Chapter 14 Proximity Game
Proximity Game
The first line of defense against an opponent with a knife is to avoid close contact.
— U.S. ARMY FIELD MANUAL
Proximity. Dangerous curiosity. Stupidity.
These were the reasons I woke at night, Lucas Scott’s face in my mind.
It had nothing to do with the lethal glint in his eye when he said I belonged to him.
…Right?
Thoughts of him consumed me, and I wanted to go back to the beginning, when I’d been wary and suspicious and incessantly worried he might rape me.
How laughable.
I could no longer imagine any situation in which Lucas would harm me. He spent such an inordinate amount of time wanting me protected that I’d come to equate him with safety.
Lucas Scott, my safe harbor. I was fucking insane.
Questions and arguments fought with each other in my head, and I retreated to my imaginary forest to escape it all.
The next week, pretending I’d never gotten off with Lucas at the forefront of my mind was easier than I’d anticipated. He threw a hairbrush at my face; a few wavy black strands caught between the bristles. My eyes flicked up toward him. “A hairbrush? Really?”
His brow lifted. “Today, you’re going to learn how to kill people with knives.”
“I didn’t realize stabbing someone was difficult.”
“The difficult part is staying alive. Knife play is a proximity game.”
I held up the hairbrush. “Is this supposed to be my knife?”
He pressed his lips together, and I suspected a suppressed smile hid somewhere in there. “It’s for your protection. I had a dagger for you, but imagined you falling on top of your own knife.”
I shot him a nasty scowl and kicked off my sandals. “Thinking of me when I’m not around, Lucas?”
You’re one to talk.
He moved into a defensive position, eyes twinkling. “Only a little. Come at me.”
I stabbed inexpertly with my hairbrush. He slammed his palm hard onto my wrist. The hairbrush fell from my grip. I froze, surprised, then backhanded his shoulder before retrieving it.
He blew out a noisy breath. “Okay, you need to use both arms. Your non-dominant arm protects your body. Grip that knife so I can’t knock it from your hand.”
I nodded.
“Focus on your footwork. Stay far enough away so I can’t get you with a sweep of my arm. You never attack first. When he makes his move, you move on his recovery.”
He motioned what he wanted from me, and I mimicked him.
“Good. Be deliberate because you may only have one chance. You want my secret? Go for places that bleed fast or supply vital organs. This is the only reason I’m good at this.”
My mind flashed to the executions I’d watched him perform, the lethal precision of his scalpel. He lifted my hand, poking my hairbrush into every artery or organ on his body that would result in serious injury.
Since becoming a medic, I’d focused on how the body healed rather than the ways it was prone to die. My face pinched in greater distaste with each new location he unveiled.
“If for whatever reason you can’t get to those places, go for the dominant hand. He can’t stab you if he can’t use his hands.”
I tried a couple of times, him moving my hands for me.
“Remember, your attacker doesn’t need to be skilled to hurt you. If it’s possible, you should run. Few people walk out of a knife fight.”
“You do.”
“I was trained to survive. I wear the scars as proof.”
My gaze lifted to the scar above his eyebrow. “I could try to disarm him.”
“You could try. Probably be the last thing you ever do.”
What?
He lifted one finger, leaving the room and returning with a permanent marker. He pulled off the lid and tossed it behind him like one would throw salt to ward away evil spirits. “Take off your shirt.”
I gaped. “Uh. What?”
“You have something under there, right? Take off your shirt.”
Hesitant, I obeyed, then stood before him in nothing but my sports bra and shorts.
Unperturbed, he didn’t glance below my eyes, and I grew immediately annoyed. He held up the marker. “Try to disarm me.”
My gaze zeroed in on the black cylinder in his hand, and I leapt at it. All my energy focused on ripping the marker from his grip. Twisting and grabbing, we ended up on the floor, where I struggled until I got both my hands around his, and pried his fingers from the marker. “I did it!”
“Congratulations,” he said dryly. “Now get up.” He led me to the bathroom next door. His hands came to rest on my shoulders while we looked in the mirror. I chuckled at my reflection—striped with black ink.
“Imagine that had been a real knife, Sophia. All the black would be red and dripping. You think you could have survived?”
Ah, well, okay…
“Point taken,” I said, meeting his eyes in the mirror.
“If you can, you run. It will save your life.”
I fingered a long ink stroke over my abdomen. “How am I going to explain this at home? You made me ugly.”
He snorted and left the bathroom, muttering under his breath. “Right—” something, something “—impossible.”
Quelling the compulsion to grin, I followed him back into the room and retrieved my shirt, covering most of the ink.
“How many people see under your clothes anyway, Sophia?”
Lie!
“Only you, sadly.”
“No Mr. Sophia waiting back home?”
“If I had a Mr. Sophia, I wouldn’t have agreed to be yours.” I slapped a hand over my mouth as soon as the words emerged. Why had I said it like that?
His eyes brightened, and a joyless smile spread over his face. “I’m glad you finally understand the situation here.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Then explain how you meant it.” He dipped his head, peering closer at my face. “I’d love to hear in great detail exactly what you meant and why you’re blushing.”
“I’m not blushing.” I flicked my fingers regally and lifted my chin. “I’m warm and have flushed delicately from the heat.”
“There is nothing about you that’s delicate.”
I scowled. “There’s nothing about you that’s likable.”
His eyes sparked again. “Then why aren’t you trying to kill me?”
The question gave me pause. Is that what he’d been expecting? Murder attempts? Real ones?
“I am,” I said, though it emerged weak and petulant.
“You’re not,” he said, like it was an incontrovertible fact.
So I tried harder.
We fought for the next few hours. Pride surged at my progress until an embarrassing moment in the middle when he tripped me and I fell on my hairbrush. I peeked up as he speared me with a pointed lift of his eyebrow. “This is why we don’t play with real knives.”
“I hate you.”
“I’m aware. Do something about it.”
I hopped to my feet and let him attack me again. We continued in that vein until sweat drenched us once more.
“There’s hope for you yet, Reeves.”
We lay side-by-side, panting on the carpeted floor.
He launched into his weekly information.
As I’d already known, he told me the NAO’s major supply line for both the NSF and the US Army stemmed from the area north of the Ohio River.
Hunters had taken up defensive positions along the river, protecting the northern banks and their position behind it.
They formed a barricade all the way to Pennsylvania, where they dove southeast toward the coastline to control the entire eastern seaboard.
The NAO had a firm grip on everything north of that line.
As soon as Lucas said the words, my mind shuttered, pushing away the pain that still smarted from the loss of my parents last year. Lucas didn’t notice. He described a plan he’d devised for the Defiance to safely cut off those lines.
“We already tried that,” I said, my gaze frozen on the ceiling above me. “We had to pull back after months of heavy losses.”
I sensed his attention on my face. “I remember. Max Aota kept sending his soldiers on suicide missions.”
I turned to look at him, brows raised.
“Luckily, I have information you didn’t have last time.”
He explained what he knew—weak points in the outer defenses, timetables for guard changes, key bridges we could destroy.
As he spoke, I couldn’t help the little spark in my chest, the one that whispered maybe.
Maybe it would work this time. Maybe we could do it.
When he fell silent, I inhaled a stuttered breath.
“Lucas. This—this could end things. If they have no supplies—”
“I know. Isn’t that the point? If we cut off their lifeblood, it could all end.”
We.
That word.
I thought of the precipice that loomed last week, when he’d stripped the shirt off his back so I’d have something cooler to wear home.
The night he’d claimed me as his. The cliff drew closer now, but I couldn’t pinpoint what made me keep walking toward it.
This man had killed innocent people. He’d slaughtered POWs with little remorse.
At what point did I begin to look at Lucas Scott and see not a callous murderer, but a strategic antihero?
“You have ink everywhere,” he murmured, taking in my stained skin. His finger brushed my temple, where ink marred it. “There’s rubbing alcohol in the master bathroom if you want to get it off before you go home.”
“Thanks.” I didn’t stand. Instead, I stared, trying to uncover his secrets through those sea-blue eyes that said more than any other part of him.
He didn’t deflect.
“Why are you doing this?” I whispered.
“They hurt my sister.”
I wondered why he kept saying hurt when he’d admitted she was killed. Did he not like the reminder of her death? Was the pain they caused her worse than the death she experienced? It couldn’t be the entire reason he’d given up everything, could it?
“There has to be more to it than that.”
“There really isn’t.”
I shouldn’t have done it, but I touched him. My thumb grazed his forehead as I wondered what thoughts hid just beyond my finger. “One day, I’ll understand you.”
Aquamarine disappeared behind expanding darkness. “I wish you wouldn’t try.”
“Why?”
“Because you will not like what you discover.”
I frowned at the certainty in his answer.
“Listen.” He sat up and made me do the same.
We sat cross-legged, facing each other, and he looked me straight in the eye.
“That picture you’ve created in your head of that man who turns traitor for some noble reason?
Sophia, he doesn’t exist. Remember how scared of me you were in the beginning?
That was the correct reaction. That’s the man I am. ”
I shook my head. “If you were anything like the man I thought you were, you’d’ve fucked me with a knife to my throat and given me no information.”
“I never said that’s what I wanted from this. You assumed.”
The frustration came to a head. “You didn’t ask for immunity. You don’t want to be saved. You only said you wanted a woman. What else was I supposed to think?”
His brows lifted. “Did it occur to you to ask why I wanted a woman?”
“The answer seemed obvious.”
He sighed. “Never look at what’s obvious, Sophia. Look for the details beside the obvious. You’ll find a lot more information there.”
I fought the urge to roll my eyes. “Fine. Then what do you want?”
“Nothing,” he said.
I stared hard into his eyes, wishing I could see into his brain and understand every puzzle piece he’d laid before me. “Nothing?”
He didn’t respond.
“So you’re only doing this because they hurt your sister,” I said.
He nodded.
“How did they hurt your sister, Lucas?”
Something happened then.
Something soft.
A smile broke over his face, gentle, almost relieved. The tiniest laugh puffed out of his mouth, and he took my hand to hold between his. His thumb stroked the inside of my wrist, waking a trail of goosebumps across the surface of my arm. “Congratulations. You finally asked the right question.”
My spirits sank. “You aren’t going to answer it, are you?”
He released me and stood, breaking the spell between us. “Nope. And it’s time for you to go.”