It’s disturbing how much they get off on seeing a grown man beg for mercy. My stomach churns, dropping like a flapjack after being flipped. I swallow through the unease clawing at me as we walk.
“Where are we going?” I ask in a hushed voice, looking back from where we came.
“Just be quiet, can you do that much?”
I tug my arm out of his hold again. There’s not a crowd of people to get lost in back here, but also, he could be less of a dick.
He stops but only briefly enough to explain, “The fighters usually have their own space away from the fights for them to get ready. We’re trying to find Colson’s.”
The farther back we get, the more muted the roars become. Darker, too. I peek into one of the rooms we pass and find it lifeless. Papers scatter a table set in the middle of the room and filing cabinets line the wall adjacent to it. The only reason I can see at all is because moonlight shines in through the windows.
Finn opens a door, sending a creaky howl down the hallway. A colder chill blankets my shoulders, and I glance back for a second time. Nobody is there. Nobody seems to be back here at all. I doubt we’ll find Colson.
I stay on Finn’s heels, prepared to mention that, and to say that we’re wasting our time. That if we want to find Colson, we’re going to have to go where the noise is, but I never get the chance.
An arm curls around my waist and hoists me backward. My first instinct is to scream, but as soon as I try, a hand covers my mouth and my voice reduces to a muffled grunt. I kick my legs. Try and drive my elbow back into the hardness that now encases me.
I try to pay attention to what I see around me, but it’s just a hallway. Dark, damp, and dangerous. It doesn’t help that Finn disappeared down an adjacent hallway a second ago.
I focus on the sounds around me except there are none. I’m dragged into a room and then hear the door click shut. We’re in one of the abandoned offices, I quickly put together. No sooner do I realize this, my body is spun and plopped on top of a hard surface. I try to scatter away from my assaulter, but it’s hard when there’s nowhere to go. My hand brushes against the hard, cool surface of…of a filing cabinet? The coolness of the metal eats away at my leather pants, but my body is suddenly very far from being cold.
I’m hot all over, instantly in sweat mode after being grabbed by an unknown person until I look up and see familiar blue eyes.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
I gulp down my fear when Colson flicks on a battery-operated lantern. His gaze is on me. It’s nothing like I remember it. The man I knew weeks ago is gone and in his place is a different one entirely. All hard lines and clipped words. Markings of a self-inflicted war on his handsome face. His piercing blue eyes holdmine, and I wonder how long it’ll take Finn to notice that I’m gone.
“I, uh…”
“Talk, Violet.”
Now would be a good time to do that, but see, everything gets caught in my throat as I take him in. His skin is tinged red below his nose, as if he wiped at blood that was there with the sleeve of his shirt, but as my eyes flick down to spot the matching color on his clothes, nothing is there. Only the gray, soft fabric of a cotton shirt. I’m not sure how there isn’t a drop of blood on it, but then I remember he was bare-chested during his fight.
At some point, he put on a shirt.
The side of his face is a watercolor sunset, pinks and blues and purples mixing together to create a smattering of a bruise on his skin. I glance down and take in his large body. Broad-ish shoulders that lead down to wet-dream forearms. He’s never seemed bigger than this moment.
My eyes catch on his hands that can’t seem to stay still. They comb through his hair, then they’re at his side, then they’re rubbing the ache out of each other. He’s on edge. So totally out of his element while beinginhis element that it’s startling.
I know exactly how he feels.
And those knuckles, marred and aggrieved from his bare-knuckled fight, catch the faintest of light dancing around the room.
“You have nothing to say? Well then let me say it for you, this isnot?—”
“A place I should be,” I finish for him. “Yeah, you don’t need to tell me what I already know, but I chose to be here and that’s something you’re going to have to accept one way or another.”
Suddenly, I’m pissed. I’m tired of him telling me what’s best for me. Tired of him thinking he can make decisions on mybehalf. Tired of him thinking he can tell me where I can and can’t be. How I can and can’t feel about him.
“I don’t need your damn attitude.”
“Attitude? This is nothing, Colson.” I huff out the start of a laugh. “You know, this doesn’t seem like a place you should be, either.” My voice cuts down to a whisper. “You’re fighting now?”
He puts his hands on his hips after setting down the lamp. “I don’t need your judgments.”
“I’m not…I’m trying to understand.”
I’m sickened over this whole thing. That I even have to be here. That we can’t be back at the apartment cuddled under my bed sheets and lazily running our hands over one another like there’s nothing else we love more in life than each other.
