Chapter 33
Silas
Maybe I am still high on her.
Maybe it is the memory of Octavia in that locked classroom, flushed and trembling, looking at me like I was something chosen instead of something survived.
Maybe it is the sight of her in the hallway before, chin up, blood on her knuckles from where she hit Kadin, all that fury in her small frame like she had been waiting her whole life for someone to dare her to bite.
Maybe that is what has me moving through campus like a blade with a pulse, smiling at secretaries, skipping classes, learning his route one harmless question at a time.
It does not matter.
What matters is this: danger does not get to linger around her just because it learned how to speak softly.
Men like Kadin always think they can dress desire up as concern and make girls grateful for being watched.
They think attention is flattering if they use the right tone. They think pain leaves a door unlocked.
Octavia is not a door.
She is not a wound for someone else to crawl into and call it love.
Kadin Anderson has mistaken her scars for an invitation one too many times.
By the time I find him in the university weight room, the place is nearly empty.
Afternoon classes swallowed most of the students already.
The echo in here is all metal, rubber and fluorescent hum, the kind of cold institutional quiet that makes violence feel clinical if you let it.
Weight plates clink somewhere in the back.
A fan turns overhead with a dry little tick that sounds like a countdown.
Kadin is on the bench press.
Who would have guessed?
He is flat on his back, under a bar he wants everyone to think looks easy, his shirt dark with sweat down the center. The bruises on his face are fading into ugly greens and yellows, but the line along his jaw where Octavia punched him still lingers like a signature.
He does not see me at first.
I let him finish the rep. Let the bar come up. Let his elbows lock out.
Then I step forward.
My boots whisper over the rubber flooring. His head turns. The shift in his expression is small, just a flicker, a catch in the eyes, a half-second where instinct speaks before ego can cover its mouth.
There you are you little fucker.
Racking the bar too fast, it clatters against the hooks as he sits up with his usual sneer already halfway built, trying to wear confidence before I get close enough to peel it off him.
“Corvin,” he says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “You stalking me now?”
I say nothing.
Silence is useful. It makes men like him rush to build bridges out of words, every bridge they build showing you exactly where they think the weak spots are.
Stopping beside the bench, I glance down at the bar, then back at him.
"You should stop ending up alone with me,” I say.
His mouth twitches. “Yeah? And what exactly are you going to do?”
He starts to stand.
I move before he finishes.
My hand grabs his shoulder, shoving hard enough to send him flat onto the bench again, the other snatching the racked bar. Surprise blows through him before anger can catch up, swears rolling off his tongue as he grabs for the bar on instinct.
That instinct is what traps him.
I press down.
Not all at once. Not with enough force to crush him immediately. Just enough to make the bar dip lower than he expected. The metal gives a hard, ugly clank against the rack teeth before I shift it free of the catches completely, settling the weight down over him.
His eyes flare.
Both his hands lock around the bar, his elbows buckling.
The plates on either side wobble with a metallic chatter as he realizes, in one quick clean flash, that the game has changed and he is underneath it.
“That’s right,” I say softly.
The bar hovers an inch above his chest because I let it.
My palms flatten over the knurling, his muscles jumping under the strain.
He could probably press this weight on a good day, with a spotter at his back, music blaring in his ears, and a room full of people to applaud him for surviving his own vanity.
This is not that kind of day.
Now it is me above him, looking down, my shadow cutting across his face. The fluorescent lights bleach everything sickly white. Sweat gathers instantly at his temples, his jaw clenching so hard I can see the tendons stand out.
“Get the fuck off,” he snaps, as I lean a little more of my weight into the bar.
It lowers.
Not much. Just enough for the steel to kiss his shirt and dimple the fabric over his sternum as his breath leaves him in a tight grunt.
Fear moves through his face so fast it almost counts as honesty.
“You hear that?” I ask, because the plates are rattling now, a nervous little metallic chatter. “That’s what panic sounds like when it’s trying not to embarrass itself.”
Gritting his teeth, he pushes upward, the bar rising half an inch. I press it back down effortlessly.
The look he gives me now is different. Not indignant. Not smug. Not even angry, really.
Alert.
Good.
“This is insane,” he says, but there is hesitance in it now.
“Yes,” I tell him. “It is.”
That lands harder than a denial would have.
I watch him understand why this is happening in real time. There is no appeal in this room. No moral high ground to scramble toward. No performance to rescue him. I am not here to prove I am better than him. I am here to make him feel the shape of consequence.
Lowering my mouth toward his ear, my eyes never leave his face.
“You put your hands where they didn’t belong,” I whisper. “You said her name like you had a right to it. You talked around her, over her, through her, like she was a prize somebody forgot to lock up.”
His arms shake as he tries to buck the weight.
Letting the bar drift lower, very slowly, it presses into his chest enough to force his next breath short. His face changes at once, the muscles in his neck standing up, his legs planting wide on the floor. Trying not to look frightened, he is failing miserably.
“She is not yours,” he bites out.
The laugh that leaves me is quiet.
“No,” I hiss. “She isn’t.” Pressing one finger harder into the steel, it's enough to make his triceps tremble. “That’s what makes this so humiliating for you, doesn’t it?”
He swallows. I see it. I see every involuntary thing.
“She chose me anyway.”
His expression flashes hot with hate. There it is. The tender center.
“I know what you saw when you looked at her,” I go on. “You saw damage and mistook it for availability. You saw pain and thought it made her easier to corner. You heard pieces of her history and started circling because boys like you hear about blood in the water and call it romance.”
He curses at me, shoving upward.
I answer by taking one hand off the bar, reaching for the collar of his shirt, using the other to force the weight down hard enough to make him gasp. Not crush. Not break. Just enough to hurt. His breath tears out of him in a panicked sound before he can stop it. He hates that sound. I can tell.
“Careful,” I murmur. “You push at the wrong time and you’ll crack your own ribs trying to prove a point.”
His eyes dart to the empty doorway. The mirrors. The windows. There is no one coming. The room knows it. I know it. Now he knows it too.
Letting the bar rise a fraction, it's just enough to let him drag in air.
Then I press it down again.
Slowly.
Harder.
The steel bites deeper into his sternum as the bench squeals against the floor. Sweat breaks fully across his face now, running into his hairline. His forearms quiver from the effort of not losing control completely. I can feel every tiny desperate adjustment through the bar.
“St. Augustine didn’t put me away for no reason,” I mutter quietly.
That sentence goes through him like a wildfire.
He does not know the details. He doesn’t need to. The not-knowing does more work than any explanation ever could.
“You don’t get to use her name to make yourself feel important,” I warn. “You don’t get to hover around her because you think broken things need a witness. You don’t get to decide that her hurt means there’s room for you.”
He is breathing through his teeth now, fast and shallow. Survival has reached his eyes properly. He still tries for a sneer, but pain keeps interrupting it.
“Get off,” he hisses again, weaker now.
I look down at the plates.
Then at his throat.
Then back at his eyes.
“Say her name again,” I whisper softly. “Go on. Use that tone one more time.”
He does not.
Of course he doesn’t.
Feeling the corners of my mouth rise, I smile, because silence is the right answer and now, he knows it.
The weight stays on him. Not crushing. Not yet. Just there, heavy enough that every breath has to be negotiated around it. The bar trembles in his hands. The muscles in his arms stand out like cables, already starting to shake from the strain of holding against me and losing.
“Smart,” I hiss. “You’re not as stupid as you look.”
His face flushes hotter. He hates the position.
Hates that he’s flat on his back with me above him.
Hates that his body is answering honestly while his mouth still wants to lie.
I can see the moment he thinks about yelling.
The moment he realizes no one would get here fast enough.
The moment after he understands yelling would only make him sound afraid.
That almost makes me laugh.
Bending down, I move close enough that he can smell the mint on my breath, close enough that he has to keep looking at me if he wants to keep track of where the pressure is coming from.
“You know what I think your problem is?” I ask.
He says nothing. His jaw is too tight for speech anyway.