Page 13 of Dare To Fall

“I’m not strong.”

Kellan snorts. “You’re kidding, right? You’ve been struggling with what’s been happening on your own for weeks, and here you are … still standing.”

I shake my head, blinking back tears. “I broke.”

“Not completely.”

I tear my attention from Kellan and fix my gaze on the table. “I wanted to die when Eli found me. I’d given up.”

Silence descends at my whispered, raw confession.

A chair scrapes against the floor, and a moment later, Eli is crouched beside me. Taking my hands, he squeezes them tightly.

“No. No giving up.” His words are fierce. “No ending anything. You get angry. Do you hear me, Ari? At the person who did this to you. At us. At me.”

I glance away from him. “I’m not brave enough.”

“The fuck you’re not. You are still the girl who came out to the cemetery in the middle of the night to answer the call of a stranger. The girl who was courageous enough to demand what she wanted. To have her fantasies fulfilled in the dark.” He lifts my hand and brushes the tear trickling down my cheek away with the pad of his thumb. “You are not broken. Not at the core.”

I close my eyes and lean into his touch, savoring the contact. “Just scarred on the inside.”

Eli’s palm flattens against my cheek, stroking it lightly before he pulls away. “Eat. Then fight. Don’t let these fuckers win.”

“You have us with you now,” Kellan points out as Eli retakes his seat. “The game has changed.”

With a shaky breath, I take my spoon and scoop up some soup. For once, food doesn’t taste like sawdust in my mouth. Between Kellan’s encouragement and Eli’s quiet praise, I finish almost all of it.

“You get the orders on your phone, right?” Kellan is watching me play with the rice.

I nod. “From an unknown number, but they managed to delete some when I tried to show Principal Warren.”

“Can I see it?”

Abandoning my food, I leave my seat and find my discarded clothes. I don’t even remember Eli stripping me out of my sweatpants and hoodie. I search through them until I find my main cell and carry it back to the table. “Here.”

Eli frowns when I hand it to his friend. “You don’t have a password?”

“No.”

“Jesus, Ari, you need to keep things secure.”

“I wouldn’t need to if people stopped taking my stuff,” I snap back.

Kellan is already absorbed in whatever is on the cell’s screen. “Okay, kids, let’s stop the bickering.”

I go back to swirling the rice around my plate.

“Stop playing with your food and eat it,” Eli snaps.

I glare at him, but pop a spoonful into my mouth, and chew.

His lips curl in a smile. “Good girl.”

The needy ache that rocks through my body surprises me, and I have to press my thighs together to alleviate the throbbing. I don’t know what power those fucking words uttered in that husky voice have over me, but I’m not sure I like them. Eli Travers is someone I shouldn’t want, but my body doesn’t seem to have figured that out yet.

Kellan hums. “They want you to go to the Valentine’s Ball tonight and unleash the monster.” His eyes flick to Eli. “I wonder how they are planning to do that.”

My chest tightens. “I don’t want to go. I can’t—”

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