14. Knee-Jerk
KNEE-JERK
Qiang’s POV
Back to the present
There’s a painful hitch where my throat is throbbing around a breath that’s caught in it, pulling me out of some of my cruelest memories.
Next time I turn to scan a classroom, I’m going to turn the entire way around to make sure there aren’t any unwelcome phantoms from my past lurking just outside my peripherals—just full-on Exorcist-twist that shit.
For now, it’s too fucking late, so I stare straight ahead, trying desperately to master complete control over my body while my brain fractures and spirals out of control.
How the fuck is he here? Why the fuck is he here? Everything inside of me is hinged somewhere between shutting down and screaming for me to run. Neither option is feasible; I absolutely cannot let him see the damage he’s done.
As if to apologize for the cruelty it just dropped in the seat behind me, the universe offers me the greatest gift it could in this moment by having the professor dismiss the class and granting me the perfect excuse to get the fuck out of here.
Completely ignoring the voice behind me, hoping he assumes I just didn’t hear him–which is of course completely impossible because he said it right in my ear–I grab my stuff as quickly as I can.
I stand up to throw my bag over my shoulder and turn to leave when his hand wraps firmly around my wrist and holds me there. My skin recoils at the foreign, yet completely familiar touch, and my stomach clenches with painful memories.
Before I can stop it from escaping, a hiss of disapproval wriggles from the deepest recesses of my heart and out of my mouth, and I wrench my wrist from his grasp and all but flee the room.
I knew he wouldn’t let me go that easily; he’s always been headstrong, and when he gets something in his head, he makes sure to follow through, and for whatever reason, that something right now is talking to me.
After four and a half years, the voice that once made my heart race with excitement is making it want to shrivel up and die instead.
“I wasn’t sure if I was even going to tell you I was here and just kind of hoped we never ran into each other, but when I saw you were in my class, there’s no way you’d not notice that I’m here.
In hindsight, it’s probably better this way anyway because now I can tell you that just because I’m here doesn’t mean anything has changed.
That way you didn’t see me from afar and make the mistake of assuming otherwise and talking about things that shouldn’t be talked about,” he rambles on as he follows me at a brisk pace.
I stop in my tracks and take a deep breath to calm myself. Don’t let him see. Square your shoulders and look him in the eye. Show him he has no power over you.
Easier said than done when I’m barely keeping the panic and bile at bay just from knowing he’s here. Once I feel like I’ve got control over my emotions, I pivot and meet his gaze, making sure mine is steely and impossible to read.
His sky-blue eyes are on mine, and his face is the same, if not a bit more mature, than the last time I saw him. He’s still handsome, but it’s marred by the pride and cruelty that I know exists in him now.
“What are you doing here, Kingston?”
“I transferred,” he deadpans, and it pisses me off that he went out of his way to approach me just to tell me to keep my mouth shut. Like I’d ever want anyone to know I was involved with this prick.
He can’t fathom the concept that I’d want as little to do with his memory as possible because, in his mind, it should be my honor to have ever been seen by him.
In my mind, it’s my biggest failure; if I could ever undo one moment in my life, it would be whatever I did that caught his attention in the first place.
“Of all the schools to transfer to…” I roll my eyes, cursing every deity in the universe for throwing this fucker into my path again.
At least this time, I know him for what he is and know better than to fall back in his trap.
His eyes take me in slowly from my head to my toes, probably forming a million opinions of the way I’ve changed.
I’m not just significantly less sweet in my tone and delivery than I once was, but the full face of makeup, along with the tank top covered with a floral lace-knit shawl and the leggings tucked into knee-high boots I’m wearing, are also significant changes from how I used to be.
I never came out to him as being nonbinary.
Even when we were dating, I never said. With Qi and my parents, I was my full, authentic self, but I lived publicly as my assigned-at-birth gender back then.
That’s the version of me Kingston knows, because even when we were dating, I never said anything about my gender.
I meant to; I thought of a million ways to tell him, but something always held me back.
I didn’t even tell him about my obsession with makeup, because it’s simply something most people think is for girls, not boys.
Obviously, I know better now. I’ve worked through all of that and unlearned the many toxic binary standards society grounds into people from birth, and I’ve met more people over the years who get that makeup is genderless.
But going to the high school I went to, and being surrounded by the types of people I was back then, boys wearing makeup was girly, and that was a bad, bad thing, so I was too scared to tell him and have him judge me harshly for it.
That really should have been a clue that things weren’t as cozy as they seemed.
I couldn’t even trust him with such a vital part of myself, yet I was somehow under the impression that there were happy-ever-afters for us in the future.
It’s sad to look back and see how obvious the clues were back then, knowing how badly I’d missed them all.
“Have you seen the football stats here? Oh, wait, never mind, of course you wouldn’t understand that,” he says scathingly, bringing me out of my ruminations.
At least he’s focusing more on the conversation than whatever fucked up opinions he’s making in his head of me. Not that I care, and I really mean that.
I’ve spent years learning to embrace myself, and no amount of judgment from this asshole is going to have me backtracking or second-guessing.
I raise my head high and look him dead in the eye. “I am actually fully aware of how famous the football team is here. I’m also pretty sure that since you missed both the tryouts and the first game, you’ll have to wait until next year.”
Kingston shrugs. “Not necessarily, as long as I’m on the team, anything can happen between now and the end of the season,” he says in a way that has my stomach clenching uncomfortably.
“It amazes me the shit a bit of talent and money gets away with when it comes to sports. Well, money in your case, since your talent has always been mediocre at best,” I say scathingly, using the years of him not knowing me as a barrier to protect myself from the million emotions that are glitching inside of me while pretending I’m wholly unaffected by his completely unwelcome presence.
“Oh, baby,” he tsks condescendingly. “We both know you don’t know shit about football. You just look stupid trying to pretend otherwise.”
I just roll my eyes because he’s partly right.
I really don’t know that much about football, but living with two football jocks means I’ve picked up enough to be a hell of a lot more fluent in it than I was over four years ago.
But why waste the effort of defending myself when I don’t give a shit what this asshole thinks of me, anyway?
So I huff out an insult of my own instead. “At least I have to make an effort to look stupid,” I deliver the low blow, hoping it’ll send him away.
To be honest, I don’t even know if it’s actually a low blow, because his whole crybaby ‘everyone thinks I’m stupid’ act could very well have been an act, just like everything else was.
But even if it wasn’t an act, everything he’s done since then has long since stripped me of caring about his feelings anymore.
“Ouch,” he says drolly, clutching his chest dramatically like I’ve pained him. “How un-Qiang-like of you.”
I roll my eyes at him again, wanting to get away from this conversation. My knees are shaking beneath me, letting me know that the mask I’ve thrown in place can only hold for so much longer. I need to get away from him before the cracks start to show.
“It’s been years, Kingston, you have no idea who I am anymore.”
A teasing smile curls across his face, one I know well, even though the butterflies it used to ignite in my tummy have been replaced by a wave of revulsion.
“We could change that. Keep it on the downlow. No one has to know; it would be like old times. I miss how desperately you used to beg for my cock,” he murmurs as he steps suggestively into my space.
I immediately raise my hands to create a barrier between myself and his advances.
“Eighteen-year-old me was much easier to impress than twenty-two-year-old me. You were the best of the very slim pickings I had back then; however, the options have grown exponentially since then. Not to mention my experience, and knowing what a good dicking down actually feels like now. So you can keep your dick to yourself; I don’t even need to make an effort to find a better option,” I respond coldly at his suggestion that has bile creeping up my esophagus.
He slowly steps into my space as I step out of it until my back hits a wall. For fuck’s sake, I need to pay better attention to my surroundings.
It’s usually Marcus who catches and traps me like this, but I’ve never felt anything but completely safe, albeit a bit unhinged because I’m not used to that feeling, or really anything that my heart does whenever Marcus gets that close.
However, there is no trace of that safety right now with Kingston doing this. Instead, my body is hyperaware that it’s in danger, and it’s firing synapses that are igniting my fight or flight receptors.
“Have it your way. I was hoping you’d be more pliant if we were friendly, but since you want to do it the hard way…” he trails off.