Total pages in book: 126
Estimated words: 122030 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122030 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
RJ adjusts his jaw, taking the parting shot as the price of doing business. “Better be.”
“Come on.” Duke throws his arm over RJ’s shoulder. “We’re basically family, right? You are screwing my ex.”
“Is that what this is? Phase Two: Use me to get Sloane back?”
He laughs. “Dude, if you think she can get tricked into bed, you don’t know her at all.”
“Fair.”
“Okay, listen up!” The master of ceremonies this evening takes the center of the circle where the previous bout has left a paltry smattering of blood and sweat. “From the junior class, Wynder and Hamill, step forward.”
The next fighters emerge from their respective corners to face off. Money changes hands around them, bets moving in careful choreography.
“Let’s go,” RJ tells me. “I’m over this shit.”
We’ve only taken two steps before a commotion stirs from somewhere deep in the scrum. Wariness crawls like ivy up my spine as I watch Fenn push his way to the middle of the room, taking the floor from the two fighters-in-waiting.
“I want next,” he demands.
Just like that, my pulse quickens.
Shit.
The confused MC looks to RJ for a ruling, unaware of the recent transfer of power.
“What are you doing?” RJ calls out, frowning at Fenn. Like the rest of the room, he senses the moral fury with which Fenn has claimed the right of vengeance.
Fenn ignores his stepbrother. “Lawson,” he hollers.
The greenhouse becomes deathly silent. Like a morgue.
His determined gaze locks with mine. “I’m calling you out.”
The silence breaks, and the responding boisterous clamor through the crowd is both elated and perplexed. Me, I’m not at all confused by this turn of events. I know why I’m here and what I’ve got coming. It’s plain on Fenn’s severe face.
RJ turns to me for an explanation, but I ignore him to meet Fenn in the circle. My shoulders drop. I force myself to look him in the eye.
“I’m sorry,” I say as Fenn pulls his shirt off and tosses it at the feet of the rabidly eager bystanders.
“Fuck you.”
Fenn doesn’t wait for a bell. He came prepared to pound me into oblivion, and so I let him. The first several blows are catharsis for both of us. I take the beating because it’s the path of least resistance. Eye swelling. Mouth filling with blood. Call it penance. Call it self-pity.
I deserve this.
“Fight back, asshole.” Eyes feral, Fenn grabs the front of my shirt and drops me to one knee with a right cross. “Hit me, damn it.”
I’m almost numb, my nerve endings so brutalized, they hardly register the blows, only the violent ringing in my ears with each echoing snap of bone on bone. Eventually Fenn’s rage—and frustration with my reluctance to trade with him—propels him to wrestle me into a headlock and clamp down until I’m forced to elbow him in the gut to free myself.
“That’s it,” he hisses. “Hit me back, you goddamn asshole.”
He tackles me again, this time pinning me down with his knee between my shoulder blades, and my delayed sense of self-preservation kicks in, and we’re both operating on reptile brain. I scramble to roll over, my fist snapping into his jaw before we both stumble to our feet. I hit him. And then I hit again. Because I’m angry too. Not with him, but at myself.
Because it’s suddenly occurred to me that the one nice thing that’s happened to me during this whole abysmal year is the only thing I wasn’t supposed to enjoy.
We become angry, bloody animals in this circle. Inflicting pain and spitting malice. Until our arms grow heavy and the air is too thick to reach our lungs and we’re choking on our own adrenaline.
I land a shot to his kidneys that doubles him over and forces Fenn to tangle up with me. In a red, blind flurry I elbow the side of his head until I lose my balance. He rams me into the ground. Fenn is able to get on top, sitting on my chest, his features taut with torment and hatred. He pulls back his fist as I stare up at him, knowing I’m about to wake up in the hospital or tossed in a ditch.
But the strike never comes.
Fenn, apparently realizing the limits of his own violence, stops himself.
“You’re dead to me,” he mutters, standing up. “You went too far this time, Lawson.” I recognize my father in the way he gazes down at me with such contempt and disgust. “We’re done here.”
CHAPTER 43
FENN
MY MOUTH TASTES LIKE METAL AND DIRT. THE THROBBING AT MY temple flares across my face and settles into my swollen eyelid and aching jaw. I’m breathing shallow as I bend tree limbs and swat away spiderwebs, trudging through the dense forest. The pain is clarity. The clarity of purpose, but also consequence. All of this was inevitable. From the moment I set foot toward that boathouse. We were always going to end up here.