eight
Dex - Past
BURNING. BLAZING. RAGING. SCORCHING.
I could feel the new guy’s eyes on me whenever I was around him.
It wasn’t in the way people normally looked at me—with a mixture of caution and disdain. No, his gaze was so much deeper. It made my skin prickle with an awareness I wasn’t sure I liked.
He clearly didn’t know enough about me to realize that having any kind of interest in me couldn’t end well for him. So I was going to show him.
Apparently he was from here, moved away as a kid or something, but now he was back. Didn’t know the details. Didn’t care.
When my eyes first locked with those pretty honey ones in the diner, there’d been a tug toward him. It was magnetic. Something about him called to me, and that could only mean he was fucked up. Because only broken, deranged, and fucked-up things called to me. Like recognized like, or whatever the saying was.
I’d seen him around a fair bit since then, always hanging with that Becca chick.
They were opposites in both looks and personality. She was all neons and punk clothing, whereas he always looked as if he wanted to fade into the background—dark hoodies and jeans, dark brown hair that fell into his face when he tilted his head forward. It looked soft. I wanted to pull it.
Didn’t think it was possible to fade into the background with a face like that, though. His eyes alone were the most intense thing I’d ever seen. The way he glared was so fucking pretty.
Then there were those high cheekbones and slender jaw, his perfectly pointed nose, his lips that looked so soft and pink. His skin was incredibly pale, and I wondered how easy it would be to make it flush pink in embarrassment, pleasure, or rage. I wanted to see if there was a difference between them all.
There was a fire inside him, wild and untamed. I wanted to watch it burn.
Toby told me his name was Jonah.
Jonah had my attention.
Time would tell if he’d be able to handle it.
“Dex?” A low voice snapped my attention, and I looked up to see Archer leaning against a pillar a short distance away.
“What?”
“I said, are you ready?”
“Of course I’m ready.” I rolled my eyes. Wasn’t like it was my first fight.
Occasionally, when the tide was low in the evenings, people would come down to the pier. There were barrels filled with firewood and fuck knows what else to burn.
Someone was blasting music from a speaker system.
Things were just getting started. People continued to arrive with coolers of drinks and food, and whatever the fuck else they thought they needed for an evening of watching men beat the absolute shit out of each other under the pier.
I didn’t know who I was supposed to be fighting tonight. I didn’t care either. Didn’t care about the prize money, though it certainly was a bonus.
“Bryce is up first. You’re following.”
I grunted my acknowledgment. At least that meant I wasn’t fighting Bryce. He was always such a crybaby when he lost, whining about his injuries like he hadn’t signed himself up to be here. Last time we fought each other, he pissed me off so bad with hisconstant complaining afterwards that I beat him up again just for fun.
The area under the large wooden pier was illuminated only by the burning barrels half dug into the sand, and tiny specks of orange scattered among the crowd from the ends of cigarettes like cancerous fireflies.
The fights had already started. Bryce was beating some newbie from Deltran, so apparently that group had showed up tonight. Which explained why Archer was so tense and even more of an asshole than usual.
There was a territory war brewing between him and the Deltran guys. Well,us,I suppose. I hardly fucking cared. Archer would tell me who needed some new friends, and I’d introduce them to my fists because I’m just so friendly like that. That’s all I needed to know. I didn’t care who got hurt, and I didn’t care why. That was Archer’s business.
“What the fuck is he doing?” he seethed beside me.
