Chapter 9 Jay
JAY
Fists slammed into flesh, Ryker pummelling his opponent with a force that took even me by surprise, and I’d seen him in countless fights.
I’d sparred against him myself plenty of times.
But tonight, in the packed yard, he was on a mission.
He’d been gone all day, skipping all his lectures. Probably Thorpe business.
I paced around the edge of the chain-link fence, looking for trouble.
Although Whelford Uni students liked to sneer, saying we were their inferior rivals, that Cranham Uni was a prison full of criminals, they were more than happy to make use of our facilities.
The yard was neutral territory, where disputes could be worked out diplomatically or, in Ry’s preferred way, with violence.
And sometimes, we just fought for fun. For money.
That was what tonight’s fights were all about.
There was a huge number of bets riding on this one.
Ryker against Campbell, a huge, hulking brute from the Whelford Flames hockey team.
We could only get away with so much on the ice.
Out here, where the faculty turned a blind eye, thanks to the Thorpes’ all-powerful reach, we could properly settle our disputes.
Or in this case, to win bragging rights.
My phone buzzed, and I unlocked the screen to find a message from my sister.
Priya:
V’s been sniffing around the clinic again
The fucking Volkovs. Their syndicate had bankrolled my family’s business back when my dad was starting out, way before I was born.
Although my dad had long since paid off the loans, both monetarily and via his services to the criminal underworld, the Volkovs remained involved, albeit on a superficial level.
Every now and then, one of them would show up, hinting that we owed them and trying to guilt-trip my dad into doing something shady. It made my fucking blood boil.
I tapped out a quick message.
Me:
I’ll speak to King and Arson. See if they can put pressure on to get the Vs to back off
Priya:
Thanks
While I remember, can you check the accounts next time you’re in the clinic? I think Dad messed up the records again because some of the numbers don’t make sense
As good as my dad was with a surgical knife—he didn’t have the nickname “Scalpel” for nothing—his paperwork skills left something to be desired. It wouldn’t be the first or last time I’d had to go back through the records and correct discrepancies to reflect the actual numbers.
Me:
Will do
Pocketing my phone, I continued my circuit of the yard, nodding to acknowledge several of my teammates and classmates. My gaze was constantly scanning the crowd, looking for trouble.
A flash of blonde caught my eye.
Trouble.
Trouble that came with a fucking beautiful body and a feisty personality wrapped in an almost impenetrable ice princess exterior.
As I watched, Nova ducked out of the yard, slipping away from the crowd and disappearing into the shadows.
My feet were moving before I’d even made a conscious decision, following her silently, hugging the side of the building.
The stone walls were cold and rough against my arm as I pressed deeper into the shadows.
Thanks to the intermittent security lighting, I was easily able to follow her progress, despite the fact that she’d pulled up her hood to hide her distinctive hair.
She squeezed around the back of the building that housed the lecture halls, and—fuck.
There was no way she’d managed to get through there. Was there?
The gap between the lecture building and the wall was small.
Someone bulkier than me would never have managed to fit.
Breathing in as much as I could, I shuffled sideways, angling my head to the side, my chest scraping against the building and my back dragging along the exterior wall.
I could barely breathe, crushed between two solid surfaces.
Where the fuck had Nova gone, and why would she even come down here?
I had my answer a few moments later, when my heel encountered air where there had been only solid wall. Contorting my body—thank fuck Coach Lazovsky had us doing all those hip flexor stretches—I worked my way into the gap, and then suddenly, I was on the other side of the wall.
Nova was nowhere to be seen. All I could see, in fact, was rolling hills, ancient stone walls, and distant trees, lit by the moonlight. Except…
I turned on my phone torch, pointing it at the ground.
Found you.
There was a steep drop in front of me, descending at least thirty feet.
Following the faint depressions in the grass, I carefully made my way down until I reached a flatter part.
Scanning the ground with my torch, I turned to my right, crested a small mound, and then it became clear.
There was a dip that hadn’t been visible from above, and a subdued, yellow light was shining below me.
Making my way down and around the mound, I found myself in front of an ancient stone structure. The light was coming from the space between two huge, weathered upright stones. Another stone lay across the top, forming a semblance of a roof, and earth and grass were packed tightly around the stones.
Ducking my head and dropping into a crouch, I entered the tiny, scooped-out interior, blinking as my eyes adjusted to the dim light.
“Jay?” Nova’s eyes were huge and scared. Fucking hell, she had to know I would never—
“What is this place?”
“Wh-what are you doing here?”
Crouching down in the small space, I held up my hands, palms facing towards her. “I’m not gonna touch you, Nova.”
There was a flash of something in her eyes, something hot and savage. “Too bad you couldn’t do the same the last time we were alone in the same place.”
Fuck. The woods. The chase. The night I’d completely lost control and done the most completely fucking inadvisable thing. A secret that I’d never shared with anyone.
We’d never been properly alone together since then.
I gritted my teeth. “I said, I’m not gonna touch you. Will you answer my question?”
She stared at me silently, her mouth set in a flat line, but eventually, she exhaled, her shoulders slumping. “It’s a barrow.” At my raised brows, she added, “Neolithic burial chamber. I think.”
Tearing my gaze away from her, I studied the small, candlelit space. “Interesting place to spend your time. The haunted Victorian prison wasn’t macabre enough? Had to go for something even creepier?”
A tiny, reluctant smile curved over her lips, and I wanted to kiss it. “The prison isn’t haunted. And this is…cosy. It’s not the burial chamber, anyway. Just the entrance. The interior is sealed.”
“Still creepy.”
She shrugged. “It’s also private.”
Her emphasis on the word “private” didn’t go unnoticed. My gaze swept the space again, taking in new details. As well as a stock of battery-powered candles, there were blankets and cushions, and a small metal box with a sketchpad and charcoal on top of it. And a book. A book of—
“Is that Byron?”
Her eyes widened. “You—you know Byron?”
“Do I know one of the most famous British poets in history? The one we all had to do a term-long project on in year ten?” At the reminder of the school project, she rolled her eyes, and for some reason, my mouth kept talking.
“My gran—my dad’s mum—loved him.” My mind flashed back to my childhood, of the nights when my parents had worked late, and my gran had come over to take care of me and my sister, reading to us to pass the time.
“She walks in beauty, like the night.” One of the lines from her favourite poem came to me, and I spoke it aloud before my brain even registered how fucking weird it was to be quoting poetry at the girl I’d been antagonising for years.
Someone whose private space I’d just invaded.
“Oh. Um. Wow.” Nova gaped at me, and I had no fucking response, because I didn’t even know how or why I’d ended up here. “This has to be a dream,” she mumbled to herself.
I found my voice. “It’s not. I’ll go.”
“You can stay.”
We stared at each other, both shocked by her words. “You want me to stay?”
Her mouth twisted. “I don’t want you to. If anyone catches you here—either of us here—”
“No one followed me.” Before she could take back her reluctant offer, I sprawled out on the blanket next to her, propping myself up with a pile of cushions.
“Make yourself at home.” She rolled her eyes. Fucking hell, I couldn’t believe I was here, and she wasn’t kicking me out.