8. Kinsley #2
He’s right. I agree with him. But I snuck into more than one of those underground fights, and the thrilling exhilaration of being surrounded by all the energy intoxicated me. If you let it, it will consume you. My dad was proof of that.
Out of nowhere, Uncle Trey laughs. I jerk my head up to him. What the hell could be funny? “His stage name, the Slayer. It was clever. It was what we called each other growing up.”
I smile despite the anger and pain coursing through me.
As Uncle Trey gets lost in his memories from long ago, all I can think is that Slayer was slain.
The image of his bloodied and helpless body will forever be branded into my brain.
I’m not sure if I’m ready to stop talking about what happened with my dad or not.
But at least it was an icebreaker with Uncle Trey.
The underground fights are a society all of their own, full of secrets, mystery, money, and seduction.
I don’t know when, but I know that my father’s final fight won’t be my last. I’ve given myself no choice but to return to the place where it all started.
“You ready to go home?” Uncle Trey asks.
Clearing my head of those memories and intentions, I nod. “Yeah.”
“Pizza tonight?” he suggests.
“Perfect.”
The heat of the shower soothes my aching muscles. I pushed too hard tonight, but it was worth it. The pain is real. The pain is a reminder of why I put up with assholes like Edge.
“Stop thinking about him!” Why am I letting him get under my skin?
I don’t know, Kins, maybe because he’s hot as fuck, and has the same fuck-it-all-to-hell attitude as you?
I growl at my inner self. Telling her to fuck off would be asinine, so I ignore the taunting voice, grab the towel from the hook, and wipe it over the foggy mirror.
The black hair still shocks me when I glimpse myself in the streaky reflection.
My mom is going to freak out when she sees it.
I dry the dark locks with the towel, then wrap it around my body.
My phone buzzes from the bedroom. Luca’s handsome face flashes on the screen, wanting to FaceTime.
My thumb is millimeters from the answer button before remembering I can’t let him see me like this. “Shit!”
He hasn’t seen my hair either. I didn’t even tell him what I did. Taking the cowardly path, I deny his chat and call him back instead.
He picks up on the first ring. “What, are you naked or something? I’ve seen it all, Kins.”
“Or—or something,” I stammer.
Thankfully, he doesn’t push. “How was your day, babe? I want to hear all about it.”
I take a deep breath and then let it out in a long sigh.
“That bad, huh?”
“Listen, before we get to my hellish day, I need to tell you something first. You can freak out on me, and then we can try to have a normal conversation, okay?”
His voice suddenly tightens with worry. “What did you do? Are you a mother to a herd of baby ducks? Or plow down a granny crossing the street on your death mobile? Or worse, plow down a herd of baby ducks?”
I can’t help but laugh. “First off, I think it’s a flock of ducklings, not a herd, and second, my Ninja is not a death mobile.”
He ignores my argument. “You’re not denying any of those things.”
“No, I didn’t do any of those things.” In his eyes, what I did is way worse.
“Whew. Thank God, ‘cause you know?—”
“I did another thing!” I blurt out. “You won’t like it!” A breath. A sigh.
“Kins…”
Then, without wasting another second, I spew, “I dyed my hair black. Please don’t ask why. But I promise to tell you soon, okay? Just not today.” The other end of the line is unusually silent. “Luca, are you there?”
“Yeah.” Now, it’s his turn to let out a long breath. “So let me get this straight. You dyed your gorgeous, natural blonde hair to black, like the color of tar and bat wings, for some secret purpose you can’t tell your best friend about?”
I sound like the worst friend ever when he puts it that way. “Um, yeah… kinda,” I squeak out.
“There’s no kinda about it!” He abruptly hangs up on me.
Shocked, I glance at my phone. Luca has never hung up on me before. A few seconds later, his face flashes on the screen again. There’s no getting out of it this time. If I deny him this, he’ll make the forty-five-minute drive to see me and give me hell in person. I press the accept button.
The moment the connection is made, he demands, “Take it off!”
Reluctantly, I slide the towel from my damp hair. His eyes bulge out of his head. His mouth opens and closes like a fish, opens once more, and then he covers it with his hand. An ear-splitting shriek threatens to blow out the tiny speaker of my phone.
I run my fingers through the long strands, remaining silent until he calms down from having his freak-out. The background of his room becomes a blur as he paces the length of it back and forth.
I tighten the towel around my breasts, tucking the corner into the top. “Luca?—”
“Don’t. Just don’t speak for a moment…or two …or three.”
I clamp my mouth shut as he takes in the change and tries to process why the hell I would ruin my natural blonde hair.
He wipes his brow, then finally speaks. “Kins, I love you. You know this. No matter what your reason is for decimating your hair, I will continue to love you. But why? Just tell me that. Why?”
I can’t—not yet. And as much as he’s going to hate me, I admit as much. “Okay, since I can’t tell you the truth... yet , I’m going to lie… I wanted a change.”
Luca squeezes his eyes shut. When he opens them, his gaze softens.
“Kins, girl, I know you’ve been through hell these past few months, and I understand some of your decisions in those months haven’t been exactly, well, you know…
smart. Like when you raced your bike in that chicken fight against that oncoming semi, where you could have died, or when you used your fake I.D.
to buy enough booze to die of alcohol poisoning ten times over, just so you could forget, or when?—”
“I had to,” I interrupt. “This is for a bigger cause?—”
“This has to do with your dad, doesn’t it? What, to settle a score or something? Retribution?”
I have to look away from the phone. A single tear pools in the corner of my eye. Luca knows me all too well, and hiding the truth from him is too hard. I should have known this would happen.
His voice drops to almost a whisper. “Kins, listen, nothing will bring him back, no matter what you do.”
He’s right. Deep down, I know that. But I have to make it right—find a way I can live with his death, as selfish as that may be. But for that to happen, someone has to pay.
The rest of our call isn’t our usual fun banter and teasing.
I give him an undetailed version of my hellish day and training at the dojo.
He admits school was boring without me. I miss how things used to be, when everything was so much easier, normal.
He would have picked me up this morning for school, had a couple of classes together, ate lunch together, snapped a pic of some passersby, added some bunny ears and fangs, and we’d laugh.
There would have been so much laughing. Today, without him, it was the complete opposite.
“Your hair doesn’t look terrible. Even though it washes out your tan, it makes your blue eyes pop.”
“Thanks.” Warmth spreads through my chest. Leave it to Luca to make me feel a little better.
“And for anyone who doesn’t know you’re a true blonde, keep your panties on.”
“Luca!” I pick up my pillow and hit the phone.
His naughty comment breaks the glacier-size ice between us. He laughs without malice. “You know you’ve got to if you want to keep up your secret agent identity. Plus, that color gives you bad girl vibes.” He claws at the screen and growls a purr.
I cringe. “Please, don’t do that ever again.” Then I shake my head. “I have no plans for getting that close to anyone.”
“Better tell me if you do.” He fluffs his pillow. “I’m tired. I’ll call you tomorrow. Maybe then you’ll be ready to let me in on your little mission.”
My mission is anything but little. But he doesn’t need to know that, not this soon into it, anyway. “Good night. Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
The screen goes as black as the damp locks falling around my shoulders. As I switch off the light and crawl into bed, my head spins with thoughts of one person. Edge. It’s like I’m on one of those whirling rides, and each time I come around, there’s his beautiful, haunting face. It’s dizzying.
He’s proving to be more than just some rich guy who wants to fuck off.
He’s challenging and curious, which equals dangerous.
It also doesn’t help that he’s hot as fuck.
It’s distracting. He’s distracting. And I can’t afford any distractions.
He makes me feel vulnerable in a way that makes me question if I can trust myself with him.
Even if I can’t accept this truth, I know it’s there. I can’t let him catch on to it.
If he does, he’ll bury me alive.