27. Violet
TWENTY-SEVEN
VIOLET
“You were supposed to stay out of sight,” Finn seethes, his unforgiving gaze narrowing on me. “At least until after the fight.”
I run my tongue over my teeth and pull his zip-up around me tighter. Even with all the body heat collecting inside, it’s still cold. Georgia’s December air has pushed its way underneath the doors and through the shattered windows on the floors above.
Finn runs a hand over his face, his features more disconcerting in the shadows. I learned when we were walking in that this is what merciless underground fighting looks like. Fighters and attendees meet at places like this, rundown and abandoned, so they can watch each other strip the life from one another. So they can see it leave the fighters’ eyes when they’ve fallen.
I picture the image of Colson on his knees again, and my heart stumbles. His eyes landed on mine, and recognition like I’ve never seen washed over his beautiful crestfallen face. It was like time stood still for him but not his opponent, who took advantage of Colson’s misstep. My body riots at the memory of the hit he took, guilt skirting through my veins like a go cart. All because of me.
Finn is lucky he was quick to yank me away by the wrist. I would have run to Colson. I would have wrapped my arms around him and held him up. I would have told him that he can come back from whatever this is. That there’s still hope. That I don’t care if he’s doing something I hate.
“What did you expect was going to happen?” I huff, ripping my arm free from his grasp. “You brought me here.”
“I know that, but we had a plan before we walked in,” Finn reminds me, and yeah, maybe we did. We agreed that we’d watch the fights, then after Colson was finished, we’d track him back to his car. Finn didn’t want to spook him by showing our faces too soon.
Little too late for that.
“You can’t blame me for not knowing what I was walking into.”
“I warned you, or did you forget about that?”
“You didn’t exactly tell me how brutal it would be.”
“You think that was tough?” Finn questions, irritation laced through every one of his words. “That was nothing compared to some of the fights I’ve seen.”
I roll my eyes. “What are we supposed to do now that he saw me?”
Finn glances over his shoulder. We’re backed in a corner but still in a throng of people who are ready for the next fight. It’s hard to focus on them when all I can see is the blood dripping down Colson’s face and the bruising that embellished the side of it in the snap of a finger.
God.
That must’ve hurt.
He must hurt.
In so many ways.
He’s so deep in his pain, in his grief, that he can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. He can’t see that he can come out of this, and he can’t possibly know where to put those feelings, otherwise he wouldn’t be here. In this frigid and dirty building, getting the literal shit kicked out of him.
Finn grabs my bicep. He’s not exactly gentle but not rough, either. I follow behind as he pushes through people who move out of the way without a problem. They’re apparently used to being strapped into a tight space with a million other people. A little shoving isn’t new to them.
We stay close to the wall and when there’s a bend in it, we follow that, too, my hand always close enough to skim the wall. Eventually, we find a set of double doors and push through them. The chaos behind us quiets some, but I can still hear the chants of the crowd.
Fuck him up!
Fuck him up!
Fuck him up!
It’s disturbing how much they get off on seeing a grown man beg for mercy. My stomach churns, dropping like a flapjack after being flipped. I swallow through the unease clawing at me as we walk.
“Where are we going?” I ask in a hushed voice, looking back from where we came.
“Just be quiet, can you do that much?”
I tug my arm out of his hold again. There’s not a crowd of people to get lost in back here, but also, he could be less of a dick.
He stops but only briefly enough to explain, “The fighters usually have their own space away from the fights for them to get ready. We’re trying to find Colson’s.”
The farther back we get, the more muted the roars become. Darker, too. I peek into one of the rooms we pass and find it lifeless. Papers scatter a table set in the middle of the room and filing cabinets line the wall adjacent to it. The only reason I can see at all is because moonlight shines in through the windows.
Finn opens a door, sending a creaky howl down the hallway. A colder chill blankets my shoulders, and I glance back for a second time. Nobody is there. Nobody seems to be back here at all. I doubt we’ll find Colson.
I stay on Finn’s heels, prepared to mention that, and to say that we’re wasting our time. That if we want to find Colson, we’re going to have to go where the noise is, but I never get the chance.
An arm curls around my waist and hoists me backward. My first instinct is to scream, but as soon as I try, a hand covers my mouth and my voice reduces to a muffled grunt. I kick my legs. Try and drive my elbow back into the hardness that now encases me.
I try to pay attention to what I see around me, but it’s just a hallway. Dark, damp, and dangerous. It doesn’t help that Finn disappeared down an adjacent hallway a second ago.
I focus on the sounds around me except there are none. I’m dragged into a room and then hear the door click shut. We’re in one of the abandoned offices, I quickly put together. No sooner do I realize this, my body is spun and plopped on top of a hard surface. I try to scatter away from my assaulter, but it’s hard when there’s nowhere to go. My hand brushes against the hard, cool surface of…of a filing cabinet? The coolness of the metal eats away at my leather pants, but my body is suddenly very far from being cold.
I’m hot all over, instantly in sweat mode after being grabbed by an unknown person until I look up and see familiar blue eyes.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
I gulp down my fear when Colson flicks on a battery-operated lantern. His gaze is on me. It’s nothing like I remember it. The man I knew weeks ago is gone and in his place is a different one entirely. All hard lines and clipped words. Markings of a self-inflicted war on his handsome face. His piercing blue eyes hold mine, and I wonder how long it’ll take Finn to notice that I’m gone.
“I, uh…”
“Talk, Violet.”
Now would be a good time to do that, but see, everything gets caught in my throat as I take him in. His skin is tinged red below his nose, as if he wiped at blood that was there with the sleeve of his shirt, but as my eyes flick down to spot the matching color on his clothes, nothing is there. Only the gray, soft fabric of a cotton shirt. I’m not sure how there isn’t a drop of blood on it, but then I remember he was bare-chested during his fight.
At some point, he put on a shirt.
The side of his face is a watercolor sunset, pinks and blues and purples mixing together to create a smattering of a bruise on his skin. I glance down and take in his large body. Broad-ish shoulders that lead down to wet-dream forearms. He’s never seemed bigger than this moment.
My eyes catch on his hands that can’t seem to stay still. They comb through his hair, then they’re at his side, then they’re rubbing the ache out of each other. He’s on edge. So totally out of his element while being in his element that it’s startling.
I know exactly how he feels.
And those knuckles, marred and aggrieved from his bare-knuckled fight, catch the faintest of light dancing around the room.
“You have nothing to say? Well then let me say it for you, this is not ?—”
“A place I should be,” I finish for him. “Yeah, you don’t need to tell me what I already know, but I chose to be here and that’s something you’re going to have to accept one way or another.”
Suddenly, I’m pissed. I’m tired of him telling me what’s best for me. Tired of him thinking he can make decisions on my behalf. Tired of him thinking he can tell me where I can and can’t be. How I can and can’t feel about him.
“I don’t need your damn attitude.”
“Attitude? This is nothing, Colson.” I huff out the start of a laugh. “You know, this doesn’t seem like a place you should be, either.” My voice cuts down to a whisper. “You’re fighting now?”
He puts his hands on his hips after setting down the lamp. “I don’t need your judgments.”
“I’m not…I’m trying to understand.”
I’m sickened over this whole thing. That I even have to be here. That we can’t be back at the apartment cuddled under my bed sheets and lazily running our hands over one another like there’s nothing else we love more in life than each other.
His jaw clenches and he looks away. “How did you get here? I’m taking you home.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Where do you get the right?” My heart stands at attention and salutes over the constant heartbreak where he’s concerned. I didn’t deserve the shit Webber put me through, and now look at me . Dealing with similar shit from a different guy. But not for long.
“Ever since your mom died you’ve been trying to make decisions for me, but I’m over it. Done with you thinking you have a say over whether I can be near you or not. If I want to be here, there’s nothing you can do about it.”
I hop off the filing cabinet, pushing out of his immediate space, feeling one hundred percent fed up. Finn was right. Colson does have himself tied up with the wrong people, but I’m done trying to cater to a difficult person. Done being pushed and pulled and ripped in every goddamn direction like what I feel and want doesn’t matter.
It’s never been more obvious that he doesn’t want to fight for himself. He wants to fight for them . For people who don’t give a damn. For people who would clap if they saw him sprawled out on the concrete, barely conscious.
It’s a punch to every organ in my body because if that’s what he cares about…then that means I’m not important enough for him to be better for. Sebastian isn’t important enough. Nor his aunt and uncle. We’re all meaningless . But it also means he finds himself so undeserving of the fight of life—the most important one there is. I don’t know which breaks my heart the most.
He grabs my arm when I turn for the door. Finn’s sweatshirt slips off one of my shoulders. “You’re not going out there alone.”
I look back at him, tempted to get lost in his stormy eyes. “We’re not together anymore. You can’t tell me what to do.”
And then he walks into my space, crowding me with that stupid masculine scent of his that makes me dizzy. “Well aware of that, but it’s not me who’s following you, now is it?”
“Someone once told me he was protecting me when, instead, it felt like he was punishing me. Consider this as me doing the same.”
His hold loosens and his eyes drop to the exposed skin on my shoulder before settling on the thick fabric covering me. “Whose sweatshirt is this?”
I switch to a more appropriate question. “What are you doing fighting at a place like this with people who don’t give a damn about you?”
“Don’t change the subject.” His eyes flare but not with the good kind of heat. He grips the sleeve of the zip-up. “Who the hell does this belong to, and why are you wearing it?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
He grinds his teeth and fists the black fabric tighter. It only ends up pulling us closer together. “Whose, Violet?”
“I don’t owe you an answer.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.”
“How do you figure that?” My breath wanes with us so close, our mouths growing nearer to each other. If this was the past, he’d tug me close and slide his lips over mine. I would grant him access, and then he’d pour himself into me while also taking every last bit of me. He’d give me that throaty, masculine groan I got so used to hearing when he’d kiss me, and that’d be the end of it. We’d end up in each other’s arms with sweat-slicked skin.
“You’re the one who put a stop to us,” he murmurs in a weak tone.
I scoff. “No. You did that. You broke up with me .”
“Yeah, but you…” He bites down on his lower lip. As if he’s in pain. As if he doesn’t want to speak it into existence.
“Don’t flip this.” I push my palms against his chest. I’m not trying to shove him, but even if I were, he’d go nowhere. I just want more space between us. He’s too solid, and I’m too soft. We’re a mixture of hard muscles, intriguing eyes, and thumping pulses. I know my resolve won’t last forever. Not where he’s concerned.
“If you wanted me,” I swallow down a breath, “you could’ve had me. I would’ve given you all of me just like I was doing.”
I would have been there for you.
His bloody fingers come in between us as he unzips the sweatshirt. Then he brushes a knuckle down the center of my very-exposing top. “Even this?”
My tummy whooshes. The waves in his eyes crash into me without abandon. “Especially that,” I whisper.
The air shifts. The anger-filled tension turns physical and causes a line of fire where the pad of his finger trails. It hooks on the material of my top. A couple of inches lower, and he’d drag his rough finger directly over my nipple. My back arches of its own volition.
His blue, blustery eyes meet mine, and I see the question in them. But I also see the walls he has built. Allowing him a piece of me will do nothing to tear them down. Unless I find a way to pick away at the mortar, I can’t give myself up like this.
I promised myself I wouldn’t.
I can’t be for him what I was for Webber.
I can’t constantly give and expect different results if all I’m going to get is pain and suffering at the end of it. He has to be willing to meet me halfway.
But he’s not even on the same road as me.
I’m gentle as I wrap my hand around his and unhook his finger. His expression doesn’t change. It’s as stoic as it was when he dragged me into this room, but he understands. The line is still there, and there’s no erasing it. It’s written in permanent ink and the only way around it will be to forge a new one in a different color.
But those thoughts fly out the window when Finn makes his entrance, pushing into the room with watchful, assessing eyes. Like he’s on the lookout for me. I know then that he couldn't have picked a worse moment to show his face.