"Bullshit. Everyone has an angle."
"Fine." He pushes off the counter and walks toward me. I hold my ground. Barely. "I spent six years wondering why you didn't kill me. Figured I'd ask you in person."
The pit. Always the fucking pit.
I was nineteen. They'd dragged me out of the upper Foundry as punishment for some infraction I don't even remember, threwme into the underground fighting rings where The Silent’s entertainment happened in blood and broken bones. Asher was fresh meat from juvie, a kid with nothing to lose and fists like hammers. He was supposed to be easy. A warm-up. A body to step over on my way to the next fight.
He got back up three times.
The first knockdown, he spit blood and grinned at me. The second, he laughed. By the third, I'd cracked his ribs and broken his nose, and he was lying in a pool of his own blood, barely conscious, and the crowd was screaming for me to end it.
I looked at him, and he looked back, not begging, not pleading, just waiting. Accepting. Ready to die without making a sound. Then his mouth turned up in a small smirk.
Something in my chest cracked.
I walked away. Took three days in isolation and a beating that left me pissing blood for a week. Worth it, I told myself. Better than becoming exactly what they wanted me to be.
Now he's standing in front of me, close enough to touch, alive because I let him live, and I don't know what the fuck to do with that.
"Ancient history," I say.
"Is it?" He's close enough that I can count the scars on his face. "Because you've been looking at me like you want to finish the job since I walked through that door."
"Maybe I do."
"Then do it." He spreads his arms. "No witnesses. No consequences. I won't even fight back."
My hands curl into fists. "You think I won't?"
"I think you had your chance six years ago and you choked. I think you've been running from whatever made you walk away ever since. And I think seeing me again is fucking with your head because you still don't understand why you did it."
"I had my reasons."
"Name one."
I can't. That's the problem. I've replayed that moment a thousand times, looking for logic, for strategy, for anything that explains why I let an opponent live when killing was all I knew. I've got nothing. Just a memory of his eyes, dark and steady, and the sudden certainty that ending him would end something in me too.
"That's what I thought." He steps closer. "You don't have a reason. You just have a feeling you've been trying to bury for six years. How's that working out for you?"
"Fuck off."
"Make me."
The words hang between us. My blood pounds in my ears. Every instinct screams at me to hit him, hurt him, prove that I'm still an unfeeling bastard. But there's another instinct underneath, older and more dangerous, and it wants something else entirely.
"We're done here." I turn toward the door.
His hand catches my arm. "We're not even close to done."
I spin, grab his throat, and slam him against the refrigerator hard enough to dent the metal. His head cracks against the surface. He doesn't fight back. Doesn't even flinch. Just looks at me with those steady dark eyes while my fingers dig into his neck.
"You want to die that badly?" My voice comes out rough, barely recognizable. "Keep pushing."
"I want answers." He's not struggling. Not gasping. Like my hand on his throat is nothing. Like he's been choked by worse. "I've wanted them for six years. You owe me that much."
"I don't owe you shit."
"You owe me a death or an answer." His hands come up, not to push me away, but to grip my wrist. Holding me in place. "Youtook it from me in that pit. Made me live when I was ready to stop. So yeah, you owe me something. If not an explanation, then at least admit you felt it too."
