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Well, too fucking bad. They wouldn’t get their entertainment today. It wouldn’t be the last time there was a fight in the halls of Slateview High. They’d get their fix again soon enough.
Ignoring the few lingering onlookers, I pulled Kace down the corridor before he could do or say anything else.
Just like I had the first time he’d gotten bloodied in a fight, I tugged him into the boys’ bathroom. A junior with dark hair whose name I couldn’t remember glanced up as we entered, letting out a startled yelp as he quickly shook himself off and zipped up his fly.
“We need the room,” I said shortly, not even bothering to look away.
He needed to know I wasn’t fucking around—not that he was likely to give me a hard time when I had Kace with me. He looked like a damn Berserker, his face smeared with blood and his muscles still tense from the fight.
“Yeah. Sure, whatever.”
The boy didn’t even bother washing his hands, but his hygiene was the furthest thing from my mind. As soon as the door closed behind him, it was like he didn’t even exist. All that existed in this moment was Kace.
I tugged the large boy over toward the sink, grabbing several paper towels from the dispenser and wetting them down. Then I reached up to dab at his face, working them over where his skin was split and Eli had bloodied him.
“You always do this,” I muttered. “Always…”
“Would you have rather him do whatever he was planning on doing to you?” Kace grunted, his voice harsh.
“No.” My brows pulled together, and my stomach dropped at the thought. “Of course not, Kace. But there’s—you always go in fists first.” I shook my head. “You shouldn’t. Not for me, not for anyone. Especially not over Eli. Not when he’s someone that could actually retaliate against you. His people could retaliate against your people. It could set off a war, and over something so stupid.”
“I don’t give a fuck about that.” His lips curled, and he winced as my fingers skated over the spot on his cheek where Eli had hit him. “I don’t sit back and watch while someone steps where they shouldn’t. I don’t let the people I care about get hurt.”
I frowned, pausing before continuing in cleaning up his wounds. When I was done, I tossed away the dirty towels and turned to Kace.
“Let me see your phone.”
His head drew back, a confused look passing over his face. “What?”
“Your phone, Kace.”
He eyed me before pulling it out of his back pocket and handing it over to me. I shot a message to Bishop, telling him that Kace and I would be walking home together and not to wait for us. Then I handed the blond boy back his phone and leaned against the sink.
“Why are you always fighting, Kace?” I asked. “You’re always doing it, even when you don’t need to.”
He shook his head, something dark passing through his moss-green eyes. “I’m not always fighting. I fight when it matters.”
I frowned. “Kace—”
He straightened his spine, his whole body seeming to swell up again, as if the anger inside him was almost too much for his body to contain. When he stepped toward me, I swore I could feel his energy pulsing from his body like a physical force.
“I know it was stupid, Princess. I get that. I know it could’ve fucked everything up. But what you have to understand is, I will always fight for you. I just will. And if it fucks shit up for me and my boys, I’ll fight for them too. I’ll do everything I can to keep you and them safe.” His voice dropped to a low rasp, pain and anger pouring out with every word. “But I will never, ever stand by and let you be hurt just because that’s the ‘safer’ option.”
My heart danced an uneven beat in my chest, and I stared up into his eyes, riveted by the emotions I saw there.
It was so much.
Too much.
More darkness and trauma than any boy of his age should have had to deal with in his lifetime.
I didn’t know where all of it came from, but I knew it was what fueled his words. What made them absolutely true.
Kace would kill to protect me.
He would die to protect me.
That knowledge hit me with the force of a hurricane, tearing through the landscape of my heart until every single barrier that still existed between us came tumbling down.
