Chapter 12
Dervla
Idon’t look back.
I can feel him watching me all the way across the courtyard, which is deeply irritating because some part of me likes it. I hate that part. I hope it dies soon.
My coffee is all over the cobblestones behind me, my pulse is a mess, and every single one of those men seem determined to say outrageous shit to my face and then stand there waiting to see if I’ll stab them or kiss them.
I need a better class of enemy.
The corridor into Fitzgerald is cooler and quieter than outside. Students move around me in clusters, talking too loudly, laughing too easily, living what are probably normal university lives, while mine has turned into a parade of secret ceremonies, blood, and dangerously attractive psychos.
I push into the nearest ladies’ room, lock myself in a cubicle, and press both palms to the door. My right hand protests. My left is still tingling from punching Cormac in the ribs and then gripping his throat.
“Jesus Christ,” I mutter.
Not because of him.
Because of me.
I close my eyes and replay the last five minutes whether I want to or not. The way he lifted me. The way he looked at me when he said he’d kill for me. The way my body reacted to his caveman attitude.
“You in here?” Roisin’s voice echoes around the bathroom.
“Yeah,” I grunt.
“That was quite a spectacle.”
“Thanks for leaving me with that lunatic.”
“We need to finish our conversation.”
“Right now?” I groan and open the door.
“Right now.” She leans back against the sinks, her hands in her pockets. “Jokes aside…”
“We were joking before?”
“Hey, you laughed.” She shrugs.
“It was funny. I didn’t think Gallagher had a sense of humour.”
“He doesn’t. That’s what makes it so funny. But we digress.”
I purse my lips. “You said it wasn’t your business.”
“I meant the Board’s business. If you want that seat, I can endorse you.”
“I didn’t know I needed an endorsement.”
“You don’t. There is no canvassing for this post. It gets decided, and that’s that.”
“So what does your endorsement mean then?” I search her gaze.
“It means that they know someone is watching you.”
“Do I need watching?” I ask carefully.
“Let’s just say it won’t hurt.”
I study her face, looking for the angle. Roisin Brennan doesn’t do anything without a reason, and a reason that benefits herself is the only kind she deals in. That much I’ve established in under twenty-four hours.
“What do you get out of it?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer for a while, but then she says. “I like you.”
“And?”
“And that’s enough.”
“Is it?”
“I’d take the compliment and run with it.
Let me know what you decide.” She turns on her heel and strides out of the bathroom, leaving me feeling disoriented.
She has an angle, I just don’t know what it is, which concerns me.
I don’t like owing people, and I don’t like owing people I don’t trust. I stand in the bathroom for longer than I should, staring at the door she just walked through.
The fluorescent light buzzes overhead, and the faint smell of industrial cleaner fills my lungs every time I breathe in.
I flex my left hand. My knuckles ache where they connected with Cormac’s ribs, and the satisfaction of it is petty and real and mine.
I sigh and leave, glad I get to just go home and relax for the rest of the day.
The afternoon has thinned out. Fewer students in the corridors now, most of them tucked into lectures or the library or wherever normal people go when they’re not being lifted off their feet by a man who smiles when you hit him.
I turn Roisin’s endorsement over as I walk.
On its face, it’s a gift. Someone already embedded in the Board structure, someone the others clearly defer to, offering to watch my back.
The cynical answer is that she’s positioning herself close to a power shift before it happens.
The more cynical answer is that she already knows something about the Board seat challenge and wants to make sure she’s aligned with the winning side before the dust settles.
Either way, it’s information I don’t have enough data to act on, so I shelve it and keep walking.
The road is quiet. A couple of students ahead of me peel off into one of the other houses. A cat watches me from a windowsill with the kind of judgemental indifference I aspire to. The row of Georgian townhouses stretches ahead.
Someone is sitting on my front step.
I slow down. Not obviously. I adjust my bag strap with my left hand and let my right drift toward Henrietta at the small of my back. The figure resolves as I get closer. Male. Broad but not tall. Dirty-blond hair. Sitting with his elbows on his knees, casual, like he belongs there.
Troy Kavanagh.
He lifts his head when I’m ten metres out and gives me a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Callaghan.”
I stop on the pavement. “You’re on my doorstep.”
“Used to be mine.”
“Used to be. Past tense. Move.”
He stands, slow, brushing off his jeans like he’s got all the time in the world. His jaw is set, and his eyes are doing something I don’t like. They’re scanning me for weakness.
His gaze catches on my right hand. The glove. The stiffness.
“Heard you had a rough night,” he says.
“Not really.”
The smile drops. “You know what pisses me off?” he says. “It’s not the house. Houses are just bricks. It’s the way you walked in here like your dead dad was still on the Board.”
The words land like a slap, in that cheap, gutless way that people who can’t win a real fight resort to. I feel the heat rise in my chest and push it down. He wants a reaction. He wants me angry, off-balance, swinging first so he can tell himself whatever happens next was self-defence.
I don’t give it to him.
“Are you finished?” I ask. “Because I’d like to get inside, and you’re between me and my door.”
He doesn’t move. He takes a step closer.
“The whole campus is talking about you. I ran that gauntlet too. Three years ago. I didn’t get handed the top spot because of my surname.”
“No, you got fourth. I know. Must sting.”
His jaw locks. Another step. We’re less than a metre apart now.
My fingers are brushing Henrietta’s handle through my top, but I don’t draw.
Not yet. Because if I draw on Troy Kavanagh in broad daylight on a residential street, the consequences extend beyond this moment, and I’m not giving Whitmore or the Board or anyone else ammunition to use against me.
“You should be more careful,” he says. “Walking around here without your three guard dogs.”
“If you’re jealous, I’m sure there’s a support group.”
His hand moves fast. Faster than I expected from someone I’d written off as muscle without finesse. He grabs my right wrist and yanks it toward him, and the pain that rips through my thumb and up my arm is so immediate and so total that my vision goes white at the edges.
I don’t make a sound.
I lock my jaw so hard my teeth creak. Every nerve in my hand is screaming, a high, bright shriek of agony that radiates from the dislocated joint through the tape and the wrap and the glove.
He’s got my wrist in a grip that’s too tight, his thumb pressing directly over the swollen joint, and the pressure is precise enough that I know he’s doing it on purpose.
He knew about the injury, and he’s exploiting it.
“Not so tough now, are you?” he murmurs, leaning in.
The pain is a white wall. It fills my skull, floods down my spine, and turns my legs to water. I can feel my knees trying to buckle, and I lock them the same way I locked them coming out of the gauntlet, the same way I’ve locked them every time the world has tried to put me on the ground.
My left hand moves. Instinct. Reaching for Henrietta at the small of my back.
Troy catches it. His free hand snaps around my left wrist and pins it to my side, and now he has both my hands, and the realisation hits me like cold water. I’m pinned. I bring my knee up, but he deflects with his thigh.
“Ah-ah,” he says, like he’s scolding a child. “None of that.”
I hold his gaze and let him see exactly nothing.
No pain. No fear. No anger. I give him a blank, steady wall of absolutely fuck all, and I watch the confusion creep into his expression because this isn’t what he came for.
He came for a scream, a flinch, a plea. He came for the satisfaction of seeing the new Apex crumble, of having something to take back to whatever sad little circle of mates he’s assembled and say she’s nothing, I had her begging.
He gets none of it.
His grip tightens. The pain spikes so hard that spots swim across my vision.
I breathe through my nose. Slow. Controlled.
The same way I breathed in the gauntlet when the walls pressed in, and the water hit my face.
The same way I breathed when I found Dad at the table and the world ended, and I had to stay standing long enough to call for help.
I’ve survived worse than Troy Kavanagh. I’ve survived worse than this university. I’ve survived worse than the pathetic, entitled fury of a man who thinks pain is power because he’s never had enough of either to know the difference.
“Finished?” I say. My voice doesn’t shake. It comes out flat and bored, and I watch it land on him like an insult.
He stares at me. His grip loosens. Not because he’s had enough.
Because the thing he wanted isn’t coming, and holding on without getting a reaction is starting to make him feel stupid rather than powerful.
He wants to hit me, but that would get him sent straight to prison by the dog walker I’ve caught in my peripheral vision.
I can see it happening in real time, the slow, dawning awareness that he’s standing on a public street, squeezing an injured woman’s hand, and she’s looking at him like he’s nothing.
He lets go.
My hand drops to my side, and the relief is so sharp it nearly buckles me. I keep my knees locked. I keep my face empty. I breathe.
“Stay out of my way, Callaghan,” he says, and his voice has lost its edge. It’s trying to be threatening and landing on defensive, and we both know it.
“You’re in my way, Kavanagh. Move.”
He moves. Sideways, onto the pavement. He shoves his hands in his pockets and walks away without looking back, and his shoulders are hunched in a way that tells me he knows he lost even though he hurt me.
I wait until he’s on campus grounds, then I take out my key with my left hand, unlock the door, step inside, and close it behind me.
The hallway is dark and cool and silent.
I make it three steps before my knees give out.
I slide down the wall and land on the floor with my back against the wood panelling and my legs folded under me.
My right hand is cradled in my lap, and the pain is coming in waves now, hot and thick and nauseating.
The tape is still holding, but the joint has been aggravated, and the swelling that Declan’s wrap had been managing is already pushing against the bandage. I can feel it pulsing.
I don’t cry.
I sit on the floor of my hallway and breathe.
My hand is throbbing, and my stomach is turning, and the worst part is the stupid, traitorous thought that slips in between breaths.
If Aidan had been here, Troy wouldn’t have touched me.
If Cormac had been here, Troy wouldn’t have hands left to touch anyone.
If Declan had been here, he would’ve looked at the damage with that quiet, lethal calm and fixed it like it was inevitable.
I press my forehead to my knees and breathe until the thought dies.
Needing people is how you lose.
Still… my pulse won’t slow.