Page 48 of Crash
“You should listen to her,” Ren said, smiling at me. “She’s the Fuller with the book smarts.”
“Don’t I know it,” he replied,thenbegan to grind his teeth again. He never did like being told what to do, especially by his little sister.
“You and Dr. Ormond have been guiding me to this point,” I said. “Being shut away in that house… That wasn’t any way to live a life, and neither has being locked away in this office because I was afraid of the guy downstairs. I want what you and Ren have. I want to be able to trust and love and—” I clamped my mouth shut. “You know what I mean.”
“If he ever so much as—”
“Shit,” Ren declared. “We get the point, Ash. You’ll knock his block off.”
He narrowed his eyes, focusing on her and taking the heat away from me. “Spitfire.”
“Fuck help us when we have kids,” Ren said to me, shaking her head. “I want a boy if this is how he’s going to act over a boyfriend.”
Ash looked dumbfounded. “You want kids?”
“FYI,” she said, ignoring the stupid look on my brother’s face. “If you want to talk aboutyou know what, bypass the caveman here and come straight for me.”
I nodded. “Sure.”
“You want to call a ceasefire and come get some lunch?” Ren asked. “Kiss and make up?”
Glancing out into the hall to where I knew half the place had heard our raised voices,I squared my shoulders. Confidence was beginning to suit me. I felt it bristle through my limbs and lodge into my heart like a drug. Maybe I’d needed Ash’s mini-meltdown to shock me into action.
“Vee?” she prodded.
I glanced up at her and shook my head. “I’ve got something to do.”
Twenty
Violet
Stepping around Ash and Ren, I descended the stairs and ventured into the gym.
Being lunchtime on a Tuesday, it was pretty quiet apart from the full timers. All in all, there were probably a dozen people in the main room and six or seven working out on the cardio equipment. Nobody was looking at me, they were all focused on what they were doing like true gym junkies.
Looking around for Lincoln, I spotted him over by the cage in the far corner where he was guiding a couple of guys through some kind of punch and kick repetition on some tall padded bags. His broad shoulders rose and fell as he laughed as one of the guys slipped and fell on his ass.
A small smile pulled at my lips, and I stepped forward. That was the moment a body positioned itself in front of me, and my vision locked onto Andrea. Shit. Didn’t she have a life? I mean, it was the middle of the day, I always figured she had to work someplace, or maybe this was her gig. Working rich men to pay for her spray tan.
“Don’t even think about it,” she said, her voice dripping with venom.
I began to shrink into myself, but I forced out the words that had formed in my brain. ”Excuse me?”
Andrea narrowed her eyes in challenge. “You think he wants someone like you?”
I looked at her and realized that someone like him, someone genuinely kind and caring, would never be into a woman like her. I never had to be jealous of Andrea, and it was only ever my lack of confidence that had driven me into that pit of despair. They were never more than superficial.Lincoln and I?We might not end up together, but at least he wanted to know who I was.
Andrea’s beauty was only skin–deep, and it was a thin layer at that.
I tilted my head to the side and regarded her. “You’ve never been dumped before, have you?”
It was her turn to be taken aback. “Excuse me?”
Man, that felt really good. To just let loose and let it rip. Bloody oath.
Ignoring her simmering rage, I stepped around Miss Skin-Deep and continued across the gym to where Lincoln was with the other men. I hadn’t been this far before, not even on the night of the opening party, and I was beginning to see Pulse, and myself, in a whole new light.
Was this how it felt to be fearless? If it was, then Lincoln was right. The girl I was at sixteen, when I sat at Beat watching both twins and Ash train, was still in there. That, more than anything, gave me hope.
