Abi bent over, heaving so loudly it shut everyone else up.A woman I didn’t recognize stood beside her, rubbing her back, her blue eyes occasionally scanning around us as she had a whispered conversation with Abi.Those eyes seemed to laser through the darkness in a way that had the hair lifting on the back of my neck.Abi heaved again, and Ali whimpered, wrapping her arms around herself a little tighter, and then Hayat restarted her raging.
“Look at what you’ve done to Abi!She was so worried about you idiots that she made herself sick.”
Tough love was one of Hayat’s love languages.So were cooking and feeding everyone.My grumbling stomach reminded me that I hadn’t eaten more than a greasy drive-thru burger the day before.Given my workout from beating the shit out of Gaviria, I was freaking starving.Hayat was full force in tough-love mode, though.
The newcomer muttered something to Abi that was too quiet for me to hear with all the other chaos going on around us.From first glance, I figured she was older than Hayat by a few years.Abi kept shooting her glares that held a haunted hurt that got worse each time she looked at the new girl.In the near distance, people were running, shouting, slamming doors as they got into their cars and squealed their wheels in their hurry to leave.A few times, I thought I heard what might have been gunfire, but it could have just as easily been a vehicle backfiring.
Remembering Lunatic scratching his head with his gun before the fight started, I felt a chill slither up and down my spine.
Catching her breath, Abi straightened and pushed away from the car she’d been leaning against.A little wobbly, she crossed the distance separating her from her sister and wrapped Ali in a hug.At first, Ali didn’t respond, standing statue-still in the embrace, but then I heard her choked sob as she hugged Abi back.“I-it’s all my fault.”
“No, it’s not,” I argued, shifting closer.I started to touch her face, but I realized my hands were covered in blood.Fuck.My knuckles were ripped all to hell, but it wasn’t just my own blood staining my skin.A few more snapshot-style memories of the fight filtered through my mind.
I couldn’t touch my daisy girl with blood on my hands.If I got her dirty with that fucker’s blood, there would be no coming back once the wall descended again.
“Baby, don’t cry.Everything is okay.I told you it would be.I promised, didn’t I?”She started crying harder, the sounds tearing at something vital within me.Breaking me in a way only Ali could do.
Had I promised?
Double fuck.I couldn’t remember that either.
Abi kissed the top of Ali’s head, gently rocking her, while I stood there feeling helpless as my girl cried like her heart was broken, Abi attempting to calm her in a way I couldn’t with another man’s blood splattered on me.“Whatever the reason, it’s over now,” Abi soothed.
“No, it’s not,” the new girl announced, her chilly-blue gaze landing on me, unblinking.I imagined I looked like a deranged monster, covered in sweat and blood, eyes wild, having just beaten a man unconscious.
At least, I thought he was unconscious.A few more snippets of memory played out in my mind as I struggled to remember the fight.Gaviria’s eyes rolling back in his head, the loud thud of his body hitting the blood-covered mats beneath us.Loud because the music had been abruptly cut off.Then came total darkness as someone killed the lights.For all I knew, he was dead.
Hayat and Abi both shuddered every time they looked at me, yet this girl watched me with rapt attention.It could have been the nearby streetlamps or the occasional flash of headlights as they danced over her face, but her eyes seemed to gleam with fascination.“You don’t compete in a fight club, dominate, and then walk away after one fight.People took notice of you in there tonight.The fact that you’re under the age of eighteen doesn’t matter.If anything, it only got you more attention.They own you now.”
“No,” Ali cried, lifting her head to look at her sister, her entire body trembling.“We can’t let that happen.Abi, it’s my fault.I did this.I’m responsible for everything.”
“Ali, shut up,” I barked, needing her to stop talking fast.She was in distress, and there was danger all around us, surroundingher.That stupid fucking wall could so easily fall again with how unstable I felt.
“No!Staying quiet is how I got you into this mess.”Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath and unloaded the heavy weight she’d been carrying.I wished I’d known sooner.
If this was anyone’s fault, it was mine.If she hadn’t been scared of what I would do, she would have told someone sooner.If she’d loved me less?—
Nope.
I couldn’t finish that thought.There was no world where I could exist if Ali loved me less.Unstable wouldn’t come close to describing how my mental state would become without her loving me.
Restraint.That was what I needed to work on.If I’d been more controlled, I wouldn’t have done what Ali had feared all along.My daisy girl had predicted my reaction correctly.She hadn’t trusted me with what was going on because she knew me too well.
Ali hiccuped on another sob.“There was this guy.He was bothering me at school.I didn’t say anything because I thought I could handle it on my own.But he wouldn’t leave alone.He got my number.He kept harassing me.And then… He has pictures of me, Abi.”
“You sent him nude pictures?”the newbie admonished.
“She would never do that,” Abi defended at the same time I growled a warning in the other woman’s direction.
“He took them while I was in the shower after my gym class,” Ali confessed quietly, but the words echoed inside my head louder than a gong.Gaviria had spied on her in the shower.At school.Where she should have been safe.Only, she hadn’t been.I hadn’t been there to protect her.
And neither had Evan.
Don’t kill him.You’ll never see Ali again if you kill him.
I was wrong.I did have control.Fuck, I had superpower-level restraint.Because if I didn’t, Evan would already be dead.
“He’s the PE teacher and one of the assistant basketball coaches at school.”
