Chapter 6 River
RIVER
My fist collides with Fenrir’s side.
I’d celebrate, but the blow barely even phased him. I didn’t think it would—that’s why I asked Fenrir to be my sparring partner. Even though he’s still pissed I chose to pledge at Kappa Alpha instead of Eta Epsilon Lambda, we’re still on the same boxing team.
I need somebody who can keep up with me, who can take all of my blows without going down in two hits. The sweat drips down my forehead, and I swallow around the mouthguard as I get into a defensive stance.
Fenrir sends a beautiful uppercut at me, and I admire the form for a split second before I raise my arms to guard myself against it. Even though we’re only sparring, Fenrir isn’t going easy on me, and I grunt through the pain of the blow.
We keep trading punches back and forth. I lose myself in the rhythm of the fight, letting the movements wash all my thoughts away.
It’s working.
It’s mostly working.
Until some guys start laughing behind me.
“Jesus, that’s brutal,” one of them says. “Play it again.”
“Right? I can’t get enough. It’s a trainwreck.”
My vision goes hazy, and this time it’s not from Fenrir’s blow.
I am so tired of hearing people going on about what happened to Pandora. Whether it’s sharing pictures or videos, they can’t seem to stop.
I’m tired of it.
I end up taking a blow to the arm as I turn, and Fenrir says my name as I storm over to the edge of the training mat. I spit out the mouthguard, not caring that it lands on the floor.
My hand has fisted inside my boxing glove, and I slam it directly into the shoulder of the guy holding the phone. The phone clatters to the concrete floor.
“What the—” the guy raises his arms to block my next blow, but he’s no Fenrir. I send him flying.
I get ready to attack him again, but his friend gets in the way, and somebody pulls on my shoulders.
“River!” Fenrir yells, his grasp tightening. “Calm down!”
The guy who’d landed on his ass on the mat gets to his feet, giving me a wide-eyed stare.
“What the fuck was so funny?” I snarl, struggling against Fenrir’s hold. “Aren’t you tired of it yet? Everyone’s seen it by now.”
The guy I’d punched rubs his chest. “What? It got posted yesterday. This dude’s car just rammed right through the fast food window.” He grabs the phone and holds it up. A vid is playing, one where a big SUV crashes through a window on loop.
It’s not Pandora.
It has nothing to do with Pandora.
“What the fuck, asshole?” his friend demands. “I hope somebody shatters your femur.”
They both glare at me before heading toward the locker room.
The few other guys training in the gym all stare at me.
Fenrir lets go of me. “Well. I’m guessing you didn’t randomly ask me to spar, huh.”
I let out an ugly laugh. “No.”
The last thing I want to do is talk about Pandora or the way she’s fucking with my head. I pull my gloves off, staring down at my hands.
I shouldn’t have lost my temper.
I shouldn’t have acted like him.
It hadn’t even felt good to throw a punch, not like it usually does when I’m on the mat and my opponent is ready to give as good as he gets.
Fenrir hands me my water bottle. “I think we’re done for today,” he says. “Let’s hit the showers.”
He sounds so calm, especially against the heat that’s clawing at me and demanding that I lash out at him for holding me back from doling out more blows. It doesn’t matter that the asshole I’d punched hadn’t deserved it.
It only matters that I need an outlet for the violence before I really do turn it on the wrong person.
“I wasn’t done yet,” I mutter, but I let him lead me in the direction of the showers anyway. I pass the guy I’d punched on the way. He gives me a dark look, but I ignore him as I grab my bag from my locker.
I notice I have several texts, and I let out an irritated sigh.
Asch
Did Blaze get someone to deliver the groceries, or do I need to pick them up?
I’ve got a separate text thread going with Blaze, and that one pops up with a new message too.
Blaze
Tell Asch he has mail. If he doesn’t remove it from the kitchen by tonight I’m tossing it.
I keep thinking they’ll get over their stupid argument, but it’s been going on for several days already and shows no sign of letting up. Asch keeps asking me things he’d ordinarily ask Blaze about, and Blaze keeps getting me to play messenger pigeon.
I’m tired of it, but I don’t want to piss Blaze off right now.
Just like Asch, I don’t buy for a second that the basement had anything innocuous in it. There’s some big secret, and I need to know what it is. If Blaze thinks I’m more trustworthy, more capable of handling the truth, it’s possible that he’ll let me in on it.
It’s a long shot that it has anything to do with Rachel; he and Asch had seemed genuinely confused when I’d asked them about her what seems to be a lifetime ago. But I can’t shake the feeling that it’s important.
I fight back the urge to tell Asch to ask Blaze himself anyway, instead dutifully texting both of them with their respective messages before shoving my phone back into my duffel bag.
I head into the showers, choosing the stall the farthest away from the locker room, and I exhale heavily. Fuck. Why did everything have to get so complicated?
The water pounds heavily onto my shoulders, and the heat of it feels good. I soap up my body, lingering when I reach my cock. That’s one thing that could relieve some of the tension, and I stroke myself into hardness.
Of course the first thing that pops into my mind is Pandora.
She’d been weirdly… sweet at the funeral.
Strange.
But not angry, not crying, not broken.
I imagine Pandora sliding into the shower stall. It would be just like her, to sneak into the men’s locker room to terrorize me. And she’d probably get on her knees on the hard tile and tease me.
Torment me.
I squeeze my cock harder, remembering how good her mouth is. Knowing her, she’d scrape her teeth against the sensitive skin, and she’d laugh if I complained.
I stroke faster.
I imagine Pandora’s looking up at me with her devious smile.
“Can you keep quiet?” she’d say, and then she’d probably get a kick out of ensuring I moaned as loud as possible. Hell, she’d bite on purpose to make me yelp, and that thought is hot too, and—
“River? I’m done here. I’ll grab us snacks from the vending machine,” Fenrir calls out suddenly.
Fuck.
My hand falls away from my cock, and I groan inwardly.
Now I have a raging hard-on on top of being in a shitty mood, and I can’t do anything about either of those things.
I pinch my cock a few times to make it soften, rinse off, and step out of the stall, toweling myself dry before throwing my street clothes back on.
Fenrir’s waiting for me right outside the locker room. He’s got all his usual piercings on again. I can’t believe he removes them every time he boxes. I’d never bothered with piercings because of how much of a pain it would be, but apparently it’s worth it for Fenrir.
The shirt he’s wearing is low cut enough that the entirety of the wolf tattoo on his neck is visible, too.
I suddenly want a tattoo too.
“How long did it take to get that done?” I ask, motioning to his neck.
Fenrir reaches up to stroke his neck. “Fucking ages. Lines on one day, filled in on another. Healing was a bitch too. Why?”
“Thinking about getting one,” I tell him. I wonder how hard it would be for a tattoo artist to go over scars.
I have plenty of those I wouldn’t mind covered up.
Fenrir nods. “I can hook you up with my tattoo artist, but I gotta warn you, she’s booked months in advance.”
“Worth it to wait for quality,” I tell him. And the wolf is quality. “You mentioned snacks?”
Fenrir smirks and hands me two protein bars.
I rip one open and bite into it immediately. Delicious, calorie dense nutrient bars. I feel almost instantly better after I’ve finished it. How long had it been since I’d eaten? Maybe that was part of the reason I was so annoyed at everything.
“So, since I fed you… you wanna tell me why the fuck you blew up like that?” Fenrir asks.
“No,” I say bluntly. I like Fenrir, but I’m not close to him, and he could never understand the frenetic whirlwind that is Pandora Pavone.
“Uh huh,” Fenrir says. He takes a few bites of his own protein bar. “Fine, don’t tell me. By the way, now that the Chaos house got burned down, are you ready to ditch them and join Hell instead?”
I can’t deny that I’ve put thought into bailing on Kappa Alpha, especially in the wake of Franklin’s death. But at the same time, they’re right that brotherhood forges bonds — whether you want them to or not — and I can’t exactly walk away from Blaze and Asch before I find out what they know.
“Shouldn’t you call it Eta Epsilon Lambda?" I ask, deflecting the question.
“If I was a stuck up prick, sure. But Hell sounds cooler anyway,” Fenrir says.
Zayden would never agree, but then, Zayden is no longer there to be a condescending prick to tell us never to call it Chaos.
I’m not sure whether the feeling in the pit of my stomach is nausea or twisted amusement. Not that it’s funny, not with the memory of his head forever etched into my mind.
Pandora had done that.
The part that I still can’t figure out is the why. He hadn’t even been there that night.
Maybe she didn’t know that.
She’d been blindfolded. Nobody said any names. Voices can meld together when it’s a mob frenzy like that.
I’m not sad that Zayden is dead.
Maybe the problem is that it doesn’t bother me as much as it should. That burying Zayden’s head left me cold.
It was nothing like when I’d watched Franklin die.
“Anyway. Sucks about the fire, but if you find out who did it, I’m happy to beat him up with you.” Fenrir laughs. “I shouldn’t offer. My Hell brothers would be pissed. We had a whole mini party when it happened.”
I don’t tell him that I know that she got worse than beaten up for it.
“Why am I not surprised?” I ask, but there’s no malice in my voice. Kappa Alpha would’ve celebrated something like that happening to Hell, too, or any of the other frats on campus.
Footsteps echoing down the hall draw our attention. I look in that direction and tense up when I see Blaze approaching with another guy.
“Yeah, the gym is still open until 11 p.m. every evening. They renovated the facilities a few years back,” Blaze says. He spots me and tenses, then waves to me. “Hey, River. Good timing. I’ll introduce you.”
The guy with Blaze is about the same height as him. He has smooth black hair, thick eyebrows, and a crooked nose. His outfit screams rich student, even more than Blaze’s, even though he has to be a good seven or eight years his senior.
“This is Ezio Roland,” Blaze says. “He’s an alum here. A former Kappa Alpha brother, and he’s going to be managing the frat while we get all this shit with the frat house sorted. Ezio, this is River, one of our new pledges.”
Fenrir covers his mouth to stifle a laugh.
I elbow him hard in the side. “Hi, Mr. Roland,” I tell him, but I eye Blaze. A babysitter? I’m surprised Blaze’s father didn’t insist that Blaze step into the leading role, and I wonder what he thinks of that particular slight.
Maybe he doesn’t think it’s a slight at all.
“Please, call me Ezio,” Ezio says with a smile. “If we’re brothers, there’s no need to stand on formality.”
“Ezio,” I repeat. “Sure.”
Ezio gives me a once over. “You box, River?”
Nodding, I tell him, “Yeah, I’m on the school’s team.” I glance at Fenrir. “This is Fenrir Winters, who’s also on the team. He’s not in Kappa Alpha, though.”
Fenrir gives Blaze and Ezio a wide, toothy grin. “I wouldn’t be caught dead with you all. Can’t believe you let your house get burned down. Lax security there, Chaos boy.”
Blaze smiles right back at Fenrir. “Yeah. We didn’t expect anyone to have the balls for it. But you know, the culprit is still out there. We don’t know their motive. Maybe they’re going to target the Hell House next. Better sleep with one eye open, Winters.”
I grind my teeth.
The culprit is still out there.
But we do know her motive.
And she wouldn’t go after Eta Epsilon, not without reason.
Unless she thinks it’ll hurt us, or… something.
Shit.
I wish I had a better grasp on Pandora’s thought process.
Fenrir rolls his eyes, obviously unconcerned with any potential threats. “Sure.” He claps me on the shoulder. “I’m out of here. Hit me up if you want to spar again. Which you need to do more of, because based on today’s form, you won’t even make it past the first round of any competition.”
I’d never get anywhere fighting like this, too caught up in my feelings. I have to figure out how to set all of that aside.
I have to figure out how to get her out of my head.
Ezio shakes his head at Fenrir’s retreating form. “Nice to see the old frat rivalries are going strong.”
“Yeah, well, Fenrir’s a particular dick,” Blaze mutters. “You recognize the name, right? Fenrir Winters? That old gang that used to run in New Bristol. He’s got an inferiority complex a mile wide because his family name means nothing these days.”
Ezio lets out a startled laugh. “But if he’s a Winters, doesn’t that mean he’s part of the Cresci outfit? Blaze, you’d do better not to underestimate people based on their surnames. You know as well as I do that names aren’t what give people power.”
Blaze’s expression turns furious for a split second, but he smooths it over into a congenial smile. “Yeah, point taken. Anyway. See you around, River. And if you see Asch, tell him I’m serious about the junk he’s got lying around. It’s going into the trash this weekend.”
Do it yourself is on the tip of my tongue, but I nod. “Sure,” I say.
I watch them leave.
If Ezio’s going to pull this frat together, he’s got a lot of work ahead of him.
My phone buzzes, and I groan when I see it’s a text from Pandora.
I leave it on read, like I have every other text from her in the past two weeks.
Maybe I have time for another round with the punching bag.
No amount of punching is going to get Pandora out of my head, though.