ran to her.
“How you doing, Brooklyn?” I call out. She’s pretty with sleek chestnut hair that curls around her face. Her mouth twists like she’s eating a lemon, ignoring me.
She’s Jolena’s bestie. What did I expect?
Flipping back around, I study Knox’s hard profile. “Pew-pew-pew. That’s me shooting down your troops, you know, those guards you station around yourself so you don’t have to talk to me.”
“Mmmm.”
“He speaks! Or mumbles—I can’t tell.”
“We’re in class,” he says dryly.
“Hasn’t started yet. You know, I was thinking about Patrick Swayze. Ghost, admittedly, is an excellent movie if you like pottery and spirits and crazy mediums. Point Break is my personal favorite of his. The surfing, jumping out of planes, adrenaline junkie, and those abs—sign me up. But Road House, now that’s like top three worst movies ever made. I appreciate his fighting skills, but the storyline—a pacifist slash bouncer? Pfft.”
“What are the other movies on your worst list?” He still won’t look at me, but he leans a miniscule bit closer, just a hair.
“Showgirls. Elizabeth Berkley as a Vegas stripper—no thanks.”
“Not a Saved by the Bell fan?”
“Nope. And it goes without saying Saw I, II, III, IV, V, and VI all suck.”
“What about Saw VII?”
My mouth gapes. “They made another one? Say it ain’t so.”
“So.” He smirks and looks down at his laptop.
He’s almost there. Just needs a little more pushing…
I tap my pen on the table. “How did you get to be the head Shark? You’re a jerk, A-plus on that, but I don’t really see you as part of some hierarchy of school society. You’re really more of a stoic loner, I think. If you weren’t rich, I bet you’d be a gang leader. The Knox Gang. You’d have a cheap shark tattoo on your neck. Real badass.”
Come on, Knox. Break. Show me who you really are.
“Good thing I’m rich.”
“You still jacking off in bathrooms?”
He starts. “You still fingering yourself in tubs?”
“Not lately.”
“Too bad.”
“Sometimes I wonder what might have happened if you hadn’t left that bathroom. I wonder how things might have been different. If I’d gone to that keg party for you, if I’d been with you—”
“Ava, stop. Please.”
Whatever infinitesimal inches of ground I gained have vanished. He scoots his chair away from me.
“Something about me really gets under your skin. What is it? I don’t think it’s the whole she’s a scholarship girl and so not worth my notice angle. Nope, it’s deeper.”
He sighs.
But I don’t want to stop.
“You asked me about Persephone and Hades once. Remember that? It was one of my favorite myths, Hades falling for the beautiful goddess. He wasn’t interested in any of those other she-demons that lurked around his domain. He only wanted her.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“It’s rather romantic in a god and goddess sort of way. He did kidnap her, I suppose, but he loved her, and kidnapping is really minor compared to what some of those other gods did. She loved him deeply in spite of everyone warning her to stay away. She ate those pomegranate seeds because she knew her mother would never let her live in Hell.”
“She only got to live there with him for six months out of the year—then she had to go back to her mother. To me, it sounds like their relationship couldn’t have been that solid.”
“So you do remember.” I let him hear the satisfaction in my voice. “And as far as being solid, absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that. Did you miss me when I was gone?”
My breath hitches as I wait for him to reply, but like the wily devil he is, he avoids my direct question and asks me one instead. He turns and gives me an even better look at his eye, the skin puffy and purple and painful-looking. “I also recall Hades rising up from hell in his black chariot, snatching Persephone, and carting her down to live with dead people. He tricked her into eating those seeds so she’d want to be with him. Is that a sign of a good relationship?”
I shrug. “She was in love with him and she knew it was the only way. Admittedly, he probably scared the bejesus out of her, but she took a chance on her man.”
He grunts. “Really? No one wanted them to be together. None of the gods approved. Who’d love the king of the underworld?”
“The right person.”
He inhales.
Jolena walks past our table and gives Knox a withering look, and I pause.
That black eye…hmmm.
“Your eye has to hurt. It’s like it’s sentient, like it might step right off your face and tell a story. If it did, I’d ask it why the hell Knox Grayson lost control the night of Chance’s party.”
His eyes flare at me.
“Fine. I can tell you’re clamming up as usual. Let’s discuss the fight you obviously got in. I saw my mom with a couple of shiners, you know. Tyler’s dad, Cooper, was a real winner—no job, on drugs, angry. Once, he had her pinned against the wall while he smacked her face. One side. The other. Back and forth. Red welts. Her feet dangled right off the floor, just like in the movies—can you believe it? Vodka bottles rolling—geeze, always with the dang vodka. He looked over his shoulder at me and said, ‘Leave or you’re next.’ I ran.” My chest rises rapidly at my admission.