I know it’s going to hurt, but I still can’t help hoping that he’ll prove me wrong. That maybe I can change his mind. That’s what I’ve been doing this entire time: not trying to change the future, but trying to changehim. Making the same mistake thousands upon thousands of girls have made in the past, thinking everything would be different if only I could make him like me more.
I should’ve known how this would go. Should’ve known it was doomed from the start.
“Chanel,” he says quietly, “I would give you almost anything you asked for. I’d wait in line outside the bakery every morning to buy you the lychee cake you like, whether it’s your birthday or not. I’d fly to the other end of the world with you if you simply wanted a change of weather. I’d gladly be your chauffeur, your bodyguard, your confidant, your private chef, your personal photographer, your tour guide in any city. I’d plant an entire field of your favorite pink lilies and pluck the brightest ones to deliver to your door. I could build a tower inthe middle of the ocean just to give you a better view of the sunset. I could claw the stars from the sky for you. I could give you the moon. Anything,” he whispers, “but this.”
I should’ve known how this would go, but the actual blow still knocks the breath out of my lungs. I’ve failed. After everything I’ve done, all my scheming, all the ways I tried to contort myself into something he wanted, all that I offered, I still haven’t escaped the age-old curse:He just doesn’t love you enough.
I clench my teeth and let my hand drop, the heat of his skin gone completely. Now there’s only the cold and the ink-black waters and the distance between us.
Strange, how a few inches can feel like infinity, the turn of an era.
I wait until my voice hardens enough for me to speak. “Okay.” This time, it comes out exactly how I want it to. Curt, sharp, removed. “Then I should probably go.”
Something ripples across his face, fleeting as a sparrow’s shadow over the surface of a lake, there and then gone. But he doesn’t ask me to stay.
24
Ares
Ares wishes someone would just punch him already.
He can feel the compulsion crawling along his skin like an itch, the desire to be hurt, to be hurt so badly he can stop thinking. Forget the wounded, betrayed look on Chanel’s face at the lake tonight, how she’d walked away without glancing back at him. She’s always been so composed, every word and action calculated, laughing as if nothing in the world could ever affect her. But he’d seen her composure slip. Heard the shakiness in her voice.
Will you go to prom with me?
You’re rejecting me?
Why can’t you?
The bell rings, the crowds of the fight club come alive with bloodlust, stamping their feet, and Ares pushes his way forward into the ring, relieved that it’s finally happening.
The tension in the air is palpable as he takes his place before a man his father’s age. In his peripheral vision, he can makeout the faces of his spectators from the shadows. Suspicion. Distrust. Outright disdain. After Chanel had showed up the other night, he’d sworn to them that he hadn’t known she would be coming, that she was merely a classmate who must’ve tailed him out of curiosity, that it would never happen again. Despite his insistence, he’d worried that because he’d let her run away, the Cave wouldn’t let him back in. But then Sangui had informed him of the final match happening tonight, with the same instructions as usual.
Make sure you win.
If he wins this round, he’ll be the final victor. He’ll get to meet Long Ge at last, get to save his brother.That’sthe part he has to focus on now, not the shine of tears in Chanel’s eyes when he’d turned her down—
His opponent rushes him, fists swinging.
The first punch lands just as Ares had hoped it would. An astounding burst of pain to his temple, so violent his vision flashes white. He staggers back, panting, metallic taste of blood in his mouth. Rights himself.
The man is surprisingly fast and nimble on his feet for someone so much older. Ares had heard that he was released from prison not long ago. Sentenced for murder. He believes it. The man looks like he’s spent the past decade pacing by himself, imprisoned in his own mind, the life leaking out of him like watercolor until all that’s left is the feral, bloodshot red of his eyes, the sickly yellowish tint of his skin and teeth.
Ares tries to take charge by feinting left—and it works, at first. He gets in three rapid jabs to the man’s stomach beforehis hands claw into Ares’s shoulders, forcing him back again. In most matches, there’s usually some kind of unspoken etiquette about avoiding the face, but he strikes Ares hard across the cheek, an obliterating, searing sensation, the sheer pressure and force of it more shocking than the pain itself. Ares feels his head swim, his legs swaying beneath him.
He can no longer tell if the dampness on his neck is from sweat or his own blood.
“The kid’s definitely losing,” someone remarks behind him.
Another voice agrees. “Yeah, just look at him.”
If he looks anything like he feels, then Ares can understand why they’d think so. He’s struggling to stay standing, to keep breathing in and out. His body seems sluggish, like a foreign object controlled only by a remote with a bad connection, every command registered a beat too slow. Then, a new source of pain.
Sharp, too sharp. Wrong and unfamiliar, cutting open his side, right under his rib cage.
Disoriented, Ares glances down just in time to see the silver flash of a pocketknife as it retracts from his wound, shining red.
Even seeing it, he feels numb with disbelief, a refusal to accept that this is something that has happened to him, to his body, that he must now deal with the consequences of it. A pocketknife, in the middle of a boxing match. But outside weapons aren’t allowed.
