Chapter 23 #2
“I see that.” He leans in close, getting eye level with me, “You’re not, which is why I’m throwing you over my shoulder right now.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” I say firmly.
His eyes darken, a flicker of something else in them too. A familiarity that scares me.
“Try me,” His voice final.
I don’t move, that defiant bone in me just doesn’t know when to stop. I want to see what he’ll do next. I want to test those boundaries. See how far I can push.
“If you so much as try to grab me—”
“You’ll what?” he says teasingly cutting me off.
“Touch me and I’ll make you bleed.”
“I love that mouth on you. Let me put you onto a little secret,” he pauses. “I like pain, so do your worst.” He reaches for me. “Just know you might end up bent over with my—”
I take a steps back from him. “Don’t finish that fucking sentence.” Taking a deep breath, “Fine let’s go. Gods you drive me fucking insane.”
“Good,” he smiles. “Now you know how it feels.”
I let him lead me out of the arena and back out through the library. His grip is firm. There’s a possessiveness to it, and I let him. What the fuck am I getting myself into.
The basement level felt stuffy, thick with sweat and blood.
Too crowded. I’ve always hated confined spaces, so coming back up through the secret entrance brings a wave of fresh air.
Now we're surrounded by the scent of old books. He stays silent, pulling me through the isles with purpose. Some of the baseboards creak revealing their age. He leads me to a section tucked in the back where we can be left unseen. The only light is that of the moon coming through the vast windows. We stop and he turns to me. He’s silent as he drags me down to sit next to him on the floor.
“What are we doing here, Eryx?” Everything about him has me questioning his motives.
“Just thought we could use a little bit of quiet.” He turns to me, and my eyes catch on the cut above his brow. I shouldn’t care but I do. The caretaker in me stirs, uninvited but relentless. I swing my bag I always carry around, unzip it, and pull out my kit.
“Come here. Let me see.” I huff.
He doesn’t move.
“I’ll be fine. Nothing I’m not used to.” His voice is calm, but his eyes don’t leave mine.
“Doesn’t mean you have to suffer through it.” Why are men so stubborn? If something is bothering you just speak up. It doesn’t make you any less of a man. Especially when we still have to deal with the complaining.
I step closer. He doesn’t flinch when I reach out, gently dabbing the cotton to his brow. I can feel the warmth of his skin radiating off of him.
“Why do you even have that?” he asks, nodding to my kit. “You make it a habit to patch up others’ wounds?”
“Something like that.” I glance up.
His brows draw in. “Whose wounds?”
“Someone I grew up with. It was a long time ago now.”
I learned how to clean blood from skin before I even knew how to braid my own hair.
Thoren would come home wrecked. Split lip, black eye, bruises crawling down his ribs like shadows. His father’s death hit him hard. He called it training. Said it would make him stronger. Said a man needed to learn how to bleed if he ever wanted to lead.
But all I saw was him breaking.
Piece by piece.
I press gauze to Eryx’s side. The smell of antiseptic fills the room, but under it, I swear I can still smell old sweat and iron and the salt of tears I never let fall.
Thoren never complained. Not once. He’d sit on the edge of the bed, back straight, jaw tight, and let me patch him back together. It was the only time I got to touch the part of him that hadn’t turned to steel.
He wouldn’t speak. But sometimes he’d close his eyes, just for a moment, and let out this quiet breath, like he was letting me carry the pain for him.
I tape down a bandage across Eryx’s ribs and smooth my palm over it.
“Tell me about him.”
I hesitate for a moment, his memory is always hard on me, “His name was Thoren. Our moms were best friends, so we basically grew up together. I used to do this for him. Whenever he went out looking for fights.”
Eryx doesn’t say anything. His posture shifts, and his attention sharpens.
“He’d come back barely standing some nights.
Nose broken, ribs cracked, knuckles torn open.
He made sure to always win. My father saw how good he was and then started managing him.
Why the Co-CEO of a tech giant wanted to get into the fight business is beyond me but he started putting pressure on him.
Thor always had a mind of his own, even as kids, you could never make him do anything he didn’t want to.
I’m not sure what kind of hold he held over his head, but whatever it was worked. ” I continue cleaning his wound.
“There was no room for failure. The one and only time he did, my fath—Sergio, made sure he wouldn’t forget what it felt like.
” I swallow, “I’d sneak into his room with ice and bandages.
He never asked me to. He just... let me.
We didn’t talk much about what he went through.
I think that was the silent deal we made.
He fought, and I cleaned up what was left of him.
He didn’t want me to worry more than I already was. ”
I press gauze to Eryx’s side a little harder than necessary.
“I hated seeing him like that. He was always bigger than life to me, you know? And then he’d come home and look like a weapon someone forgot to clean.
Fixing him made me feel close to him. Like maybe, even if I couldn’t stop the fights, I could give him something my father never could.
Gentleness. Care. Someone who saw more than what he was trained to destroy. ”
My fingers pause over Eryx’s chest, resting just above his heart.
I finally look at him again. “I think that’s when Thoren and I really became each other’s.
Not when we were laughing in the halls. Not when he taught me how to drive or swim.
It was in those quiet, broken moments. When all I could do was help him stand back up. ”
“And now you’re doing the same for me?”
I nod, my lips pressed together. “I guess it’s the only kind of love I ever really learned. Not the kind that stops the fight. The kind that stays afterward. That stays through it all.”
Eryx watches me for a long moment. Not just my face, but the weight behind my words. He shifts, carefully, “My brother used to say there were two kinds of men in our world. Ones who killed to protect, and ones who killed to prove something.
His voice is low, but steady. I don’t move, just listen like the words matter, like they’re sharp and sacred.
“My father raised us to be both. We weren’t allowed to lose, not even when it was just us sparring in the yard. Pain wasn’t a consequence. It was a lesson. And if you showed weakness? You earned more of it.” He laughs, just once. Bitter. Short. But there’s no humor in it.
“I used to wrap my own hands. Tend to my own bruises. No one stayed afterward. You bled, you bit down, and you showed up the next day like nothing happened.” He looks up at me now, his voice quiet but rough.
“I think that’s why I can’t stop looking at you.
Because you stay. And I don’t know what the fuck to do with that. ”
I lean in, just a fraction. Enough that our foreheads almost touch. I’m not trying to fix him. Not trying to fill silence with comfort. Just letting the stillness hold us both.
“Maybe you don’t need to do anything with it. Maybe you just need to let it be real.”
He closes his eyes, exhales slowly. Like he’s never had permission to let something in before.
“Maybe I should get going. It’s late.” I start to rise, but his hand closes around my arm. His eyes begging me to stay.
He doesn’t break his gaze. “Yeah, let’s go,” he says. “You’re coming with me, though.”
“I’m what? Didn’t we just go over this?”
“Yeah. We did.” A slow, dangerous smile. “Which is exactly why you’re coming.”
And I do. I don’t fight him this time, I just follow. But not because I trust him. Not because I’m curious. And definitely not because I want to.
I follow because something inside me recognizes something inside him and that scares the shit out of me. There’s something familiar in his darkness. In the way he hides it in plain sight. In the way he wears it like armor and dares the world to test its weight.
It reminds me of myself.
It reminds me of how easy it is to become the thing that once tried to break you. And maybe that’s what I see in him. A reflection. A warning. Or maybe a mirror.
I shouldn’t be here. Not with him. Not after what I’ve been through.
Not when I’ve only just begun to remember what it feels like to breathe on my own again.
But there’s a gravity to him that keeps pulling me in his direction.
Something sharp and quiet, like the stillness right before a storm.
And I hate how part of me leans into it, like a match leaning toward the flame just to feel something real.
But the truth is, I’ve always been drawn to danger. Maybe because it’s the only thing I’ve ever understood. Or maybe, after everything, it’s the only thing that still makes me feel anything at all.
The hospital did what it could. Set my bones.
Stitched my skin. Tried to scrub the blood from my hands and the terror from my eyes.
But they couldn’t touch what really broke.
They couldn’t reach the part of me that had shattered when I lost Thoren.
No one could. Part of my soul died with him that day, and that’s something I’ll never get back.
That kind of loss doesn’t just shatter you, it hollows you out.
The world went quiet after that. Muted. Like someone turned the volume down on life and forgot to turn it back up.
You come out haunted. And somewhere along the way, I stopped running from the dark and I started feeling safer inside it.
That’s the part Eryx sees.
He sees me. The version I don’t let anyone else look too long at. And he doesn't flinch. He meets it. Dares it. Challenges it.
So, I follow. Even when I shouldn’t. Even when every logical part of me is screaming at me to run in the opposite direction.
Even when I know that being close to him is like standing too close to the edge of a cliff.
It’s thrilling, breathless, and plain stupid.
I’m not that girl. Not anymore. That part of me died three years ago.