He waits for someone to stop the fight. They must have noticed the knife, or at least the cut. The blood is spreading fast through his shirt, and he reaches uselessly for it, his hand pressing down over his torn flesh.
But the crowd only watches.
The floor flips upside down, and he feels the cool cement on his cheek. Has he fallen? He’s lost his sense of direction; everything’s blurry. When he squints up at the lights, he sees his opponent approaching, the knife gleaming in his hand, his shadow falling over him. It shouldn’t be allowed, surely, by now, someone will speak up—
They’re letting it happen,he realizes dimly, his heartbeat pounding in his ears. This is his punishment for the other night, for letting Chanel escape. He’d violated the second rule: He’d fought the men outside the ring. They don’t trust him anymore, and they’re certainly not going to do anything to help him.
He could die here.
Like this. Alone, bleeding, curled up against himself like an injured animal.
And as soon as he becomes aware of this, he thinks, unwillingly, of Chanel Cao again. If he dies, the last time he ever saw her would be at the lake tonight. The last words he’d ever spoken to her would be to disappoint her—
He struggles to rise, fingers scrabbling at the cement. His body feels like it’s made of lead, something he has to carry rather than something he owns. He lifts his head inch by agonizing inch, eyes watering from the effort. He’s barely managed to shift his knee forward when the man kicks his stomach so hard he gasps, his muscles seizing.
Bright, blunt pain.
He falls back down as the crowds roar in delight. The noise encases him like a cage, amplifying every shout of glee, everybarked laugh. It seems almost impossible, like this level of cruelty defies the governing laws of the universe.
A boot grinds down over his arm, pinning him there. He wants to scream, to run, to fight back, but he can’t find the strength to even open his eyes properly to look at the man who’s going to kill him. Fuck, someone’s actually going tokillhim—
“Wait.” Sangui’s voice rings through the noise with enough urgency that everyone goes quiet. “Stop right now.”
Is he taking pity on me?Ares thinks in disbelief.Does he actually care enough to save me?
Then, as if from a great distance, he hears Sangui say, “Long Ge wants to see him.”
25
Chanel
The worst thing about heartbreak is how spectacularly predictable it is.
You know exactly what’s coming. You know, and yet you’re powerless to stop it, a bystander in your own disaster, frozen to the spot as the train tears off its tracks, as the avalanche crushes everything in its path, as the meteor falls and sets the city ablaze. Every piece of advice I’ve ever given to my friends comes back around to point and laugh in my face. “If he’s not willing to do this for you,”I recall a younger and wiser version of myself saying, my heart carefully tucked away, “he isn’t worth it. Don’t cry over him. Don’t bother texting him. There’s no point getting upset.”
As if it’s that easy, that logical.
I do cry over him.
It feels like I’m grieving, but the person is dead to me by his own volition, and somehow that’s worse. When I drag myself out of bed the next morning, the tears spill faster than I can reapply my mascara.
I give up after the fourth try, wiping angrily at the black clumps on my lower lashes until they’re smudged across my cheeks, my eyes rimmed red, my lips chapped and trembling. I look like every girl who’s ever secretly envisioned a life with a guy she has no future with. I’ve become a walking, sobbing cliché, a perfect case study about the risks of falling in love.
Yet, for all its predictability, heartbreak is also so isolating. So contradictory. I’m simultaneously aware that everyone has gone through something like this and stubbornly convinced that nobody on earth has ever suffered this way before. I’m not interested in talking about anything except him, but I also don’t want to tell anybody about him. Don’t want to share him, even after everything.
I grant myself exactly one day to mope in private. That already feels overly self-indulgent, considering that the lunar eclipse is in three days.
Then I get to business. I make a booking for my mom’s favorite resort in Sanya, the one with the goat enclosure and the underwater restaurant. I choose the flight that leaves on the night of the vision, calculating it so that she’ll need to head off to the airport before it gets dark.
I start collecting my belongings. Putting childhood photos and precious gifts in boxes, to be stored somewhere else until I can be sure the house is safe.
I log into my mom’s email account while she’s showering and track her latest correspondence with Long Ge. He’s already sent her the documents and the agency pitch deck, but she hasn’t signed anything just yet.
And if I catch myself wondering about Ares from time to time—
Well, I tried it, I think to myself, with a mental slap on the wrist. I’d been frank and disgustingly earnest, offered up a small piece of my heart—and look what happened. Exactly what I knew would happen. Now there’s no getting that piece of my heart back ever, no refund or replacement for damaged goods, and I can be certain that I’m never putting myself through it again.
Back to games and tricks and lying through my teeth.
