Page 31 of Ruin

She sighs, slumping her shoulders, running a hand over her face. There are pale blue bags beneath her eyes. Sunken dark circles, lines of worry pinching the outer corners of her eyes, all things I haven’t noticed, haven’t been looking at, worrying about.

“We’ve got problems,” she blows out a breath, I want to go to her, but I don’t, standing sentry on the opposite side of the long table. Her eyes flash up, arm dropping with a thud to her lap, “With Ivanov,” she spits, top lip curling with her distaste for the man I once loved. “He’s up to something,” she sighs heavily, and she sounds… exhausted. “We’re just trying to…” she pauses, eyeing my face, likely calculating the outcome of this conversation if she mentioned the state of me, the scratches, the blood, the protein powders. “Take precautions,” she scrubs her trembling hand across her brow, before propping her chin atop it, eyes dropping down, scanning over the papers laid out before her. “He’s fucked up shipments with Vito, Alejandro, and Kai,” she purses her lips, looks up, eyes locking on mine, and it feels like a boulder is sitting in my chest, “with you?”

She speaks the words like a question, like she knows but wants confirmation, she’s digging. That’s all this is, digging and delving into business that absolutely has nothing to fucking do with her.

“What trouble is there with them?” I ask instead, avoiding her diving.

These are things I should know.

It’s my business as much as hers.

We run The Firm.

I have as much right to the information she holds as she does.

She rolls her tongue across the front of her teeth, pushing out her top lip with the motion. Then she bites the inside of her cheek, cocks her head further to the left and rolls her gaze down my body, over what’s in my arms, the blood on my skin, something that is normal for me.

I feel like I’m under a microscope, her inspection of me something clinical and harsh. Perhaps, more of a magnifying glass, angled so the sun burns right down on me, making me twitch with the intense heat just before I’m set on fire.

“What happened to your eye, Charl?” she smiles then, something sharp and cracked. “Who did that to your pretty face, Charlie-boy?” she whispers, her fingertips of each hand curling over the edge of the table now, elbows below the wood as she leans forward. “Who fucking touched you like that, Charlie?”

Serpent like, the hiss that spits through her teeth, her eyes wide and locked on mine, analysing and venomous.

Protective.

My injury has personally offended her, something that is natural to us, to shield one another. I would be the same with her, but tonight, this just feels off.

Wrong.

“I don’t belong to you anymore,” I rasp, chin dipping, eyes glancing at the bundle of supplies in my hands, I cling onto them harder, think of Ava. “I am not yours.”

When I look back up, her lips parted, nostrils flaring, eyes unblinking and so, so wide, pupils blown, she swallows, licking her lips.

“Who hurt you, Charl?” she whispers again, a tremor in her voice that she tries to hide, swallow back, but she forgets I know her better than she knows herself. “Tell me and I’ll kill them.”

I think of tiny Ava’s jagged, cutting claws, skeletal fingers and vicious touch. A smile curls one side of my mouth, lifting the corner just enough to have me blinking and removing it from my lips.

“I can take care of myself, Lala,” I whisper back.

“Charlie,” she says again, louder, firmer, “I want-”

“It doesn’t matter what you want, Kyla-Rose,” I tell her boldly, cutting her off. “It doesn’t matter because we’re not doing this anymore.”

Her mouth snaps shut, eyes shining as she stares up at me. I shift the items in my arms, licking over my lips, I direct my gaze to the wood of the table, my heart clenching inside my chest.

“You have your own life, family, husbands, son-”

“Charlie-”

“That’s where your focus needs to be,” I finish, dragging my gaze back onto hers. “Not on me.” I swallow and it feels like ash and razor blades, dry and cutting. “Not anymore, Lala.”

She rolls her lips together, sucking in her cheeks, she pushes to her feet, planting her hands atop the papers, fingers splaying. She leans forward, head cocked and in the low light of the room, shadows cast across her face making her look like a demon.

“You will always be my focus, Charlie,” she says lowly, blinking at me like I’m fucking stupid.

My grip tightens around the bottle of milk in my hands, pressure threatening to make the top of it pop off.

“Don’t you get it, Lala?” my voice creaks, muscles rippling beneath my skin as I, too, lean further towards her, my knees now flush with the solid wood of the long bench seat. “I don’twantto be. I don’t want to have your focus.” I breathe in deep, her red-painted lips parting. “I don’t want you thinking about me.” My lungs are on fire, heart thudding painfully, jumping up the back of my throat.

---