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Ugh, why did it have to feel so good?
Arran sends me laughing emojis as I roll my eyes and walk out to find Draven waiting. I use a bench to doctor my water bottle with salt, put away my backpack, and lean on Draven slightly as I take a sip from my bottle.
“We’re going to walk through a really cold waterfall,” he murmurs. “Sorry if it fucks up your hair.”
“I hate to break it to you, but the scalp massage did that already. It was totally worth it.”
His grin is another lopsided one, and I realize I don’t think I’ve ever seen this one before today. It’s always been a cruel slash that had nothing to do with amusement.
On the other side of the locker rooms is a rainfall, and it’s indeed freezing cold. I yelp as we walk through it.
“Shit,” I hiss as he shudders.
“Fuck,” he mutters. “I read the description, was told about it, and my balls still packed up and crawled inside of me.”
I hide a smile because I refuse to be amused by his balls. Draven helps me into the pool, and I sigh as I find that it's heated.
“Better, huh?” he sighs, turning slowly.
Holy fuck. There’s a tattoo on his back that spans most of it, and it’s of an angel that looks suspiciously similar to me.
“Draven,” I whisper. I know what lies somewhere within that tattoo because my family told me about how Liliana cut him.
“What?” he asks, freezing. “What’s wrong?”
If I ask… I don’t want to go down the rabbit hole of remorse and shame. It’ll break the little bubble we have, and I don’t want to lose it yet. Maybe that’s weak, but he’ll never know about this.
“This is better,” I say, clearing my throat as I drink more water.
“Good,” he says, turning to face me as I put my water bottle down on the ledge. “You look beautiful, Noor. The water looks good in your hair.”
We’re silent, and I let the water do its magic. The room smells fragrant instead of full of chemicals, and I find myself relaxing again as I sit on a little shelf.
“Of all the girls, why me?” I finally ask.
“That’s easy,” Draven says, dropping his head back against the wall as he looks up. “You make us all feel. At first, it was intense and for negative reasons. You’re this beautiful, tiny pixie, willing to stand toe to toe with people who are bigger than you, simply because you felt like it. You reminded us of something that scared the shit out of us: we’re not special, just human.”
“Why did that scare you?” I ask, trying to understand. It shouldn’t matter, it’s years too late, and yet, I need to understand both sides of the man to know if he’s changed enough.
“Being special is what would get us out of Santa Barbara. Otherwise, we were fucked. My mom is a saint. It’s not that I wanted to leave her, I wanted to get out for them. Alastair and Ciaran couldn’t survive there, and I can’t survive without them. So, we skated, we trained, and we fought to be noticed. Somehow along the way, we decided that we had to be dicks to the rest of the world too.
“Alastair's dad definitely thought that. By the way,” Draven turns his head to look at me as if it’s an afterthought. “Let your mom know that Mr. Steele is laundering money through her school. That’s why he wanted you bullied. It was about business for him.”
“Seriously?”
“And then it became personal,” he adds. “You have this light we didn’t understand, especially when we saw the darkness. In some ways, it matched ours, and that scared us the most. I like to cut people, Ci likes to be degraded and cut, but it’s a very easy thing to flip that script and begin self harming. You made us angry when we found out you were hurting yourself.”
His body remains relaxed even as the words flow and I swallow hard as I think about his words.
“You were mad about my scars, because they reminded you of how easily it could be you?”
“It did become us. Ci started cutting in college… Fuck. I can’t tell you that. Forget I said that.”
“I can’t forget that,” I cry out, my eyes widening. “Why? Why did he do that?”
“I can’t tell you,” he says, walking into the deeper end of the pool.
“I can’t follow you,” I remind him, watching as he stops.
