James 29
James
I open my eyes to find Kian looming over me.
“Hey,” he says again. “You want me to spot you?”
I take him in: his dark features, his olive skin. The uncertain smile on his face. Objectively handsome guy. Hardworking. Well-respected.
I’ve known Kian for years.
I like Kian. I’ve always liked Kian.
Right now, I don’t fucking like Kian.
I’m irritated with him for reasons so infantile I’m not even willing to acknowledge them in the privacy of my own mind. I’ve jammed these reasons into my overstuffed mental basement and slammed the door shut.
It suddenly pops open.
Jealous.
Nope. I’m not doing this. I tell my brain to fuck off.
Instead, it hits play on a memory:
The night of the attacks. We’re at the diner. Kian looking at Rosabelle with obvious interest.
Wow, he’d said. Cute. She single?
The echo of the moment knocks the wind out of me. And not only does this make me feel like shit, it makes me embarrassed.
I am pathetic.
When I manage to pin down these uncomfortable feelings and look them over honestly, I can admit that Kian isn’t the problem.
Everyone is my problem. What’s killing me most is that there are other people out there—people like Kian—who have more of a right to talk to Rosabelle than I do.
What’s killing me most is that I don’t even have the right to be jealous.
She isn’t even mine.
I don’t know how to make this any clearer, Warner had said. She never wants to see you again. Never.
Fuck.
I take a breath, deciding to walk myself through this situation like a sane person: Kian is a nice guy. None of this is his fault. We’ve been friendly for years. I’m pushing dangerous weight. I should accept his offer to spot me.
Say yes, I tell myself.
You were once a pleasure to be around.
“No,” I say, turning away. Then, forcing it: “But thanks.”
There’s a beat of uncomfortable quiet.
I lift the hem of my ruined T-shirt to wipe down my neck, then reach for my water bottle. There’s a brutal, reverberating clank from another corner of the room.
Liam has decided to use the leg press.
I’m waiting for Kian to leave, but he’s not moving.
I take another pull on my water bottle and study Liam’s shitty form, wondering if I should warn him he’s trying to push too much weight for his body, that his joints are going to sustain more damage than his ego.
He catches me staring and flips me off. I decide to let him suffer.
“Look,” says Kian quietly. “I didn’t know.”
My body tenses. I lift my head. “What?”
Kian sighs, then meets my eyes. “C’mon, man. This is a weird situation.”
Unwanted adrenaline courses through my veins, waking up all my fear responses.
I hate it.
I hate the way my heart is pounding right now.
It’s fucking terrifying how my body just knows, instinctively, that we’re talking about Rosabelle.
Kian is still watching me. “I didn’t know that you guys were, like”—he makes an abortive motion with his hand—“whatever you are.”
“Who says we’re anything?” I ask, and my chest is already tight.
Wow, Kian had said. Cute. She single?
I’d wanted to say no.
I’d wanted to tell him she was mine. I’d wanted it to be so obvious we were together that no one would even be stupid enough to ask.
I hated that I couldn’t. I hated that she and I hadn’t even talked about it.
Hadn’t even discussed, in exacting detail, the fact that I would happily die for her and also, desperately, wanted to make her dinner.
And now I want to drive a fork through my eye.
“Pretty much everyone?” Kian almost laughs.
“I mean, I don’t know, it’s mostly people talking out of their asses, as usual, and I know I should ignore it, but it’s all making sense now.
The way you acted with her that night at the airfield.
The fact that she’s suddenly a high-profile critical asset.
” He hesitates. “And we all heard what happened at the hospital, when she woke up from a coma or something? Liam was there.”
Kian hesitates again, searching my face. He’s giving me a chance for a rebuttal, but I say nothing to deny it.
I’m a little thrown.
It’s not that I’m surprised people are running their mouths; people all over the world have been gossiping about my family since I was a kid. I’m just surprised I didn’t anticipate this particular kind of gossip.
To be fair, I’ve been distracted.
But I’ve never been able to fly under the radar.
Strangers have been speculating about my love life since before my voice broke.
Allegedly, there’s a mailbox planted somewhere in the center of the city that serves no purpose but to collect letters from delusional people auditioning for a date with me.
Just me.
I’ve never seen it. I don’t ask about it. And I don’t know who empties it.
Kenji, probably.
Like so many of my issues, I’ve gotten good at ignoring the things that make me uncomfortable.
“Look,” says Kian. “I’m sorry you’re going through all this shit right now.
I don’t know what happened. I don’t know what’s going on between you and your brother, and I don’t know why Rosabelle’s been kicked up to top-secret status.
I don’t know why she’s suddenly off-limits or why we’re all supposed to act like we don’t know she exists.
I thought you would know.” He hesitates.
“But I’m guessing from the look on your face that you don’t. ”
“What?” I’m frowning at him. “What are you saying?
You don’t have clearance to talk to her?”
“Bro, why would I have higher clearance than you?” he says, and now he actually laughs. “I don’t have clearance for a lot of things.”
I’m still confused.
“To be honest,” he goes on, “I think the new restrictions made everything worse. A few days ago, there were maybe a couple of people who knew enough to be asking questions about her. But now everyone is talking about everything. All these rumors about you?” Kian shakes his head.
“People thought there was a bigger story to break, and they went looking for one. This girl’s been put on a security tier that I think, like, only five people can access.
” He makes a gesture between us. “Right now, we’re not even supposed to be discussing her.
This conversation is a punishable offense. ”
“Yeah,” I say, tensing. “I know.”
“Right. So if I start talking about something super random, just know it’s because Liam is walking over here.”
I stare at Kian. Take a breath to process.
It occurs to me, on a delay, that this might’ve been Warner’s idea of compassion: he declared Rosabelle off-limits to almost everyone. Not just me.
Apparently, his compassion backfired.
“Anyway.” Kian exhales. “Look. I just—I thought things felt weird at the diner, and I couldn’t figure out why. But I wanted to clear the air.” He meets my eyes. “You’re going through something heavy, and I wanted you to know I wasn’t trying to mess with your head that night. I just didn’t know.”
Something loosens in my shoulders. I deflate with an irritated sigh. “We’re good, man. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I know,” he says, flashing a smile. “But I was feeling sorry for you. You look like shit.”
“Great.”
“And I figured you probably heard she was in recovery today, which was why I thought—”
“She was in recovery?” I ask this question the way I think a normal person would ask this question, like it doesn’t cost me a small piece of my soul.
Inside, my blood has turned to ash.
Kian is watching me. “Uh, yeah,” he says, frowning slightly.
“I don’t know, I guess Zain was getting treated for a minor sprain or something and he said he saw her coming in looking rough.
Said he didn’t even recognize her at first. Apparently her face got bashed in or broken or something? She was pretty messed up.”
This lands like a bat to the base of my skull. For a moment, the floor seems to pitch.
My ears ring.
Kian straightens, looking over my shoulder. “Yeah, so you, uh, you should really think about joining,” he says loudly. “We’ve got these intramural teams going, and we’re still a couple players short. I think you’d make a decent attacking midfielder—”
My head is pounding.
I almost feel like I’m dreaming.
“Attacking midfielder?” Liam scoffs as he walks over. “Wingback, maybe.” He pauses, appraising me. “Do you even play soccer?”
“No,” I say.
I don’t even remember I’m holding my water bottle until it hits the rubberized floor with a dull thud.
I look around, seeing nothing. Hearing nothing but my heart, slamming painfully against my ribs.
My mind is working at a dangerous clip, flooding my head with images of Rosabelle, her face bashed in or broken or something—didn’t even recognize her at first—
Someone touches me and I jolt violently, startled back into my body, back into this space, this heated skin, the pounding in my head.
I register the concerned looks on Liam’s and Kian’s faces as if through several panes of glass. There’s a caustic, roiling poison inside of me, dissolving me from within. My heart is working like a machine gun. I feel like I’ve changed states, solid to liquid, nothing but lighter fluid.
Rage.
I move blindly to the exit, my water bottle forgotten. I don’t realize my hands are shaking until I hit the call button for the elevator. My needs have never been clearer to me. My task list is exactly two items long.
Find him.
Kill him.