Chapter 18 Sterling #2
Everything in me goes still. Then it all burns. My pulse spikes so fast I can hear it thundering in my ears. The trees blur. The air thickens. My hands are on him, fists formed so tightly my knuckles pop from the pressure.
I don’t think. I only see red. A searing, suffocating red.
Then he does something I should’ve seen coming.
He spits, right below my eye. The moment of disgusted shock costs me.
I rear back with a curse, hand flying up to wipe it away, and that’s all he needs.
He twists, shoves, and for a split second I’m off balance.
He scrambles away, spitting blood as he coughs out a laugh.
“Still so easy to distract,” he taunts. “Guess I’m still the better brother.”
“You’re a fucking cockroach, Stanley.”
He shrugs. “Better a cockroach than the asshole who left.”
We circle each other now. He’s bruised and bleeding. I’m seething and focused.
“She wants me, Sterling. Not you.”
“She wants you, huh?” I echo, voice dripping with disdain and disbelief. “Where the hell do you get the balls to say shit like that, Stanley? Elle isn’t yours. Never was.”
His nostrils flare. That struck deep. Good, because I want it to. He steps forward, fists flexing. “You’re talking real loud for a man who didn’t even show up until after she was broken.”
I stop cold. My blood boils. My breath comes slow, on purpose. I need to keep control, but I feel the leash slipping. It’s been slipping.
He rolls his shoulders back, dropping into a familiar stance. We used to practice like this, back when we were dumb boys with bruised knuckles and bleeding mouths. But this isn’t sparring anymore. This is war.
“Come on,” he taunts again. “Let’s see if you’ve still got it, dokkaebi.”
I circle him, calm, lethal, still calculating. He mirrors me. Copycat bastard. Second-rate Song-Smith.
“You know,” Stanley says casually, “I’ve gotten good at tracking you.”
I keep circling. I don’t speak, don’t blink. I’m waiting for an opening to strike and take him down. Make him useless. Insignificant. Like the insect he fucking is.
“I had to,” he continues. “You think you’re the only one who ran? You think you’re the only one who felt like they didn’t belong in that fucked-up family?”
I shouldn’t pause, but I do, even if it’s for a second. He sees it.
“I chased after you the moment I realized you weren’t coming back all those years ago,” he says, seething. “Thought I could find a reason why one of my brothers left us behind.”
I clench my jaw, but I don’t bite back.
“You were untrackable to a kid like me back then.” He grins too wide. “And now, I found you a lot faster. So easy. Almost like you wanted me to.”
“You talk too damn much,” I snap, and then launch. My fist cracks across his jaw before he can react. The hit snaps his head sideways, blood spattering from his lip. He stumbles but doesn’t fall. I follow and drive a knee into his ribs. My elbow goes to his temple.
He laughs, blocking with his forearm. “Nice try, temper tantrum.”
He swings wide, brutal and messy. But I duck, slamming my shoulder into his gut. He grabs at my shirt, dragging me with him. We hit the forest floor hard, a tangle of limbs and curses.
But I come out on top again, raining blows across his face, raw knuckles to bone. He still smiles through it all, laughing. My vision tunnels, rage-red and blinding.
“You had your chance,” I growl between punches. “You had her and you let Clo fucking ruin her! You knew! You fucking knew! You still let her suffer!”
He spits out blood. “You’re just pissed she moaned my name before she even knew yours.”
I lose it. A roar tears from my throat as I drive my fist into his mouth. He turns his head and spits blood into both of my eyes with scary accuracy. I jerk back instinctively, and he takes the opening. His palm slams into my chest, knocking me off balance.
We both scramble to our feet. Stanley barely twists out of the way in time, but I still clip his jaw. He grunts, breath hissing between his teeth. “Guess I should’ve expected that,” he mutters.
He doesn’t get another second to breathe. I close the distance, footwork clean, cutting into his space like I’m carving him out of the forest. I hammer him with fast strikes, forcing him to backpedal, making him defend, defend, defend.
He’s bigger than me, thick through the shoulders, heavy in the arms. The kind of bulk that intimidates most people on sight.
But I’m not most people. And he’s too slow.
I feint right. He bites into the air. I pivot low and fast, sweep his legs with a brutal snap of motion.
I feel the moment his balance goes down with him.
His back hits the ground hard. His head smacks the dirt, and his breath leaves him in a heavy gust.
I stay standing, chest heaving. “The bigger the idiot, the harder he falls,” I murmur with a frown.
But then he laughs. He’s fucking laughing. His mouth is bloody, one eye already swelling shut, but he grins up at me like I just did him a favor.
That’s when a crawling cold realization rips through my high.
The smoke’s cleared. And so has the lie.
Stanley never meant to win, never wanted to win.
He never even tried to fight back, not really.
He didn’t take a shot to kill me. Didn’t swing to connect.
Didn’t take me down when he’s stronger than me.
He came here for a beating. He came here to bleed. This wasn’t a challenge. It was a confession. A cry for judgment. A fucking punishment.
My pulse stutters as I look at him. It feels like I’m seeing him for the first time since forever.
And it has been forever, since I took a good look at the face that looks so much like mine.
Even with that shit-eating grin, I can see the pain in his eyes.
I know that feeling. I know what it is to want pain and punishment to override the guilt.
He groans and props himself up on one elbow, blood dripping to the edge of his jaw. His eye’s already darkening, purpling at the corner. But he’s still grinning like a lunatic.
“Cat got your tongue, Sterling?” he rasps, voice shot to hell. “Always were the slow one.”
I stare down at him, fists slack at my sides, every breath dragging harder than the last. I don’t have anything clever to say.
“You know,” he continues, coughing out red, “we might be dumb as shit, but Damon would’ve figured this all out in a week. Saved Elle without lifting a finger.”
He says it like a joke, but I hear the hollow scrape beneath it.
I clench my jaw, hard enough to crack a molar. Damon would’ve figured it out. That’s true. But he’s off the grid.
I look down at Stanley, all bloodied and bruised. I extend a hand. He stares at it, weighing the moment. Then he sighs and grabs it, and I haul him to his feet.
But of course, it doesn’t end there. Stanley tightens his grip and yanks me forward, pulling me into his space, nose to nose. “What’re you planning to do with Elle?” he asks, serious.
My throat tightens. Because I don’t have a clean answer. What am I going to do with her? Hold her until she forgets everyone else? Keep her close enough to memorize every breath she takes? Make sure she never wakes up to another morning without my hands somewhere—anywhere—on her?
I don’t answer. I can’t. Stanley studies me, searching, maybe, for something he’ll never find. Then he exhales. “I love her,” Stanley says with too much damn ease.
His words tear through me. My whole body stills. I don’t hear anything else in my head. Just that. I love her. The heat that rushes up is immediate, violent. I feel it in my chest, in my spine, in the way my jaw locks into place like I’m holding back something that wants to explode.
Stanley sees it and he smiles. That same crooked grin that’s pissed me off since we were boys fighting over stupid shit.
“Huh,” he goads, breathless but still smug. “Did I hit a nerve, Sterling?”
I rip my arm from his grip, shoving him off and glaring at him like I could snap his neck just to make the words stop echoing in my skull.
He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t know what I’d do for her.
What I’ve already done. He doesn’t know how she’s changed me.
He doesn’t deserve to say her name, let alone love her.
But I can’t deny it—his words hit. Because even though it tears me, there’s something real in his voice.
“You think I don’t know I missed my chance?” he asks, quieter now. “You think I don’t hate that she looks at you the way I dream about?”
That hits hard. But I don’t give him the satisfaction.
“I know I fucked up big time. But I wasn’t trying to hurt Elle. Kys made it too easy for me and her to be manipulated.” His voice cracks then. “I didn’t want to see, okay? But I do now.”
His gaze sharpens, locking on mine. There’s no grin on his face anymore. No arrogance, no lies.
“That’s why I came here. That’s why I needed this.” He gestures vaguely to the bruises and blood. “I wanted someone to look me in the face and say what I was too scared to admit to myself.”
I exhale, running a hand down my face. The silence between us stretches, less like a standoff, more like a festering open wound.
“I want to see her,” he says.
Everything in me tenses, instinct snapping back. Because no. Absolutely fucking not. But I say nothing. I just stare.
He meets my gaze. “I know we’re fucked,” he says. “All of this—what Clo did. What I let happen. It’s sick.”
He breathes out slow and heavy, like he’s finally letting go of something he’s been holding in for too long.
“I didn’t see it. Not until it was too late.” His voice cracks slightly again, just a hairline fracture. But I hear it.
He doesn’t expect forgiveness. He’s not asking for it. Not from me.
“That’s why I let you beat the shit out of me,” he mumbles. “Why I came here. Why I didn’t fight back.”
I don’t think he’s talking to me anymore.
He’s talking to the guilt, to the version of himself that watched Clo break Elle down and didn’t stop it.
That stood in the same rooms, smiled at her, said nothing.
Same as I did, when I was stalling for a plan that was never going to come.
Before I lied to Elle and took her. All for my fucking self.
For me to have her and take care of her.
To force her into recovery and make her rely on me.
Fuck.
I look at him. He’s a near-reflection, like looking at a smudged mirror. Just darker hair on him, a bigger build. But not much of a difference. He looks like a goddamn wreck. I look like that, don’t I?
Then he starts talking again. “I thought maybe if you hit me hard enough, it’d make up for some of it.”
I can’t answer. There’s too much in my throat.
Guilt, fury, and something that feels awfully too close to understanding.
I step back, because I realize we’re both in love with the same girl, but we both think we’re the monster who doesn’t deserve her.
And maybe we’re both right. But I’m not giving her up. Not now. Not ever.
Stanley exhales sharply, probably feeling ignored since I haven’t said a word, shoulders sagging like the fight’s been drained out of him.
“I need to see her,” he says. “I need to know if she’d even want to see me again.”
I should shut him down. Tell him no. Tell him to stay the hell away.
Remind him that Elle’s been through enough without having to look at the bastard who let Clo manipulate her.
But I don’t. Because for once, Stanley isn’t pretending to be anything.
He’s standing in front of me raw, wrecked, and almost unrecognizable.
He’s not just asking to see her. He’s asking for a chance to be forgiven. And I get it. I know the guilt, how it eats you alive. I’ve lived that. I’m still living that.
Stanley rubs at the dried blood near his mouth, wincing like the ache’s finally hitting him. “I didn’t know,” he mutters. “About what Clo was doing. I didn’t see it. I should’ve. But I was so far gone—”
“On Kys,” I finish for him, flat and unforgiving.
He nods, frowning. “Yeah, that among other things.”
It’s no excuse. I want to tell him that. I want to make it hurt. But I don’t, because truth is, if the roles were reversed, I don’t know if I would’ve done anything differently.
“I’m not asking to be let off the hook. I just—” His jaw works, like the words won’t come easy. “I want Elle to know I’m sorry. That I didn’t mean to let it happen. That I’d do anything to make up for it.”
I should tell him to shut up. That nothing he says changes what happened.
But I can’t. Because deep down, I’m thinking of her.
Of Elle, in my shirt, smiling up at me like I’d somehow made the world right again.
And I know—if she knew Stanley was alive, broken and bleeding just yards away—she’d want to see him.
I grit my teeth, fighting the instinct to protect her from this mess, but I know it’s not my choice.
“Ask her yourself.”
Stanley blinks at my words. Clearly, he wasn’t expecting me to say that.
“What?” I tilt my head, voice low and biting. “Afraid she’ll say no?”
He doesn’t answer. He just stares off into the trees, shoulders drawn tight. His face is a wreck. His lip’s split and bloody. One eye purpling and red. He looks like a ghost of himself.
Withdrawals. It’s crawling under his skin. He’s shaking in the same way Elle did before the last fever broke. He’s a bit behind her, probably always has been.
Then it hits me. Elle and Stanley, both of them trapped in the same hell Clo built.
I can’t deny that maybe he needs my help, and I need his.
Maybe protecting Elle—and protecting her from what’s coming—means more than just burning Clo’s empire to the ground.
I already did that. Clo’s web is ash. I salted the earth, left nothing standing.
But there are still pieces left. Loose threads that won’t burn so easily. Lix slipped through my fingers. And if Clo has contingency plans, ways to rebuild and to restart her supply, I can’t let that happen.
My priority right now is Elle. And she’s mine to keep safe, even if that means making Stanley do the work I can’t, since my focus is on her.
I turn on my heel and walk toward the cabin. Behind me, after a moment, I hear Stanley follow. I don’t look back. I know he’d do anything to see her. And I… I would do worse. Already have.