38. Jace
He didn’t kill me. But I wish he had. Because now, I have not only lost my only chance to choose my own future, I have also lost Kayla.
By the time I had managed to put Kayla down, pull my pants back up, and secure the knife that Trent Ashford tried to bury in my heart, his bodyguards had shown up and leveled two guns at me. I wasn’t shot. But I was fired and escorted out of the building.
I tried to call and text Kayla afterwards, but she never replied. Probably because she is dealing with the fallout from this whole mess. Or maybe she hates me now. Because what I do know is that Kayla now has a new bodyguard who has been given orders to shoot me on sight if I ever come within six feet of her.
The small scrap of freedom she managed to carve out is now gone.
And so is mine. In fact, Dad almost killed me for messing up his business relationship with Trent Ashford.
So now I’m back at Blackwater University. With no freedom. No Kayla. And no one to blame but myself.
I slam my fist into my opponent’s stomach.
He crumples to the ground.
I know that the basement around me is full of people, full of guys who usually show up for our underground fight club, but I can’t see them. Can’t hear them. All I can hear is the sound of my mind cracking and all I can see is Kayla’s panicked face as I was marched out the door at gunpoint.
Dropping down, I straddle my opponent and raise my fist. Then I slam it into the side of his jaw.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Why did Trent Ashford have to pick that fucking day to visit? And why were we so fucking careless? We could’ve waited until the semester was over. Then I could’ve quit my job as her bodyguard and then we could’ve started dating. I could’ve had both Kayla and my future.
But now I have neither.
I have nothing.
Without her, everything is meaningless anyway.
I slam my fist down. Again. And again.
“I yield. Please, Hunter. I yield. Hunter. Please. I’m begging you.”
It takes another few seconds for the words to register. For me to realize where they’re coming from. Who they’re coming from.
My head is whirling like a tornado.
I blink repeatedly before my eyes fix on the guy lying underneath me.
Blood trickles down from his nose and lip. Panic and fear flash in his eyes. One hand is raised, palm up, in a show of surrender. The other is frantically tapping the floor beside his body. Tapping.
I stare at that hand.
Tapping.
Tapping out.
Oh fuck. How long has he been trying to surrender? I didn’t even hear him.
I can’t hear fucking anything over the roaring in my own head.
Scrambling off him, I stagger to my feet.
My opponent crawls backwards until he can rest his back against the concrete wall behind him. Tilting his head back, he tries to stop the blood from dripping down his chin.
Chaos and restlessness rip through my soul.
I need another fight. Turning with jerky movements, I search for the guy who was going to fight me next. My eyes lock with his.
Fear flashes across his face.
In a heartbeat, he drops to his knees and taps his hand against the floor. Submitting before the fight has even begun.
Rage sears through me. I need a fight. I need to do something to expel this storm I’m currently drowning in.
My gaze sweeps across the rest of the crowd.
Every single person in the room drops to his knees and taps his hand against the floor in submission.
A snarl rips from my lungs.
They all surrendered before a fight could even begin.
I hate them for it because I need a fight so fucking badly that I can barely breathe anymore. Can barely think. Can barely see.
But I also understand them. This isn’t the first time I’ve spiraled like this, and the other times didn’t end very well for the people who were brave and stupid enough to agree to fight me.
When Kaden was here, he always deliberately provoked fights with me so that I could get the anger and restlessness out of my system before things got too bad. But Kaden and Eli and Rico have all graduated now. So this year, there has been no one to stop me from spinning out of control.
I’ve spiraled into these mad episodes a couple of times before, and everyone in this fight club has learned to recognize the signs. They know when they can fight me safely and when they should bow out before it even begins because all of the safeguards in my brain have already been fried.
And I fucking hate them all for it. But I can’t blame them.
So I spin on my heel and stalk towards the stairs.
There is a half empty bottle of whiskey on a low table by the wall. I think I brought it, but I can’t remember. I snatch it up anyway as I storm up the steps.
Shoving the door open, I emerge on a dark lawn.
Winds whirl around me, pulling at my hair as I start back towards my house.
I lift the bottle to my lips and drink deeply.
Then I glance down and notice that I’m not wearing a shirt. Was I wearing one when I left the house? I can’t remember. And it doesn’t matter.
Nothing fucking matters anymore.
Kayla is gone. My future is gone. Everything is gone.
Pain stabs through my heart. It’s so intense that I stumble a step to the side and have to brace myself on someone’s fence. Squeezing my hand into a fist, I press it hard over my heart in an attempt to stop the ache.
It doesn’t work.
I suck in a shuddering breath and then drink deeply from the bottle again.
Pushing off from the fence, I start towards my house once more.
My entire body feels empty. Hollow. Like there is nothing inside of me except the pain echoing in the void.
What’s the fucking point of anything?
I fucked everything up.
I ruined Kayla’s shot at freedom and got her stuck with another damn man who is going to be looming over her shoulder and watching her every move in a way that makes her hate her own life. I ruined my own shot at freedom by proving to my dad that apparently I can’t be trusted to be professional and responsible. I strained Kayla’s relationship with her parents. I strained my relationship with my own parents. And I doomed mine and Kayla’s relationship before we could even get it off the ground.
There was a right way to go about this. And what we did wasn’t it.
Raking my fingers through my hair, I take another swig from the bottle as I stagger up the driveway to my house.
It has been three days and I haven’t even worked up the fucking courage to tell my brothers about this. If they don’t already think that I’m nothing but a fucking screw-up, they’re going to think so now.
The front door thuds as I slam it shut behind me. I don’t bother locking it. If someone wants to break in and attack me, let them. I don’t fucking care. I even wish they would.
In fact, I desperately want to go over to the Petrov house and provoke Anton and his twin cousins into a fight. They still dislike me enough that they would do it.
But Alina would be angry if I hurt her brother and cousins. And if I made Alina upset, Kaden would skin me alive.
I wouldn’t actually mind if he did that, though. But what I wouldn’t be able to handle is the disappointment that I would see in his eyes. I could survive his fury. But I couldn’t survive his disappointment.
The couch creaks in alarm as I slump down on it. I raise the bottle again and drink deeply.
Part of me wants to stalk right into Trent Ashford’s office, put a gun to his head, and tell him that Kayla is mine regardless of what he thinks of our relationship.
But I can’t do that to Kayla. I can’t make her choose between me and her father. I don’t want her to have to choose. She has already lost too much.
So I would rather self-destruct than be the reason that she loses even more of her family.
Resting the back of my head against the couch’s backrest, I stare up into the ceiling. The house is dark and silent around me. So at odds with the roaring chaos in my own mind.
I want to beat someone unconscious. I want to throw this bottle across the room just to hear the glass shatter. I want to set the house on fire. I want to do something that will relieve the oppressive restlessness that is threatening to shred me to pieces from the inside.
But I can’t.
So I do the only thing that I can to numb the pain inside me.
I sit there on the couch. And I drink.