Descending Darkness(14)

“I’m just that good,” I say.

“Is there anything you can’t do?” Emma asks me.

“Um, I can’t cross my eyes or roll my r’s. I can’t pat my head and rub my stomach at the same time. I end up patting both. See,” I demonstrate. “I can’t rap like you can. I can’t speak Spanish. I can’t go invisible or walk in dreams. I can’t speak with dogs. I can’t grow a couple extra inches. I can’t make the dryer stop eating my socks. I can’t read Chinese or time travel. I can’t make you stop criticizing my wardrobe. I can’t drive a stick-shift. I can’t mmhhh—” Colton places his hand over my mouth stopping my rambling.

“It was a rhetorical question, Ryanne,” he says. Everyone else is laughing at my response. Of course, I knew that it was a rhetorical question, but that’s the fun part—doing things that others wouldn’t.

Taking his hand off my mouth, he pulls me toward the middle of the floor, so I can start sparring. “When someone asks a rhetorical question, they should specify that it is indeed a rhetorical question before they ask it. Like this: the question I’m about to ask doesn’t need to be answered…”





Chapter Four




Colton

“I think this might be a form of abuse. I want a divorce,” Ryanne says while lying on her back on the ground breathing heavily. Liam and I are not taking it easy on her because we know her opponents won’t. We push her to her limits, but she is improving. Her hits are starting to hurt me. She is anticipating what we are going to do next. Soon, she’ll need to train with someone else. She is getting too familiar with us.

“I think that’s good for today. Let’s head back,” Tom says. He’s been sparring with Logan and Bragden. “I think Ryanne is dying over there.” She tries laughing, but it comes out very strained. Liam and I stand up and reach down to help her up. She laughs and waves us off. She’s so stubborn.

Slowly, she stands up and glares at Liam and me. “I wonder how difficult it would be to learn voodoo. That sounds like a really good idea right now,” she mumbles as she walks past us. She pulls her hair out of its messed-up bun. It falls down to her mid-back in a curly mess. Running a hand through it, she runs up to talk with Emma and David. My eyes follow her as she starts laughing at something David said.

“She seems to be handling everything well,” Liam says as he matches my stride. We are the last ones to leave the training room.

Closing the door behind me, I reply. “She really is actually. I’m pretty surprised. I was expecting her to freak out, not accept it so easily.”

“Toy Story!” David yells. Ryanne winks at him before she runs up to Bragden. The wind starts picking up, so we know Ryanne is calling magic to her. Bragden jumps and stares at her. When she starts giggling and jogging backward, he begins chasing her. She spins around and runs toward the house. Wow, she actually is fast.

Liam doesn’t ask me any more questions about Ryanne, which is one of the things I like about him. He doesn’t need to know every little aspect of everything. Emma is always asking me questions about Ryanne because she won’t say much. Liam knows what questions to ask and when to ask them. We start jogging to catch up to everyone. When we get to the backyard, we see Ryanne standing on the veranda and Bragden standing at the bottom of the stairs, scowling at her.

Bragden turns toward me. “She shocked me again.”

“She’s got eighteen years of evil to unleash. I wouldn’t mess with her,” I tell him.

“You really should listen to him,” Ryanne says with a muffled voice. She’d put a shield up to keep Bragden from getting to her. Bragden looks back at Ryanne, who isn’t grinning at him anymore. She pursed her lips out and is batting her eyelashes at him, trying to look innocent. It would be hard to stay mad at her when she’s giving you that look. He shakes his head at her, but says with a sigh, “Fine. I give up…for now.”

Ryanne lets go of the shield but jumps out of the way. Bragden walks slowly past her, eyeing her the entire way into the house. When he makes it inside, I reach out and lace my fingers with hers. Pulling her close to me, I lean over and whisper, “You want trouble, don’t you?”

“Just trying to keep things interesting.”



Thirty minutes later, we are all changed and downstairs in the kitchen. Tom ordered a pizza while we were all changing. Much to my dismay, Ryanne didn’t change back into the fringe top she was wearing earlier. She is now wearing a large t-shirt that she probably stole from one of the guys. I’ll have to talk to her. I don’t like her wearing other guys’ clothing. If she wants to wear something that is too big for her, she can wear something of mine.