Chapter 12
JAGGER
THE ONE WHO STAYED
By the time I get to the warehouse, my hands are wrapped and my head is wrong.
Not empty. Empty would be so much fucking better.
This is too full.
Johnny. Alice. The cage. The water from the pool night still sitting somewhere under my skin, like chlorine can get into bone if you let it. I keep hearing her voice in the pool room, low and tired and sharp enough to cut through every stupid excuse I tried to hand her.
Don’t let him make you stupid.
I told her I’d try.
Then she told me to do better than try.
So that’s what I’m doing.
I’m sitting on an overturned crate in the back of the warehouse, pulling my wraps tighter across split knuckles, breathing through the urge to find Johnny before the fight starts and make the whole thing simple.
The crowd is already loud beyond the curtain of hanging plastic that separates the fighters from the rest of the floor.
Music shakes the walls. Men shout over each other.
Money changes hands in stacks thick enough to make people feel brave.
Everyone came to see brother against brother.
Wraith versus Cutter.
Blood doesn’t count if it’s family.
That stupid fucking line is everywhere now. On posts. In texts. Whispered around campus like people are excited to watch something ugly and then pretend they didn’t know it would get ugly.
I flex my hand once, then force it still.
No stupid.
Not tonight.
Johnny wants me wild. He wants teeth and blood and witnesses. He wants every person here watching me lose control so later, when he twists the story, they already know what kind of monster to picture.
Alice was right.
I hate that she was right. Hate it more that I had to leave her there to come here, but this needed to be done. Johnny was never going to stop, and I was never going to settle with this thing between us still sitting there, rotten and unfinished.
Not after what he did to her.
After what he made her carry.
He needs to be handled.
And fuck me, I’m done pretending I’m not the kind of man built to handle him.
A guy near the lockers laughs too loud, and my eyes cut over. Two freshmen I’ve seen around the fights are leaning against the wall, counting cash, both of them talking like they matter.
“I’m telling you,” one says, “put it all on Wraith. Johnny’s blowing it off.”
The wrap stops moving between my fingers.
His friend snorts. “No way. Cutter loves attention too much.”
“Yeah, but not tonight. I heard he’s down by the pool.”
Everything in me goes cold.
Like ice sliding under my ribs.
The second guy laughs. “Doing what? Getting laps in before his own ass beating?”
“I don’t fucking know, man. Someone saw him going that way earlier. All I’m saying is, if he’s late, Wraith wins by default. Easiest money of the night.”
They keep talking, but I don’t hear the rest.
The warehouse noise drops out, piece by piece, until all that’s left is my own pulse and the words sitting in the middle of my skull.
The pool.
Johnny never cared about the cage.
Or maybe he cared just enough to make sure I did.
My hands go numb.
I stand so fast the crate scrapes backward across the concrete.
One of the guys looks over. “Shit. Hey, Wraith—”
I’m already moving.
Someone steps in front of me near the curtain, probably a bookie, probably stupid enough to think he can stop a fight from walking out before the money gets settled.
“Where the hell are you going? You’re up in ten.”
I shove past him.
He grabs my arm.
Bad choice.
I turn and hit him before he can say another word.
The punch cracks across his face hard enough to send him stumbling back into the table, knocking cash, betting slips, and a half-empty beer onto the floor. The whole corner goes quiet. Someone swears under their breath, but nobody steps in.
The bookie grips the edge of the table, blinking fast, blood already spilling from his nose.
I step in close. “Is Johnny here?”
He stares at me.
I grab the front of his shirt and slam him back against the wall. “Is my brother fucking here yet?”
His eyes go wide. He shakes his head fast, one hand coming up like that’s going to help him. “No. No, man. Haven’t seen him.”
The certainty hits before I even let him go.
Cold, sharp and wrong. Fuck. The fight was never the trap. It was just the noise around it. I release his shirt, and he drops against the wall, coughing blood into his hand.
By the time someone says my name, I’m already gone.
I tear out of the warehouse and into the cold night with my wraps still half done, one trailing loose from my hand like a white flag I don’t know how to raise. Rain has left the streets slick. My shoes hit pavement hard, each step sending pain through my ribs, but I don’t slow down.
Not Johnny.
Alice.
That’s the thought now.
Not the cage. Not the crowd. Not his throat under my hands.
Alice.
I call her as I run.
It rings.
Once.
Twice.
My lungs burn.
Three times.
“Pick up,” I snap, voice tearing out of me. “Alice, pick up.”
Voicemail.
I call again.
Nothing.
I run harder.
The campus lights smear past me. The chapel. The side path. The empty stretch of lawn near the athletic building. Everything looks normal, and that makes it worse. The world shouldn’t be allowed to look normal when something inside me already knows it’s too late.
No.
I shut that shit down before it finishes.
I can’t be too late.
No. She was mad. She said she was going to shower and go home. She’s probably at home, screening my calls cause I left her to go fight when she asked me not to.
Fucking idiot.
Shit, I’ll take her angry. I’ll take her throwing something at my head and telling me I ruined everything if it means she’s okay.
The pool building sits ahead, dark except for a few low lights glowing behind the glass.
I yank the side door open.
Unlocked.
My stomach drops.
“Alice!”
My voice slams down the hall and comes back empty so I run.
Shoes squeaking on tile. Breath ripping out of my chest. The building smells like chlorine and wet stone and something metallic under it that might be in my head, might be memory, might be the whole fucking world turning against me.
“Alice!”
No answer.
I hit the pool room doors hard enough that one swings back and crashes into the wall.
The room opens wide and blue and still.
Too still.
For half a second, I don’t see her.
My brain won’t let me.
It gives me the lane ropes first. The ceiling lights. The tile. The shadows under the bleachers.
The water moves in slow rings, like someone was just in it.
Then I see her.
Just under the surface, drifting near the lane rope in a dark hoodie and leggings, her hair moving around her face with the water.
For a second, I don’t understand what I’m looking at.
I can’t.
My brain won’t let me.
Because that’s Alice.
That’s fucking Alice.
Everything in me stops so hard it hurts.
No.
I don’t say it. I can’t. It just gets stuck somewhere in my chest, big and useless, crushing everything under it.
She moves with the water, one arm shifting a little, her body drifting slow like she’s asleep. Like she’s going to wake up pissed that I’m staring, call me an asshole, and tell me to stop looking at her like that.
But she doesn’t.
She just drifts.
In my pool.
The one place I was stupid enough to think he couldn’t touch.
Rage hits first because it’s easier than the rest.
Then guilt.
Then grief so fucking hard my knees almost go out.
I left her here.
I fucking left her here.
My fucking fault.
Then my body moves because my head can’t.
I hit the water fully dressed.
Cold closes over me. Shoes, jeans, shirt, wraps, everything dragging at once. I reach her in three strokes and get an arm around her, hauling her against my chest.
She’s too still.
Too heavy.
Wrong in every way a body can be wrong.
“No, no, no.” My voice breaks the second we surface. “Alice. Fuck. Come on.”
I drag her to the edge, one hand locked under her arm, the other clawing at the tile. My shoes slip against the wall. My shoulder screams. I don’t feel it. I get her up first, shoving, lifting, pushing her onto the deck before hauling myself out after her.
She lands on the tile with a sound I will hear for the rest of my life.
I crawl to her.
“Alice.”
Her name comes out ruined.
I press my fingers to her neck.
Nothing.
No.
I move before the thought can finish. Heel of my hand on her chest. Other hand over it. Arms straight. Count.
One. Two. Three.
“Come on.”
Four. Five. Six.
Her face is turned slightly toward me, wet hair stuck to her cheek, mouth parted like she almost has something sarcastic to say.
Seven. Eight. Nine.
“Wake up.”
Thirty compressions.
I tilt her head back, pinch her nose, breathe for her.
Nothing.
Again.
Nothing.
I go back to her chest.
I know how to do this. Years of lifeguard training. Swim team safety checks. Emergency drills I never gave a shit about because they were boring and fake and no one ever tells you how loud a dead girl is when she isn’t making any sound at all.
One. Two. Three.
“You don’t get to do this.”
Four. Five. Six.
“You hear me?”
Seven. Eight. Nine.
“Come on, ghost girl, wake the fuck up.”
My voice breaks again.
I don’t care.
I breathe for her. Press again. Breathe. Press. My hands know what to do even when the rest of me is gone, locked into a rhythm because stopping means letting the truth in, and I can’t. Not her. Not here. Not while my hands are the ones trying to drag her back.
“Come on, baby.” The words rip out of me, raw and fucking useless. “Open your eyes. Be mad at me. Hit me. Do something.”
Her chest doesn’t rise on its own.
I keep going.
Water runs off me onto the tile, mixing with the mess we’re making. My arms shake. My ribs burn. I press my mouth to hers and breathe like I can force life back into her if I just do it right. If I move fast enough. If I refuse hard enough.
Then the alarm goes off.
The sound screams through the pool room, loud and brutal, bouncing off tile and glass and water.
My head snaps up.
And I see him.
Up in the shadows near the viewing area.
Johnny.
Standing there like he’s been waiting for this part. Wet hair. Split smile. Eyes bright and fucking empty.
Smirking.
Everything in me turns black.
I want to run at him. I want to tear up those stairs, slam him through the glass, put my hands around his throat, and squeeze until there’s nothing left of that smile. I want him dead so badly it clears every other thought from my head.
But Alice is under my hands.
Alice is cold and not breathing.
I can’t leave her. Not again.
And Johnny fucking knows it too.
His smile widens, like this is the punchline he came for.
Then he turns and disappears into the dark.
“No,” I snarl, but I don’t know if I’m saying it to him, to her, to the fucking universe.
The side doors burst open.
Voices flood in.
“What the hell—”
“Call 911!”
“Get security!”
Shoes squeal across the wet tile. Someone grabs my shoulder, and I throw them off without looking.
“Don’t fucking touch me!”
“Sir, move back!”
“No!”
I go back to compressions, counting because numbers are easier than grief. One. Two. Three. Press. Breathe. Press. Breathe. My hands slip on her hoodie. Someone is shouting my name. Someone else is telling me to stop.
I don’t.
I can’t.
More people come in. Security. Staff. Radios crackling. Hands on me again, stronger this time, pulling me back while I fight them hard enough that someone swears and another body hits the tile.
“Jagger Cutter, stop!”
I hear my name, then Alice’s name.
I hear unresponsive.
No.
They drag me back while someone else takes over, kneeling where I was, checking for something I already know isn’t there. I’m soaked and shaking and fighting like an animal, eyes locked on her because if I look away, she’ll be gone for real.
Then one of them says it.
Time.
A number, a fucking sentence.
A line drawn straight through the rest of my life.
Alice Aster is pronounced dead on the tile beside my pool, and I’m still reaching for her when they cuff my hands behind my back.
I understand it then.
All of it.
The fight was never supposed to end anything. It was supposed to put me exactly where he needed me. Angry enough to believe. Public enough to blame. Attached enough to touch everything when I found her.
Johnny didn’t just kill Alice.
He made sure I would be the one found trying to bring her back.
My throat tears around her name as they shove me through the door, and the last thing I see before the hallway takes her from view is blue light moving over the pool like nothing happened.
I used to think Johnny ruined everything he touched.
I was wrong.
He ruined everything I loved.
TO BE CONTINUED