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CHAPTER SEVEN
CHLOE
Chloe Duke was a distantstranger I didn't recognise. I struggled to reconcile the girl with the deep scar inside my chest, the one my sister and my coach carved me into, who went along with everything, and not only did her best, but became the best. Then there was the girl who responded to the wild man who tried new things and found a part of herself that had been locked away for too long.
Somewhere between the two of those was a slice of a person that was unrecognisable to either version of myself.
One of those versions was the one that tried to surface, and I was too scared to find out which would answer him. And if he would reject me.
"You were fighting. All of you. I could feel it," I said softly. “And it was just like being at a high-level game, feeling the crowd's attention where it switched between which players they backed and trying to ignore them, rather than feed off it."
"Do you feel that at home?" Nick slid his fingers closer to my crossed legs. His knuckles grazed my thigh, but he didn’t push any further. Just left his hands against me.
Maybe I wasn't so deep in that no woman's land as to be undiscoverable any more. Part of me yearned to cling to him but that fear of rejection was too close, and so I hid from that too.
"I feel everything." I said, turning the razor blade over, scraping the surface of my skin. White line appeared there. "Elisse’s bullshit, you and her fighting over me, Barclay’s silent protests....it's like I couldn't get any freedom.."
Nick nodded. "I noticed." He paused. "He kicked her out."
“Barclay threw her out of the Kingsman house?"
"Yep." He titled his head, watching me, not grinning when I might have expected it from him. “She's banned for life."
"You don’t look happy about it," I commented, wondering why I didn't feel anything at all.
That was the first.
I press the blade into my thumb so hard that miniscule scarlet drops beaded its length.
Nick’s finger pressed to the underside of the blade, stopping me from going any further.
I froze. "What are you doing?"
"Before you do that, I have a story about a bear."
It should've been funny, but it wasn't.
He didn't move his finger, and I didn't move the blade. "The scars?"
"Yes."
I rolled my lips inward, biting them hard, unlike the pressure on the blade that released a fraction. "Okay."
"You can give me that, if you’re ready." He nudged the blade with his fingertip. Nick smiled, like always, when he should have been concerned.
"Not just yet." But my chest loosened, and I eased the pressure a fraction more, experiencing the sting of the cut for the first time, the warmth of his hand wrapped around my wrist. I enjoyed feeling something again, especially with him.
He could have ripped the blade from me, pulled me from my perch and forced me to give it up, but he didn’t.
I appreciated that inch of control he let me keep.
Nick stilled, squeezing my wrist like the contact wasn’t one sided. “The story about the bear involves a seven-year-old boy. He ran away because everything felt too much. He ran away because his big brother and his father fought.” Nick let out a long breath, tension radiating from him. “That little boy ran into the woods, trying to get away from the fighting, and the pressure. He ran and ran and ran until his legs gave out. But he didn't realize because he was so tiny and so young that his big brother told him all about the dangers of the woods and fairy tales.Goldilocks, Little Red Riding Hood.”
Nick paused, looking down at our fingers, running his knuckles across the backs of mine. "But most of those fairytales have really bad endings. Have you noticed?"
Bile rolled from my throat and settled at the back of my tongue. "Yes," I breathed. “And the bear?”
“The bear.” Nick smiled again, but this time it was cold. "Everyone looked for him when he wouldn’t come back and the boy got lost. His father, his big brother... The brothers found each other around the same time as the bear found them. With a pocket knife in his possession, the big brother fought the bear, and nearly died. He managed to stick it with the blade in just the right place to distract it from killing him. A fluke of fate, or some other bullshit.” He swallowed hard, and I reached for him, the razor blade tumbling from my hand.
