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Stopping right in front of me, he stares me down, and I brace myself for his wrath. “I told you not to break her,” he snarls. “I told you that if you break her, I would break you.”
I see it coming but make no attempt to stop it. Eric’s fist flies toward me as if in slow motion, and I close my eyes as it connects with my right eye, knocking me off my feet.
Falling back onto the mat, he towers over me, and I roll onto my side as his foot connects with my stomach. Blow after blow, he kicks me, grunting with the exertion. I do nothing but lie there and take it. In fact, I welcome it. I deserve this. I deserve to feel the physical pain of what Ava is feeling on the inside, and part of me wants him to kick harder as it’s not painful enough.
“That’s it! Cut it out,” James roars, taking hold of Eric from behind and pulling him away. “He’s had enough.”
Eric shrugs out of his hold and pins me with a seething glare. “It will never be enough. Stay the fuck away from her.”
He turns and storms out of the gym. James watches him leave, then comes over to me, holding out a hand to help me stand up. I bat his hand away and pull myself up, wincing at the pain radiating through my stomach as I get to my feet.
“What the fuck, Mason? He can’t fight for shit. Why did you just let him beat you like that?”
“It doesn’t matter.” I remove my grappling gloves and fling them across the room. “I’m out of here.”
I start heading for the exit when James steps in front of my path. “Talk to me, man. What the fuck is going on?”
I haven’t spoken to James about what happened, and I don’t particularly want to. It was hard enough opening up to Grant about it, and the only reason I did was, not only did he hound the absolute shit out of me, but he had already heard most of it from the gossip at school anyway. I just filled in the blanks.
I run my hand through my hair as he continues to stare back at me, puzzled. “I need to go and put some ice on this.” I point to my eye that’s already swelling up. “I’ll talk to you later.”
“Okay.” He holds his hands up and steps back, letting me go past. Grabbing my gym bag, I march out, hoping that Eric is waiting outside to finish what he started.
* * *
Staringout the window with a book in my lap, I watch the gray clouds drift across the sky, my mind lost in the flow and morphing of shapes as they continuously change form. After reading the same page several times, I eventually give up. Not even the literary world can give me an escape from my reality right now.
Someone plonks down on the sofa across from me. I can feel their eyes on me, but I have no desire to spare them a glance.
“What happened to your eye?”
I don’t respond, refusing to shift my attention from the outside world. Eyes continue to penetrate through me, waiting for my response, and letting out a breath, I turn to face Lyndsey. She sits with her arms and legs crossed, her expression neutral as she waits patiently for me to answer her.
“Nothing I didn’t deserve,” I reply, and not willing to beat around the bush, she gets straight to the point.
“Why did you do it?”
“What part?” I ask her.
“All of it.”
I watch her for a moment, slightly surprised at her calm disposition. I would have expected her to rain hell down upon me in her own form of wrath, but instead, she watches me with general curiosity.
“I wanted something I couldn’t have and hurt the one person I love the most in my determination to get it.”
She acknowledges my answer with a slight nod then directs her attention out the window for a moment. “Even though what you did is pretty fucked up, part of me understands why you did it.”
My brows furrow, and her eyes meet mine.
“The thing about being the queen is, not only does she rule over everything, but she also sees everything. You may think your obsession with Ava has gone unnoticed, but I saw the longing in your eyes every time you looked at her. You have been watching her every move for years. And I know without a doubt that you were madly in love with her before she even knew your name. If the world was a fair place, we all wouldn’t be separated into pigeonholes and labeled with what is deemed to be an appropriate social status for who we are as individuals.”
“That’s interesting coming from the person who basically put everyone intothatappropriate pigeonhole, so to speak,” I fire back, and she shrugs.
“If it wasn’t me, it would have been someone else, Mason. I’m not proud of how I have treated people over the years, but they are my sins to atone for. Perhaps if things were different, we would all be friends dancing and singing under the rainbow, and you wouldn’t have been living in a different world to Ava. So I can understand how desperate you may have been to break through that barrier and bring yourself into her line of sight. What I can’t understand though, is why you would go to all that trouble only to fuck it all up by sleeping with Hadley.”
I let out a long sigh. “Not only did I not want that to happen, but I also don’t remember it.”
“How much did you drink that night?” she asks, tilting her head to the side.
