Chapter 26 #2
“What are you talking about?”
“Leif, stop,” Staten chimes in, adept at sensing the tension between us—like we’re two territorial mutts fighting in a scrapyard for dominance, all reckless impulse and arrogance nursed by a lifetime of yes men.
“She hates mayonnaise. The smell, the texture. Can barely be within five feet of it. Thought you knew.”
Hurt tickles the back of my throat, but I know better than to exacerbate the enemy fleet of tension waiting to submerge us all in a pre-warzone. “You never told me that,” I say to Staten.
Staten—who’s now our designated peacekeeper—bears a warning in her voice that I’ve only ever heard a few times before. “It’s fine. He’s exaggerating.”
“Guess you two aren’t that close. Then again, you did only start dating, what, a month ago?”
As much as I appreciate my girlfriend’s efforts to clear the air, she doesn’t know how reactive I can be—thank you, Father—and it’s like we’re all waiting for the axed tree to finally fall, cored and splintered by a whetted blade.
I police the situation with attentive eyes, bracing myself for active cleanup duty. “What’s your deal, Kennedy?”
“I don’t have a deal, Mulligan. I’m just stating the facts.”
“You came here to start something. Why are you so obsessed with our relationship?”
I pretend not to notice Staten blinking in Morse code to call off the hounds.
She interrupts me, her tone strained with exasperation. “Knox!”
Why does she expect me to play nice with her ex-crush?
“God, you’re insufferable. You do know the whole world doesn’t revolve around you, right?” Leif seethes.
“And you do know that ghosting your supposed best friend because you can’t have her is a dick move?”
Blustering, Staten’s mouth falls open with seemingly no response, as if her hatred-fueled words are caught between her teeth, evading capture like some nettlesome popcorn hull. “You two both need to calm down.”
“You should listen to her. Don’t start something you can’t finish,” Leif warns.
“You think I’m afraid to get my knuckles dirty? Do you know how many times I’ve been benched for fighting on the ice, Kennedy? For lesser reasons than you harassing my girlfriend.”
The brunette with Leif narrows her eyes, poring over me as if I’m some breakthrough science experiment that defies a backlog of research. “I don’t know why you even bother, Leif. She’s not worth it.”
Who the fuck is this girl?
Staten looks to me for help with the swiftness of a whipcord, mouth permanently folded like she’s suddenly taken an oath of silence.
I jump into action as protectiveness crawls down each vertebra of my spine. “Leave her out of this.”
Leif scrapes his teeth together, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d expect to find blood-red gristle between sharp canines—a compulsive rush to hide his food away from view like a predator dragging its kill into the underbrush. “Everything was fine before you came into the picture.”
I wish I could astral project myself out of this fucking conversation. There’s a potpourri of emotions in my head right now, and it’s getting harder and harder for me to scab over the pain.
“It’s not my fault you were too stupid to notice her,” I growl, nearly halfway to causing a scene that will inarguably make headlines before midnight. “Do you know how many times she tried to get your attention?”
“Knox,” Staten whispers beneath her breath, pleading with me to deescalate before it’s too late. “It’s okay.”
I don’t plan on backing down, nor do I plan on lowering my voice.
“It’s not. Do you just want me to stand here and let him say these awful things to you?
” I hiss, and my question bellows into the hushed surroundings like a verdict in a courtroom.
The bustling of the party has, expectedly, ceased in the face of our altercation.
I’ve never been so mad before. It’s like I’m possessed by something unholy—like the voice that came out of me doesn’t belong to me.
A low growl rattles in my throat. “This isn’t your fight.”
“It shouldn’t be yours, either,” she bites back.
Whatever retort I had locked and loaded pulls a vanishing act. “Staten…”
And then it hits me—or misses me, more appropriately.
A fist swung in my direction—aimless in its trajectory—trying to hit a target that’s only a few feet away.
Luckily for me, I duck out of Leif’s range before he can land a shot, and maybe it’s the adrenaline or the pure shock, but my arm flings out in retaliation.
Ten dollars of fries go scattering everywhere; it’s a miracle that they don’t hit anyone in the immediate vicinity.
I feel the impact before I hear the corresponding crack of cartilage. Something warm and wet explodes over my knuckles, followed by a high-pitched scream from one of the unfortunate witnesses.
There’s blood on my hands, and I’m standing in the middle of a parking lot again.
An oppressive red paints the asphalt. I don’t even realize the extent of what I’ve done until I glance over at Leif staggering backwards, holding his broken nose.
Torn skin, pulpy muscle, carnage that stains the ground in more ways than one.
My knuckles are in a similar state: split open, raw, pulsing with a violence that’s been written into the helix of my DNA.
I was a sleeper agent, and Leif knew the exact words to wake me up.
Before he can lunge again, my teammates are restraining both of us by the arms and escorting us outside of the tailgate to evade one hell of a phone call from the dean.
We’re both quite literally kicked to the curb, and the throbbing of my hand doesn’t compare to the pain of seeing Staten on the other side of my mess, staring at me like I’m nothing but a stranger.
The temperature is five degrees colder when we perform the ultimate walk of shame, and the sky above is akin to a funeral shroud, blotting out the beauty of the stars. Leif—bridling next to me—doesn’t seem in much of a hurry to get his nose checked.
If I thought the parking lot was tense, the walk is unbearable.
Once the scene unfolded before me like a degenerate war, I knew I was at my wits end to offer any sort of resolution.
I just stood there, taking every jab until my throat closed, and I was already drawing up plans to bury that indignant part of myself.
Unfortunately for me, it’s a part that doesn’t want to die quietly.
With each step, my ribs grind together on a rough inhale, and a shadow of irritation blurs my voice. “I can’t believe you got us kicked out.”
“Right, because this night is all my fault,” Leif gruffs.
“You tried to hit me!” I seethe, venom adhering to my tongue.
“You actually hit me!”
He thinks he’s such a fucking saint.
I can’t tell who I’m more upset with—the point guard in front of me, or myself for choosing the low road and being entirely counterproductive.
I mean, fights are reserved for the ice.
I embarrassed Staten, I caused a scene, and my own teammates had to haul me out like I was some decrepit, nasty dog who wouldn’t stop biting.
I stop in my tracks, knowing that I’ll be out of breath if we keep walking and arguing at the same time. “Why did you have to bring Staten into this? Why did you have to show up with a new girl just to rub your relationship in her face?”
“You mean playing by her rules? You two have been doing the exact same thing,” he chastises, finally staring at me with his undivided attention, his eyes reflecting a fury that’s sole purpose in life is to scythe me down.
“Actually, we weren’t doing shit. She was just happy for once, and you were so miserable that you had to make her feel equally terrible.”
“Oh, fuck off.”
I unearth the truth as if it’s a forgotten relic, the quiver in my tone more prominent. “Maybe if you’d used your goddamn brain, you would’ve noticed this was all an act.”
He stiffens. “Act?”
“We…all of this was fake in the beginning,” I confess, a melting pot of resentment and regret purling in the pit of my stomach, right alongside the half-digested helpings from my dinner. Resentment for obvious reasons, regret for the reasons I don’t want to admit.
“You two were never actually dating?”
I shake my head. “It was a ploy to get you to notice her—to make you jealous. But then it turned into something real for both of us.”
A clearing of his throat. A show of mercy before the final coup de grace. “You two don’t belong together. You do see that, don’t you?”
My old friend envy pays me a nighttime visit, heating up the tips of my ears with a fire that Prometheus himself couldn’t procure.
Leif is just trying to get under my skin. The rational part of me knows that. Fuck. When will I stop caring about what he thinks? We’ll never see eye to eye, even if it’s for Staten’s sake.
Leif resumes his trek to nowhere, and I have to lengthen my strides to keep up with him.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Suddenly, he stops to turn and face me, a disgusted scoff stirring in his throat. “You two are from two different worlds. You don’t have anything in common. She’s too good for you, and deep down, I think you know that.”
The bottoms of my sneakers scrape against the asphalt. My breath catches on every corner of my diaphragm, and my composure disintegrates quicker than chalk in rain—milky streams of watered-down carbonate snaking through divots in the ground.
“Excuse me?”
My heart feels like it’s been crushed in an iron maiden, spewing lifeblood from unsealable lacerations. The world is pulling away from me, and suddenly, Staten isn’t within arm’s reach anymore.
Leif sculpts his words into weapons. Little does he know that it won’t take much to wound me beyond recovery.
“You could never make her happy. I mean, she’s brilliant, at the top of her class, and you’re a collegiate level hockey player. What do you guys even talk about?”
He’s lying. I am enough. Staten thinks I’m enough.
Does she really, though? I mean, Leif has a point.
You two are on completely different levels.
You couldn’t even ace simple English. She’s light-years ahead of you, with a good head on her shoulders and a work ethic that’s going to take her far.
If you don’t make it to the NHL, there is no plan B.
And if you think Daddy is going to pull some strings and get you a job, you’re sorely mistaken. Not that you’d take it even if he did.
I just want what’s best for her.
And you think that’s you? God, how delusional can you be? Leif Kennedy is the better option—the stable option.
My lower lip quivers, and my thinly veiled threat is anything but. “You don’t know her, and you clearly don’t know me. You’re just angry that you couldn’t see you had a good thing right in front of you.”
Leif glowers, a snarl ghosting over his lips. He tests the bitterness of his retaliation like one might test the sharpness of a blade with the pad of their thumb—the action cold, methodical.
“I’m angry that she chose you, of all people, to give her heart to. You never would’ve given her the time of day if you hadn’t felt guilty for hitting her with your car.”
It feels as if I’ve stepped into the eye of the storm. The adrenaline rush of the night peters out while I continue to dig my fingers into half-healed bruises, wincing each time the consolidated hurt presents itself as a tangible vessel.
“Consider this: if you truly want Staten to be happy, you won’t continue to drag her down, and you won’t keep her from living her best life. All you have to do is ask yourself if it’s worth it: keeping her complaisant so you can play house.”
I have nothing else to say. The only thing that I question—time and time again—is my deservingness of the girl who took a chance on me.
Leif still has his greasy fingers hooked in the cavity of my torso, clawing, scratching, pulling at my offal with a greed not forged from hunger but from animalistic savagery.
A greed that wants to see my bloody parts bared to the rest of the world; a greed intent on dragging my deepest insecurities toward the light.
And I hate that his unsubstantiated accusations ring true, because I begin to wonder if Staten’s life would be a lot better without me in it.