I feint high. His guard flies up, too fast, too desperate, and I’m already somewhere else. The strike lands exactly where I put it, driving through the opening like it was made for me. His body doesn’t fall so much as stop—momentum just ceasing, legs buckling a half-beat behind the rest of him.
He hits the canvas and the room comes apart.
I don’t watch him land. I’m already stepping back, rolling my shoulders, turning for the edge of the cage. The announcer is screaming something into a microphone. The crowd is on its feet. None of it touches me.
I don’t look at her either.
The hallway behind the main floor is cooler and darker, the noise dropping off fast once I’m through the door. It’s muffled, like something heard underwater. Sweat and antiseptic and something chemical underneath it all.
I find the room at the end of the row and push inside. Kick the door shut. Put my wrapped hands on the edge of the sink and lean over it, staring down at the drain while my blood drips into it in slow, separate hits.
I’ve got an hour to get my fucking head straight.
EIGHTEEN
BELLAMY
I’m already moving.
Lola’s voice somewhere to my left, Ryder’s mouth forming words I don’t catch—I’m already gone.
“Stay with them.”
“Wait—where are you going?” Lola yells.
The crowd swallows me before I have to answer. I cut between bodies, ducking past shoulders and elbows, past the sharp surge of noise as the fight to my right spikes louder. The farther I push from the main floor, the more the heat drops out of the air, the bass thinning to something I feel more than hear. A side corridor opens up. I take it.
He slips into the last door at the end of the hall. It drifts open behind him, a thin blade of light falling across the concrete floor.
I follow.
The room is smaller than it looks from the doorway. Concrete walls, low ceiling, a bench, two chairs, a sink bolted crookedly to the far wall like an afterthought. The overhead light flickers once, then holds—the kind of light that makes everything look like evidence.
Bishop is braced over the sink, both hands locked around the edges, knuckles pale with the effort. Blood moves in slow lines down his forearms, gathering dark at his wrists before it drops into the basin. More of it at his cheekbone, the skin split and already beginning to swell, a thin trail working its way from his brow toward his eye.
“Get out.” There’s no inflection in his voice. He doesn’t look up.
I close the door. The latch catches with a soft click.
For a second, I just watch him.
The way his shoulders rise and fall, steady despite the fight he just finished. I watch the muscles in his back shift when he adjusts his grip on the sink. The way his tattoos curl around his body, like they’ve always been a part of him. The way he tilts his head a fraction to the left, blinking once—blood getting too close to his eye.
Why the fuck is he so goddamn attractive like this?
I step closer, stopping a few feet behind him. “Let me help you.”
I don’t know if it’s an entirely altruistic offer.
He huffs something under his breath that might be a laugh, but it doesn’t carry any humor with it. His head lifts just enough that our eyes meet in the mirror—his gaze catching mine through the scratched, clouded glass above the sink. There’s nothing soft in it.
“What the fuck are you doing here, Bellamy?” he grinds out.
My gaze flicks to the blood dripping into the sink and back to his eyes. “I’m going to help you.”
“Shouldn’t you be with your date?” The last word slithers out of his mouth like it’s sour on his tongue.
It takes a second to figure out what he means, but when I do, I don’t bother smothering my smirk.
